Oops!

Well, I knew it had been a while since I had updated this blog, but I didn't realize it had been THAT long. My apologies to those of you who were willing to try and keep up with our family through this blog! I can't promise anything, but I will definitely try and update more frequently. Thanks for sticking with me. Here are a few things we are experiencing right now...

A few weeks after we arrived, Eli began preschool classes at a local Chinese Preschool called Merryland. After a couple weeks of kicking and screaming and a lot of crying, she is beginning to tolerate it. Some days are great and she is excited to go and other days she is crying before we get to the door of her classroom. Three nights a week she gets one homework paper that she completes at home to help her begin to learn Chinese. She loves this time with her dad (Garett helps her) and she is always very proud of her finished work. So far, her favorite teacher is Teacher Rachel (her Caucasian English teacher), but she is beginning to make friends and talk about some of the other students. When asked why she doesn't like going to school she says that it's because they yell a lot and it's really loud. We find this incredible amusing, because Eli only has one volume and that is LOUD!: Apparently when the noise level is in another language, it's much more disturbing. :)

Our apartment is located directly on Morrison Academy's campus which has been a huge blessing. Garett's commute has gone from 30-60 minutes each way to 30-60 seconds. He is able to come home for lunch every day and any time we want, the kids and I can go down and visit him in his classroom. It is a short walk to the school playground, pool, soccer fields, and gym, all of which we have used on a frequent basis. We are surrounded by an extremely generous community (most of the staff live on campus) that are always offering to help us in any way they can. Several of the families have young children and the kids never have a shortage of playmates.

We have found a great little church that we have begun attending called Dali Faith Baptist Church. It is in an area of Taichung City about 30 minutes from our apartment called Dali. And when I say LITTLE, I mean that literally. We attend the English service and the average attendance is between 20-30 people. Although it is a HUGE change from our previous church, we are really enjoying the opportunity to get to know people and begin to invest in the Lord's work here in Taiwan, outside of Morrison. Each week after the service we all eat lunch together and fellowship and then a smaller, more intimate Bible study is held following lunch. We also work each night as a family to memorize the weekly Bible verse and then try and recite it on Sunday. The girls have done an amazing job with the memorization so far, but we have yet to find a brave enough soul to stand up and recite it in church. I think it's probably because they tend to get candy from the usher whether they say it or not.:)

High up on our prayer list at the moment is a vehicle! When we first arrived in Taiwan, we were able to quickly find the exact type of van we thought we wanted and buy it. But, unfortunately after a recent road trip the van died and the cost to repair it was more than the price of another car. So, we are on the lookout for another vehicle. We have a couple types of vehicles that we are considering and hope to find some good options soon! Taichung is a sprawling city and does not have a subway. Cabs are not too expensive here, but can start to add up quickly depending on the distance traveled. Thankfully, Eli's school, several fruit/vegetable markets, as well as a few other stores and restaurant stalls are all within walking distance. I am quite the spectacle in the village (the nearby grouping of stores next to the school). With the three kids hanging off my double stroller and two of them being blond, we get quite a few stares and smiles any time we venture out. Here in Taiwan, it is almost unheard of to have more than two kids and many only have one. But thankfully, children are very welcome here and never considered a bother to anyone. For that, I am extremely grateful!

Container Day Part 2

Once again, the Lord has abundantly blessed us and we are THANKFUL! It took only three short weeks for our belongings to make their way across the Pacific Ocean to our new home in Taichung, Taiwan. And when they arrived, we had a mob of people out to help unload the container and get everything upstairs to our 6th floor apartment. It was overwhelming to see the willingness of the body of Christ to help a family in need. Basically, we turned around and in about 1 hour and 22 minutes, the whole process was over. And, yes we were timing it. After the 7 plus hour process to load it we were curious to compare how long it would take to unload it. Much like a child carefully constructing a tower...all that hard work is quickly thrown to the wind with one swift kick! Ours was accomplished a bit more carefully, but with much the same vigor and speed thanks to some very generous people. Thank you Morrison Academy!

