Life in Winchester

To be put on our e-mail update list:

2008-08-13T16:17:00.004-04:00

Simply write us at betterthanlife@juno.com

We'll make sure you get put on our list!

Where to catch us...

2008-08-13T16:01:00.003-04:00

First of all, apologies for any of you who have kept up with this blog...
This was supposed to be a twice-a-month update on our family with pictures, etc.

Apparantly, trying to keep up with that in the midst of moving from place to place over the summer was more than we wanted to keep up with.

We've been visiting family all summer, spending the majority of the time with Jay's parents in Mountain Grove, MO. We also spent time with Jay's sister and brother, Nana, Grandmother, and are currently in Aurora, CO with Vikki's older sister.

As for an update on our plans to go to China...we were (surpisingly for us) almost not able to make it this year. We had initially signed contracts with Changzhou Institute of Technology, only to have the school cancel our contract when we informed them that we are expecting another child in January. (More on that later) I didn't realize how different the job search would be now that we're a family and not just two employable bodies...it does make sense that a university would prefer two teachers in one apartment over one with extra responsibility, but I still expected to find a job rather easily. With the search for another job relegated to a matter of months, that probably contributed to the difficulty we encountered. We were, in the end, able to land a position with a school in Hangzhou, very near to the first school. The school is a private university, Zhejiang University City College. We were very excited to get a position in Hangzhou as there are some other friends we know of who will be moving to the city at the same time that we do. We leave on the 18th of this month (in five days!).

We'd love to keep any of you posted on what we're up to, but we don't think we'll have access to this blog in China. Please see the post above for our e-mail. If you're not already on our e-mail update list and would like to be, simply write us an e-mail and we'll make sure you start receiving our update!

Please do keep us in your prayers. Even though we will have friends in Hangzhou, staying strong will be a challenge and we cherish your support!

We are expecting another child in January and plan to deliver in China. We still don't know the gender of the baby, though Vikki has started to feel the movements.

- Jay and Victoria Beamon

busy busy

2008-04-22T16:23:00.002-04:00

Jay has been doing a long-term sub job for Handley High School since last week and that will continue through Friday...

In the meantime, we are nearing the final stages of contract talks with a school in ChangZhou, Jiangsu province.

We are excited about the job as it should be pretty ideal...however, Vikki is now thinking she can try to work 'full-time' (16 hours/wk.) instead of an original 5-8 hours/wk. Once the contract is finalized, we'll try to get more details up here about the school and city.

Audriana has one more round of shots to do in May...we're holding a couple of garage sales on the 8th-9th and then the 15th-16th as well. It looks like we've got most of the 'major' things arranged and now will just need to work on closing out our tenure in lovely Winchester, VA and making a few minor arrangements in order to get ready for China.

We'll probably be leaving Winchester around the 13th of June.

about time...

2008-04-04T01:47:00.003-04:00

Sorry to anyone who keeps up with us for the long interval between posts!

For future reference, you can just request items like posts, pics, or video (family =) and we'll tend to work harder on actually getting it done.

Mom, we actually did try to burn a dvd of Audriana, but technology fails us...

For those of you who are technology literate, and you know how to EASILY take miniDV tapes and create DVDs, we will be much indebted to you for some tips! We've got the firewire port and cable, but the software we have completely failed us! Any recommendations?

We've been especially busy at this time...I'll try to capture it for you in a few words:

Audriana's birthday was great! We were busy while Audriana had her fun (and recovering from colds too), but it was a great time!

Audriana went in for her second round of shots today - the dTap, polio, HepB combo; plus HepA and PCV this time. She wasn't happy by the time the third shot was administered, but she handled it really well - she gave her daddy a high five and we went to Chick-Fil-A to celebrate with a milkshake and to play on the playplace.

Tonight she's at Grammy's and Papaw's while her mother and daddy prepare to leave for a weekend getaway in historic colonial Williamsburg. It's 1:57 a.m. as I write this and I just finished sending data for our required duties for teaching English with NSVAE. It's supposed to rain on us on Saturday, maybe tomorrow too, but we are looking forward to it. We've booked tickets to a AAA Richmond Braves baseball game for Sunday after church.

We need to get pics of Audriana's birthday party and the Williamsburg trip up next!

We're in communication with a school in ChengZhou about a possible job there. It's a 'small' city of 4 million, and they have free language instruction for teachers - so that is a big plus!

We finished a budget for China if anyone is interested, we might throw that up on the blog later - or could e-mail it to anyone as well.

