More fun stories:

The Easy Button:
I was at the train station with Bethany talking with my hand resting on the hand rail when a man walked up and tapped my hand. He said with a strong chinese acent: "Very dangerous". I looked down and realized the escalator had stopped and my hand was resting on a big red button that said emergency stop. Bethany and I quickly got on the train and had a good laugh!!

Cockroaches:
We have had our first visitors to our home. They were big and ugly and we KILLED them!! We have had 3 cockroaches so far. Thankfully Mike was home each time and was able to take care of them for me. The first one was fun though. As Mike was hunting it down it came running out of the cupboard and looked as though it was coming straight for me. I squealed and went running out of the kitchen to the dining area where the kids were eating breakfast. When I overreacted it made them all scream and go running upstairs to safety because we were all sure that it was going to eat daddy and then come have us for desert!! LOL

Flamingos:
We went to the park after church and got to see flamingos. They are not the typical pink ones that we have seen before they are a very pale pink almost white. Jezrielle says that they have an annoying sound and are ugly.

Ocean:
We went to the ocean for the 4th of July. It was a fun time. We had a picnic at the beach. The kids got to go swimming for the first time in the ocean. A helicopter came to airvac someone to a bigger hospital, and Dru, David and Kyle used a squatter for the first time!! It was quite the adventure!!

Garbage Pickers:
The kids were walking through the village and a local started giving them things out of their garbage! They were so excited and came home to show us all of there new toys!! We quickly told them that we are not garbage pickers and not to go throuh peoples garbage again.

This is a picture of our living/dining room. The door in the back goes to our kitchen. This is a picture from Mikes cell phone so the quality is bad but it at least gives an idea of our home.

This is the rear veiw from our roof top. It is basically the same all the way around but I will post more soon.

We are in our house!!

We moved into our house several days ago. We were truly blessed!! We found a 3 floor village house within our budget in the same neighborhood as the Krohn's. The kids have been enjoying being able to spend a lot of time with Isaiha and Abigail before they head back to the states.

Here is a brief description of our house: We have 4 bedrooms and 3 bathrooms all in 1200 sq ft. The ground floor has our living room/dining room, kitchen and 1 bathroom. The 1st floor has one small bedroom (the size of a large closet), one large bedroom, bathroom and a small sitting area. The second floor is the same as the first and then we have the roof as well.

We are so excited to have so much space!! We now have our basic necessities like a fridge and beds!! The kids are all doing well some of them are a little more emotional than normal but that is to be expected. They are still finding everyday things exciting like escalators and double decker buses! They have been meeting some of the neighborhood kids so I'm sure they will soon have lots of friends to take away some of the sadness when the Krohn's leave us.

I should have a way to put pictures on my computer soon so that I can begin to share the amazing views that we have!!

Getting Adjusted

We have now spent one week in Hong Kong. We are all adjusted to the time difference now. As I am writing this it is 8:00am and the kids are all still sleeping!! We found a house on Monday, in the same village as the Krohns. We were truly blessed it is much bigger than we thought possible. We found a full village house with 1200 sq ft, 4 bed, 3 bth, plus a full roof top. The kitchen is really big for a Hong Kong home too!! I will post pictures soon!!

The last couple days we have just been getting things lined up for making this our home. Getting cell phones, opening bank accounts, getting internet at our house, etc. Hopefully we will be able to move into our home on Tuesday once we have furniture and beds to sleep on. The kids have been having lots of fun with the Krohn's and Sweeney kids. We are so blessed to have both of these families here to help us get adjusted.

