Cutie Pants at Violin Lesson

I just had to post some pics of cutie and his cutie instructor ( Miss. Suz) at his violin lesson.

Birthday Boy

We celebrated Isaiah's 5th birthday on Monday at small group. He turned 5 on Tuesday. These are the pics of all of the festivities. As you can see a dinosaur cake was requested. He also wanted pancakes for breakfast and Waffles with sausage for dinner on Tuesday. He is such a joy to be around and we are so glad that God has blessed our lives with him.

Pre-school Theology

I (Micah) am blogging the details of a conversation I had with Isaiah today in the van. This really took place. You can't make this stuff up.
'
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Isaiah: Rules are important, right Dad?

Me: Well, I guess they are. But there are things which are much more important than following rules. Worshipping God is more important than just following rules.
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Isaiah: What's more important than that?
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Me: There is nothing more important than worshipping God. That's the MOST important thing -- we were created to worship Him.
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Isaiah: But sometimes phone calls are important, right?
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Me: Well, yes, sometimes Mom and Dad get phone calls which are important. But they're not more important than worshipping God.
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Isaiah: . . . . . . . . . . . does Mom know that?
~~~~~

We are logged in!

We are officially logged in with the CCAA ( China Center for Adoption Affairs) as of September 3. Now we are just waiting for our LOA (Letter of Acceptance) from China. Travel will still be in January or February but at least we are one step closer to meeting Levi!

Here is some info about Levi's city. He lives in Wenzhou, Zhejiang at the Child Welfare Institute of Wenzhou City. The population is 7.5 million.

Wikipedia has these interesting things to say about Wenzhou:

Business Culture:

"Due to both cultural and geographical remoteness and its lack of natural resources (land, minerals, etc.), the Chinese central government has left the people of Wenzhou relatively autonomous. Away from the center of the political and economic stage, its people are more independent, self-reliant, and generally more business-oriented. Numerous books have been published about the the business sense of people from Wenzhou. The people of Wenzhou are equipped with business sense and a commercial culture more dominant than anywhere else in China."

Religion:

Most people are Buddhist, around 80% of the residents, and there are numerous Buddhist temples in the city. But recently there has been a rapid growth of Christian community, one source claims that between 15 and 20% of the city's population is Christian. For this reason the city has come to be known as "China's Jerusalem". Cool huh?

Language:

The language there is said to be "notoriously eccentric" due to the geographic location (surrounded by mountains and sea) and the influence from other Chinese languages. For this reason it won't do us any good to try and learn Chinese ( Mandarin) before we go. The guide that we have will teach us basic words to communicate with Levi.

Here is a link to a page that the BBC has called "In Pictures: A Day In The Life of Wenzhou"

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/shared/spl/hi/picture_gallery/06/asia_pac_a_day_in_the_life_of_wenzhou/html/1.stm

I can hardly wait to check it out for myself!

Bahl Family Pumpkin Farm

New Violin

My little guy is going to start violin lessons next week. We will see how it goes. He seems excited now but I am sure that wont be the case when I break the news that he has to practice instead of playing babies with Naomi or something of the sort. ( He really does like to play babies with Naomi.)