...We're planning to pinch pennies (or fen) a little more this time, but all that means is that we won't be able to take four big vacations a year and instead hope to be able to come back to the states every summer and take a smaller scale vacation during the winter break as well. We just sent off to have more pages added to Jay's passport - turns out he didn't have any blank pages left! China's visas take up a full page to themselves...

In May we're hoping to host a couple of garage sales and try to sell our cars - a '98 Hyundai Elantra and a '95 Chevy Lumina. We found out that the feds should be due to give us $1,700 in tax returns, not counting the economic stimulus package...that's awesome because it pays for a ticket to China! We've already saved over $1,200 for upfront expenses to China...

In other news...Jay made a presentation to the International Student Association on Tuesday about an international student conference coming to our area in May. It was cool to see that some students were actually excited about it! Last year we had just one student go with us on this conference, MOSAIC DC. She is hoping to go again this year and we should have a few more this time as well! We're passing the torch, so to speak, in that we've tried to get some good friends of ours here, Julie and Aaron Clark, to pick up with the international students after we leave. They are also thinking about attending the conference.

Vikki is still keeping busy with scrapbooking, reading novels, volunteering with the food pantry on Wednesdays, teaching classes, and now exercising with a new organization that started in our church - Fit2Serve. She usually does that 2-3 times a week. Audriana still takes up a little of her time too. =)

getting ready for the one year birthday...

2008-03-08T09:19:00.004-05:00

We are poised to celebrate Audriana's birthday next week on March 15th. Her birthday is not until the 20th, of course, but it fit easier on the schedule to do it on the 15th. The following weekend we are getting ready to celebrate an Easter party with international students at Shenandoah University.

Everytime I look at pictures of Audriana, it strikes me funny that older pictures of her now look different compared to the little girl that is growing up before my very eyes. Her five month pictures suddenly looked too babyish just yesterday.

We were out at Red Hot & Blue (a wonderful barbeque chain) last night - also to celebrate Audriana's birthday...they gave us a $10 coupon - and we were amused that Audriana still likes to try to eat lemons. I gave her a lemon when she was little and she's loved trying to eat them ever since. Eventually she should grow out of that, but that's one of the memories of the past year that we've enjoyed.

Seeing her walk around is a hoot. Since she's been walking since she was 10 months old, she's gotten quite good at it now - and to see such a little tike bobble around is very fun.

We're staying pretty busy...Vikki has been working more hours teaching ESL recently. Beyond her 5 hours a week that she teaches, we budgeted her to try to supplement our income an additional $75 a month. She's going to be teaching 6 additional classes in the next month as a substitute for other teachers. She works out twice a week with other moms at church, and goes to the church food pantry to help out once a week. Jay is busy with subbing, teaching, getting ready for China, international students, family time, and trying to organize some upcoming trips. He meets with another Christian guy every week and they're looking at planning a camping/hiking trip together with some other guys as well. He's also trying to help coordinate a get-together of some friends from Harding either in April or this summer. We're planning a trip to Williamsburg as well to reward ourselves for minimally exercising four days a week. We're also trying to decide if we'll have time to make it to an orientation for others preparing to go to China at the end of May...and we want to have a couple of garage sales before we hope to spend time with Jay's family in MO/AR/TX this summer. We'll see how much we can actually do - we had initially wanted to go to a seminar today for people interested in pursuing a career in missions, but that was scratched when we didn't make time to prepare this week for it and Jay came down with some sniffles last night.

In all the hustle bustle, it's hard to make sure that we're getting all our priorities straight...I feel as if we're doing a good job - but I guess not always as there are times every once in a while where we feel stretched perhaps too much...and I want things like faith and family to take a dominant role in what we do...but I wonder how much they actually play out sometimes. Like, take for example, the fact that I wanted to do a 21 day purposed time to seek God at the beginning of this year. How hard it seems to be able to make a focused effort for something that I consider to be so vitally important. I didn't make it very far into that 21 days - life has a way of sort of taking over...despite our best intentions to arrange it the way we want. In some ways, I've felt renewed in my relationship with the Lord recently - which I find interesting in that it comes at a time where I've read His word and spent time in prayer less than perhaps any time that I can remember since college.

We've got three more months of probable busyness, in which we should be able to get the rest of our items on our to-do list checked off for China...a budget, a teaching job, a school to attend for language study, shots for Audriana, among other odd purchases and decisions before we'll spend at least a year at a University in China trying to see...whether the situation at that school did indeed suit everything we want as far as budget, environment, and proximity to a good language school we like are concerned...I'm preparing myself to have a year of exploration our first year where we try to adjust to all the new factors in life and if it didn't work out quite the way we want it to, to have time to prepare to change it by the following year at a different school (for teaching or study)...

