Olivia's first day at church

This morning started off nicely, with Olivia waking up playful and happy. We played with her musical bear, and had some fun time before we had to give her the antibiotics and salve for her forehead. After breakfast, we went over to Ben's art studio, where we attempted to get a couple of good poses from Olivia for Ben to paint her picture. We have some good ones, and we can't wait to see how the painting turns out.

What was supposed to be nap time turned in to play time for Olivia. We put her in her crib for a midmorning nap, and we kept hearing giggles and noises from her crib. So, daddy eventually got Olivia out and played with her. Will she be worn out this afternoon? We'll see!

We went to the English speaking church service at 11:00 a.m. this morning. The church is about half the size of the chapel at Spring Hill, and has very little circulation. The people were just packing in to the place, and it was about 3/4 Chinese people, 1/4 English speaking adoptive parents and families. We ended up on folding chairs in the very back, which was fine by us. Olivia was enthralled by the music (hang on, Randy, she's coming!). They had someone playing the piano while they had the words to some songs on a projector screen up front. There were two teenaged Chinese girls next to me, and they both had beautiful voices. Olivia LOVED hearing them sing, clap and smile to the music. When we got to the point where we would sit down, there weren't enough chairs for me and both girls, so I offered them my chair. The girls just grinned and said "my pleasure, you sit and worship, enjoy!". Then, one of them sat down in a chair while the second one sat in the first one's lap.

The preacher was a Chinese man who did a sermon from Genesis. He'd say a phrase or two in Chinese, and a young lady would translate. There were so many nice Chinese and English speaking people around us, again, I was just overwhelmed at the sight of it. I'm once again reminded of that song from the 80s - "Love in any language".

We had to leave the service a little early (it is sort of a come and go service), and we noticed that in addition to the chapel being packed, the foyer was packed and there were people standing outside listening. Amen!

The preacher has to be Chinese because if it's an English missionary, the Chinese government will give them trouble for trying to convert Chinese people to Christianity, but as long as it's a Chinese citizen presiding over the service, it's okay.

We got accosted by an elderly Chinese lady on the way to the service about Olivia's band-aid on her head. Apparently, this lady felt like the band-aid shouldn't be there, that Olivia's sore would be better in the open air, and she tried to pull the band-aid off. She kept fussing at us in Chinese and giving us stern looks while trying to pull off the band-aid, and finally Pat had to step in and say "no-no" and shoo her off.

Baby and mommy are sleeping now; please continue to pray for Christine. She is not feeling well at all, and has been taking some strong prescription medicine for nausea and possible fever.

Tomorrow, we'll take Olivia back to the doctor to have her infection checked out, and we hope Christine will be better by that time.

I hope you're all enjoying a great sermon and singing in worship today.

Michael, Christine and Olivia