Blessings From Him

Today is Sunday June 6. We have been in Beijing for almost 3 days now. We arrived Thursday and met two other families in our travel group who were on the same flight. Beijing is huge - it is not like American cities with a main downtown, but just goes on and on. We ventured out with one of the couples, Adam and Cori, to find a restaurant a few blocks from our hotel and were all feeling proud of ourselves.

Friday we toured a Cloisonne factory and then went to the Great Wall. Saturday we visited Tiananmen Square and the Forbidden City (this is where the emperors of China lived during the final two Chinese dynasties that preceded communist China) and then went on a rickshaw ride in the Hutong district (this is a district that is older and more traditional). Our tour guide in Beijing has been a Bethany employee named Joy, who has been sharing a lot about the culture of China as well as showing us around.

Today four of the six families that we met in Beijing headed off to the provinces where they will get their new children. One of the families got their daughter in Beijing, and actually had her before we arrived. Later in the afternoon we will be going with that family (they also brought their three boys with them to China) to an acrobatic show. We will be leaving for the city of Changsha early on Monday morning (that would be Sunday evening for everybody in America) and will receive our daughter Vivian in the afternoon. We are so excited to meet her!

A special thanks to Peter Krol (who is 12 years old) for helping us get through the "Great Fire Wall of China" so we could actually get onto the blog site!

The pictures show Ken and Keri at dinner with Adam and Cori, the entire group of six families at the Great Wall, and Ken and Keri with our guide Joy in our hotel lobby.