The picture above is from Elijah Clark's one-year birthday that we recently helped celebrate. We're getting ready to have our own celebration in a week!

2008-02-13T20:57:00.009-05:00

The last two days we had freezing rain and snow, so no school. Jay has been trying to catch up on missed work for having gone on a three week vacation during the Christmas holiday, and had been picking up sub jobs at pretty much every opportunity.

Today we finished some resumes for China and customized a wall map of China detailing where several of our friends are located. Mostly we know people in Changsha (where we spent our first three years), Beijing, Guangzhou, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Chengdu, Qingdao, Shenzhen, and Changde.

Click the links below if you'd like to view our resumes:

Jay - Vikki

Finally...

2008-02-12T20:16:00.001-05:00

Wow - technology has not been my friend lately. Blogger had this new enticing ability to add a slideshow to your blog...I thought that would be easier than using Webshots as I had been doing to import pictures. I was wrong!

We recently won a laptop off eBay. We may have saved $100 off the retail price by doing so, but it still remains to be seen whether it was a good deal for us. We think the laptop was formerly a store model. Everything seems to be good except the period key sticks. The original retail price was $869 and we ended up paying about $475 with a three-year warranty included. But...technology has not been my friend. The laptop is another preparation for China, but we thought we'd go ahead and get it now so that we could both use a computer at the same time, especially for lesson planning for our ESL classes. I was hastily preparing a lesson plan prior to Monday night's class only to find that it is extremely difficult to transfer files from my unregistered trial version of Word to our desktop.

...

Audriana had her first shots last Thursday (Feb. 8th), and she handled it like a pro. She wimpered only a little, which was much better than how her mother felt! Vikki has been very careful and studious in researching shots and the potential harmful effects of immunizations. While it seems that the medical community has made advances with avoiding harmful side-effects, it was still nerve-wracking for Vikki to go through with it. The reality is that we fear diseases in China more than we do the side-effects of the immunizations. She had a combinations shot of dTap, polio, and Hep B - which we didn't know they did that prior to going in. The nurse at the Health Dept. was a little concerned about our aversion to immunizations, but after she realized that we had researched our position and that we were relatively firm, was pleasant enough. We are still delaying some shots that she was eligible for on the 8th. She'll go back at 12 and a half months (April 3rd) to get her next round.

in progress...

2008-02-04T22:41:00.000-05:00

I'm in the works of trying to get some pictures on here, but it's taking some time as I try to figure out a system that I like. I just uploaded about 18 photos of Audriana from October or November when we did a passport photo shoot of her - however, I haven't figured out how to get them onto the blog yet. Hopefully that will be done soon. If you're impatient and want access sooner than later, e-mail or comment on this post and I can invite you to view them at flickr.

2008-01-17T07:31:00.000-05:00

Tuesday morning at 6a.m. saw the passing of Vikki's grandmother, Mildred Luttrell. The funeral will be held on Friday.

Grandma Luttrell always appreciated time with her great grandchildren. She had vivid memories of time spent with her first great grandchild, Tyler. She also loved seeing Audriana. Though in her later life she had trouble remembering people and events, she would always perk up when Audriana came for a visit. We'll miss our time set aside to visit her on Wednesdays at the assisted living facility at Westminster-Cantebury.

2007-12-29T14:16:00.000-05:00

Christmas season is upon us...in fact, we've already celebrated three times and will have another gift exchange (this time with Jay's immediate family) today!

Jay's sister, Jael, drove up this morning from Little Rock for the weekend to be able to spend a little more time with us before we head back to Winchester on the 2nd. Jael was able to be with us on Christmas day, but flew from Little Rock to Dallas and couldn't bring her presents with her on the plane. For that matter, I don't know if we could have taken our gifts after we loaded up the parent's van with all our gear...we really didn't have that much, but with a baby so much changes...for as little as she is, you wouldn't think she would increase our 'necessary' trip items threefold, but pretty much she does. =)

Vikki has said that our New's Year resolutions will be to execerise four times a week - which might be ambitious, but will be good for us. We have been very apathetic to excersise as a general rule since we have been married...I've been holding off on making major changes in lifestyle until I hit 200 lbs., but since I've been sitting at 193 for quite a while, it looks like our New Year's resolutions will come first...the only other 'resolution' we have is to make a more focused effort at returning to China. We will try to spend about two to three mornings a week getting things in order for a return. We are excited, but at least Jay is a bit nervous as well. The new and different will usually be somewhat scary, and even though we've been to China before - we'll be returning under different circumstances, not the least of which is that we plan to stay indefinitely this time! I'm thinking we'll need to clear our minds of expectations and go with an open heart and be ready to face new challenges in a new chapter in our journey. One of Jay's second cousins told him a couple of days ago that this fall will be here in 'a week.' It will come quickly...

