ANSWERED PRAYER . . . ONE DOWN, ONE TO GO

Thanks to all of you who prayed us through the last 24 hours!!!!! We felt so uplifted when we checked our email this morning and found so many emails conveying you were praying! Your prayers were heard and God answered with good news! …Dang Tianqing is now officially Eric Ethan Tianqing Hood! He was so brave and we are so proud of him. He just now looked over my shoulder to read, so I explained his new name to him for the first time. He agreed it was “good”! We are packing up and killing time in a very small hotel room at the moment. Andrew and Eric are being quite creative! It is very cold outside, but we actually just saw the sun break through and show us the sky for a few minutes. (I think that is rare here in Taiyuan, where there is a lot of pollution.) We leave in a couple of hours to fly to Shanghai. Then tomorrow afternoon (Tues. China time) we receive Fengmao (Brandon). Please pray that he will be brave also. This is so hard…for an 11 year old to say goodbye to all they have ever known and say yes to the scary unknown.

DIVINE APPOINTMENT??

Yesterday we had an impromptu breakfast guest. When we went to breakfast at the hotel’s buffet, as was our custom, we would get our juice and set it at our table before we would go get our food. When we came back with our food, someone else was sitting there eating at our table. So we went ahead and sat down and tried to converse as we ate our breakfast. His English was limited but was better than our Chinese and we learned that he is from Jaiden’s province! Like us, he has a 12 y.o. boy and a 6 y.o. girl. We ate and parted ways. Then a few hours later he saw us as we were waiting in the lobby to depart for the train station. He was so friendly and was happy to see us yet again. He gave us his business card with his number since he lives near Guangzhou (where we will be in one week). We brought several booklets with us of the Gospel of John in both English and Chinese, so I pulled one out and gave it to him. He graciously accepted it. I hope to follow up with him at some point, as I believe his card has his email. Please pray this businessman/father will someday embrace the Gospel and bless those around him as well.