This is the container being driven up to the apartment building. Our apartment is directly behind me (the photographer).




The driver was trying to get the truck as close to the building as possible so we didn't have to walk as far to get to the elevator. That is our apartment building in the background.


Garett climbing up to take a look. Right away we could tell that the men who packed our container for us really knew what they were doing. Hardly any shifting or movement had occurred!

Rockin' and rollin'

Thanks to some hard working young men, Garett didn't have to visit the chiropractor the next day!



And most importantly, the surfboards made it!:)

Except for a few minor dings and chips everything made it safely. Another one of the many reasons we have had to be thankful! We are now in the process of finishing unpacking and trying to make our apartment a home. The kids especially are enjoying having their toys to play with and their own beds to sleep in at night! I will try and get some before and after pictures of the apartment posted soon.

Container Day Part 1

Rhys helping pack the container!

Now that I have sped through our first few weeks in Taiwan in one post, I thought I would back up a little and post about a couple of specific events. The first event I thought might be interesting is the day we packed our container.

Having never moved overseas before, I had no frame of reference with which to imagine what this was going to look like. All I knew was that all of our earthly belongings would be packed in a 20 foot long by 8 feet wide by 8 feet tall shipping container. I was assured that it would all fit, but I was skeptical. Twenty feet did not seem like very much to me. Which, in retrospect was good because it motivated me to try and get rid of as much as possible. Of course, after three garage sales and several trips to the good will, I felt so confident, I went shopping!:)

After many weeks of questioning...would it fit? If not what should we leave behind??? Did we remember everything we might need????? The day finally arrived. The plan was that the container would leave port from Long Beach and in 3-6 weeks would arrive at our doorstep in Taichung, Taiwan. With the help of the sweet and extremely generous people from Fellowship Crating the container was slowly but surely filled with our belongings. In reality, Garett just stood there while these two men worked their magic. You could tell immediately that they had done this many times before and they knew exactly how to pack the container so that everything fit and was secure. It took them seven hours to pack everything inside, but in the end it all fit.....except for one arm chair. Here are a few pictures of the progress!

Early in the packing process. I'm not sure you can tell, but that's our couch perched up on top of those boxes.




Our boxes waiting to be packed into the container.



Midway through the packing process. Mattresses in...check!


Almost finished!

SUCCESS!



All Ready to go.

Catch up!

Well, I've done a terrible job all ready of keeping this blog updated. In my defense I do have a couple of excuses which I will try and elaborate on in this post.:) In summary, since we landed here three weeks ago, we have had three ER visits, one hospital stay, one other doctor visit, our container arrived, and Garett started work. And throughout it all, we haven't had any internet. Alright, enough with the excuses....I will however try and elaborate a little on our experience so far and try and bring you all up to date. That way I can hopefully be a little more faithful to this blog in the future and not feel as though I am always playing catch up!

The morning that we were going to be headed down to Taichung to move into our apartment, Eli and Rhys were "wrestling" and Rhys lost as he was thrown into a coffee table and split his eye open. A couple of hours in two separate ER's and some superglue later we were headed to Taichung. That evening, after checking out our new home, we were out to dinner with some friends and Rhys threw up. And then he did again many times throughout the night. By Saturday morning I was sick too so Garett thought he would take the girls back to Taipei to visit his family and hopefully stay well! Upon arrival Peyton got sick and after not being able to stop she was admitted to the hospital and given an IV. She was in the hospital for two days during which Eli stayed with her cousins and played to her hearts content. I think she thought she had died and gone to heaven!

By Monday, our family was finally back together and by Wednesday it seemed like we might all be on the mend. Our 20 ft container arrived on Friday and with the help of a huge group of very generous people it was completely unloaded and in our apartment (on the 6th floor) in 1 hour and 22 minutes. That night we slept in our own beds! What a blessing!!