Today is Audriana's 9 month old birthday!

2007-12-20T23:19:00.000-05:00

We drove about twelve hours today on our way to Missouri for the holidays. We'll leave Saturday with Jay's parents to go to Audriana's Great-grandmother's in Texas. =) That's some birthday present for our little girl...she hates riding in her carseat! It's cool that we arrived today, because it is also my (Jay's) mother's birthday today! We didn't get in until about 7:30 p.m. (Central), and found out on the road while traveling that my brother, Shelby, had been just within 5 minutes of us on the way to the folks on the same road. That was before we had a mini-crisis on the road where Audriana thought she had to have dinner...can you imagine. She was none too happy when she realized we weren't stopping for her because we were in podunk Missouri...we finally had to stop in this little community called Low Wassie, which was on county road [W] and over a one lane 'bridge' (highspot over the 'wassie') before state maintenence ended on the road and we pulled off to the side of the dirt road to feed her. This was after we travelled perhaps 20 minutes with Audriana screaming and hating on her toys and drink because it was something other than her mother. She would be consoled by a pacifier for two seconds before resuming the screaming, which was sorta nice...so that was somewhat stressful and by the time we did stop, Vikki and I were both a little tired of each other I think -- aren't those character building sessions just wonderful. =) One thing I do love about our marriage is that we have gotten very proficient about sitting down and talking through the times when one or both of us aren't following the principles that God has laid out for us.

Happy Birthday Audriana! Happy Birthday Mom!

2007-12-05T17:19:00.000-05:00

...so Audriana is clapping now. =) She started on Monday night. It's inexplicable really...we didn't really teach her! We're continually amazed at her...if we didn't mention before, she's completely mobile. She pulls up on furniture and walks around the house by pushing a chair in front of her along the tile. She doesn't know it yet, but she's getting a walker for Christmas, which will be a huge upgrade over the chair. =) Still no teeth. She will have her first doctor's appointment next Thursday...we're looking at what shots we should get for her as we prepare for a return to China.

Boston trip

2007-11-19T12:17:00.000-05:00

I had wanted to journal our trip to Boston, because quite frankly, parts of our trip were simply quite amazing. It wasn't my plan, however, to 'journal' about it first here though...sometimes you just don't always have time to do everything. Has anyone else noticed that the older you get, the harder it seems to keep up with it all?

Part of the essence our trip was that it may have been the last wild and crazy trip that we take before, you know, we become responsible-like.

The reason I can say it was a 'crazy' trip is that we left at 8:30 a.m. Friday morning and with some delays on I-95 and I-91, made it to Boston at just the right time for Friday rush hour...Boston is reputedly one of the worst cities in which to drive in the United States (aggressive drivers, small, confusing roads, and a lack of road signs) which made our arrival all the more tenuous! As 'luck' would have it though, we mistakenly arrived directly at our destination - even with incomplete directions and driving through a very confusing part of town...one of those go 0.4 mi. and then make a u-turn, followed by another 0.3 mi. and an immediate right, but not the first right you come to kinda confounding drives. Mapquest is nice, but sometimes the most direct route is not your friend. A big part is that I wasn't on top of preparations as much as I'd like to have been and was wary of some of the things we were planning on doing...I'm not much the 'big city' type and was hoping to avoid undesirable situations and people as much as possible. We left the following day at around 2:00 p.m., with only about three hours to poke around the city. So that was about 18 hours of driving for a benefit concert in which the feature singer we wanted to see, Natalie Merchant, sang three songs and had laryngitis! So we didn't know that Natalie had laryngitis beforehand, but it was a crazy trip to make. One reason I was interested in making it is because with the prospect of going to China, starting a family, and getting older and more 'responsible-like', it was worth it to 'treat' ourselves now not knowing when the next time we'll be able to do it will be. It was also nice to treat my wife to a nice birthday - the last two times I tried to go all out for her were decided against. Camping/getaway vacation for her birthday last year and a weekend away for our anniversary. So now that she wasn't pregnant and we had the ability to leave the baby with Grammy, it was nice to get away, just the two of us. The drive in itself was fun...just getting to talk and play games together.