Our first days in Hong Kong

We have now spent 2 days in Hong Kong. It has truly been an adventure. Having 5 children with you definitely keeps things more exciting. (I will post pictures as soon as I find a cord to get my pictures from my camera to the computer)

Day 1: After getting off the plane the girls went with Mike in the van with all of our things and I took the boys for a ride on a double decker bus to the guest house that we are staying at. I didn't think to have the kids go to the bathroom before leaving the airport so while on the bus David announced that he had to go to the bathroom. Unfortunately, there is no bathroom on the bus and no way to get off the bus to go. My good friend Sarah had an empty water bottle in her purse. David intitially was embarrassed to use the bottle but when it became emergent he gave in and used the bottle. So here we were in the back of a double decker bus mommy holding the bottle for David to pee. :) As the bottle continued to get more and more full we started laughing as he tried to stop the flow so we didn't overflow!! I am happy to say that he was successful and we had no mess just a very full water bottle of what Sarah said looked like tea.

Day 2: We went to the park with the Krohn's to keep all the kids awake for the afternoon. The boys all had fun playing with a chinese boy. They played tag and catch. It was fun to watch them. I ventured out to the grocery store to try and get 4 things that I had on a list. I came back with 2 things of which on 1 was on my list. It is definitely going to be hard to learn the ropes of grocery shopping here.

Day 3: So today we called Mike's parents and Aunt Hope. The kids really enjoyed that. Then we had made plans to go over to the Krohn's house for breakfast. We had 3 umbrellas so we thought we would be ok for the short walk up to the train station. We got about half way there and the rain was so bad that we were all soaked through all of our clothes. Mike finally just stopped and said we are turning around. The kids were all very sad and crying because they wanted to go and play with the other kids. We had to look so funny. Our train of children soaked all the way through everything walking down the street with umbrellas that were virtually doing nothing!! :)

We are FINALLY headed out!!!

Just wanted to update everyone that we will be flying out on June 23rd!! Mike's last day of work is this Friday. We are busy packing and preparing for our adventure. We want to say thank-you to everyone who has supported us through all of the preparations. We have had many very successful fundraisers thanks to the support of all of our family and friends. Thank you so much!!

GREAT NEWS!!

We are finally headed to Northern Asia!! We are so excited to tell you that enough of our support has come in and we should have a date of departure by the end of the week. It will be sometime between June 18th and 25th. We are having one more fundraiser on this Friday June 4th. It is going to be a benefit concert at Hooping for the Health of it in Traverse City on South Airport. It will be from 7 to 9pm and Ray's Coffee House next door will be contributing a portion of there sales to our adventure.

Thank you to all of you who have supported us financially and prayerfully. If you are interested in getting e-mail updates please e-mail me at jodieannis@gmail.com. If you are still wanting to support us it is not to late we are leaving with a very bare bones budget and just trusting in our Father that He will provide. We plan on having a going away party before we leave. I will post on here when and where that will be once a date is set. Please continue to check back regularly!!

Benefit Concert

Things are continuing to go very well. We still are hoping to head out sometime in June. We are planning a benefit concert for June 4th from 7 to 9pm at Ray's Coffeehouse. We would love to see everyone there.

We had a yard sale fundraiser that raised another $1,500. Our father is in control and continues to open doors. Please continue to keep us in your thoughts. We are seeking after His timing.

His Timing

Our fund raising is going amazing and thanks to all of you we are almost there!! We are still aiming for the second week of June for our departure date. Please continue to lift us up to our Father as he brings the final details together.

I will be finishing my last day of work tomorrow. This has been exciting yet very sad. Mike has put in his tentative notice as well. We are preparing to leave this phase of life and enter into the next thing that our Father has for us.

Thank you for all of your support!! I will try to give weekly updates from now on so please check back often and see what we are up to.

Fundraising, Fundraising and more Fundraising

We are really working hard to get to Hong Kong by the second week of June as was requested of us. We are doing several fundraisers in the coming months. The first big one is going to be a yard sale in April at our church. We are looking for people who would have items that they would like to donate to be sold. Please get ahold of me if you have anything to donate!!

The next thing is we are going to be selling candles and possibly flower bulbs in April. This is something that will not turn a very large profit if we don't have help. We are looking for those that would be willing to take an order form for us and try to sell to co-workers, family and friends!! I know this isn't a fun thing for most, but it could bring in a large amount of funds for our cause!!

If you are interested in helping with either of these things please email me at jodieannis@gmail.com