It is now Tuesday, August 9th and this afternoon we had to take Rhys and Peyton to the doctor for ear infections. They are both on antibiotics and will hopefully be feeling better soon! Although the past few weeks have been difficult, we have felt very blessed and cared for!! The body of Christ here has wrapped their arms around us and bent over backwards to tend to our every possible need! In the almost two weeks we have been here in Taichung, I don't think I have had to cook dinner once. Someone is always there asking what they can do for us or taking us places we need to go. We are also very thankful for all of you who have been praying for us! The Lord has provided us with great encouragement through your prayers!

Well, unfortunately I feel as though this post was all business. I would have liked to have dedicated a post to each of the significant events that we have experienced so far on this journey. But, in an effort to encourage myself to stay at it I thought it wise to do a general catch up post. I will try and expand a little more on our journey to Taiwan and how the Lord brought us here in a future post. There are also some fun "only in Taiwan" experiences to share with you at a later date! The picture up above is a view from our apartment at night. Thanks for reading!

We Made It!

On Tuesday morning, July 19th at 1:30 am, we said a very difficult goodbye to my family and got on a plane with a one-way ticket headed for Taipei, Taiwan. After many months of planning and more shopping trips than we would like to admit (yeah for Marshalls!), our bags were packed and ready to go. However, not without some crazy rearranging. We ended up with our allotted nine bags which were ALL dangerously close to being overweight along with at least two carryons a piece. We also carried on our desktop computer because we were concerned it would get damaged if we checked it on. With the help of my mom, it was cleverly concealed in a fashionable tote bag from Target (thanks mom!). What a sight we were walking through the airport....two strollers, three very tired children, one carseat, 84 carryon bags and two frazzled parents. OK, 84 is a bit of an exaggeration, but that's what it felt like! But the Lord provided for us in a merciful way and we had a fairly smooth flight. The plane was empty and we had about nine seats to spread out in. After sleeping for a few hours, the kids were able to watch a movie, play with some of their toys, eat breakfast and generally wreak havoc with the flight attendants. I think they pushed the call button about 15 times. Eventually, we just told the flight attendants to ignore it! The 15hour and 40minute flight seemed to just fly by(insert sarcasm here):) Actually, it really was better than we had expected and we are grateful to the Lord for His protection and provision. Thank you for all of your thoughts and prayers! We are now staying at Garett's parents house for a few days to spend some time with family before making the trek south to Taichung where we will be living. Sorry there aren't more pictures yet. I'm still trying to figure this whole blogger system out.

The Beginning

For a long time now, I have played around with the idea of starting a blog. But, I always came to the same conclusion...why? Why should I write a blog? Who's going to read it? What would I write about? Would it even be interesting? Basically, I lacked a solid purpose for blogging. Well, now I have found it! In less than three days, my family and I will step on a plane holding one way tickets for the place that we will call home for at least the next two years, Taiwan. We will be moving from Los Angeles, CA which is approximately 120º longitude to Taichung, Taiwan which is also approximately 120º longitude (give or take a little, but it makes for a nifty blog name). As our time here in Cali is quickly coming to an end, our hearts are heavy with having to say goodbye to our family and friends. But, we are thankful for God's goodness to us in blessing us with so many special relationships that are irreplaceable. Many of you have expressed an interest in keeping up with our family's adventures over the next two years and hopefully this blog will provide you with at least a glimpse of our experiences. I would like to think of myself as a very faithful blogger, however the reality is that updates probably won't happen as frequently as I would like. If it has been a while since you have heard from me, don't hesitate to leave a kind comment inquiring as to my whereabouts!:) And if there is anything you would like to know specifically about our crazy adventure just ask! There are so many thoughts rolling around in my head that I'm having a hard time deciding what to write about first. Thank you to those of you who are praying for us!!! We covet your prayers as we begin this journey of faith. It is a huge blessing to us when you take a few moments out of your day and bring our family before the Lord! Until next time...