God (in ways than we hadn't seen so clearly before) provided for us big-time on our trip, and for that we praise Him. It's so awesome to SEE the work of the Lord in your life. It's so easy to forget that He's there sometimes, when you allow yourself to get caught up in daily life, routine, and in all reality taking care of things yourself without considering the Lord. We just praise Him for being faithful and for providing for us. I truly think that because we seek to follow Him and try to apply Christ-life continually in what we do, He honored and took care of us during our trip. Not because of who we are, but who He is and because He's promised to take care of those who seek Him. Applying godly principles and seeing the benefit of His promises at work in your life is the best man, it really is.

So, this may not be as significant to all of you out there in cyberspace, but this was supposed to be an entry in my personal journal...it was very significant to us and that's why I'm recording it.

Arriving at our hotel directly, even though with the chaos of Boston's rush hour and directions that weren't the best, was taken by me to be more of a coincidence. Maybe it was, but what happened that night left no room for doubt that God was orchestrating events and people, even - for our benefit, teaching, and provision.

Here's another crazy part of the story. The concert hall is kind of a 'project', in that the city is investing into an area of town that is not as good as it once was. I didn't feel unsafe, but when the concert was done at 12:30 and we were relying on city transportation to get us back home, it wasn't the most desireable of situations.

During the concert, we were entertained by three different performers. We missed the first act, and also a speech by the mayor of the city because we arrived 45 min. late due to taking the metro, a 50 minute wait for a city bus (which buses are supposed to arrive every 20 min.), and the three jams on the interstate and rush hour we went through. The first act we saw was Mario Frangoulis, a very talented, more Vegas style performer who performs in English, Italian, Spanish, and Greek at least...maybe more languages than that. His enterouge included a pianist and guitarist that were both comically passionate about the music they made. The guitarist had huge facial hair (moustache and eyebrows reminding me of a cross between Charlie Chaplin and Einstein) and he would do this face twitch thing that accented his facial hair even more. It was interesting and it made me wonder if maybe in Europe they try to get all the performers involved in the act of entertaining, rather than just the lead singer as is the most common method here in the U.S. Frangoulis was good, and did a little cha-cha that I think my sister would like. (Jael, we hope to get the DVD when it comes out and maybe we can show you.)

The second act was Mighty Sam McLain and he may have been my favorite. He apparently has been dubbed at one time the 'torch-bearer of soul' and he had a distinctly black, Christian, soul, funk style that was captivating. At one time, he himself had been homeless, which made him an impeccable choice for participating in the 'Give Us Your Poor' concert - which was a benefit for homelessness.

Natalie was last and as I mentioned before, was not at her best. Still, it was neat to hear her even if not at full-strength - she has a very powerful voice.

During the intermission, we skipped out to get some dinner as we didn't have time to eat beforehand trying to get to the concert as quickly as possible. We stopped by a Chinese restaraunt just outside and were joined by a homeless man at our table. Working with the street ministry at the church here in Winchester has more enabled me to handle situations like that well and it was very interesting that after going back in the concert hall that Mighty Sam was performing and talked and sang about his previous life of homelessness. Just the dynamic of actually talking with and helping a man on the streets to go back into a middle to high income atmosphere where they were talking about the very thing that we had just witnessed was fascinating. It really makes you feel helpless in that it seems so hard to be able to contribute significantly to the homeless. We gave him conversation, our attention, concern, respect and our tofu mixed vegetables with rice. I tried to witness to him, but was largely ineffective. I pulled out my 'Jesus is Lord' card that Brett Emerson gave each of the guys in our 'Faithful and True' group in college. He had thought, strangely enough, that I was a biker and was telling me, after he learned that I wasn't, about the freedom in riding the open road on a bike. That's when I pulled out my card and told him that having Christ as Lord is true freedom. Even though it may have been minimal, sowing seeds, no matter how small can be effective if the Lord is calling someone.

OK, after much adeiu, here was the amazing part of our trip and the part where we couldn't deny God's intervention in our lives. We went outside after the concert at 12:30 a.m. and caught the bus to go back to the metro station. I had seen that the last buses ran until a little after 1:00, so we caught that bus without problem. It arrived almost as soon as we got to the bus stop. That turned out to be a very good thing, as no sooner than we arrived at the metro pick up, the last train came rolling by to pick us up. Five minutes later and we would have missed it and been stranded in Boston in what was probably a worse part of town than where the concert hall was. Apparently, taxis are scarce in Boston, so I'm not sure how easily we could have gotten one at the metro station. I'm still thinking coincidence at this point, but the most amazing part to me was that after we arrived at our final metro stop, the attendant locked up behind us and there were four buses waiting for any passengers that caught the last train. At this point it's about 1:30 and the drivers are anxious to leave. So anxious, in fact, that as I'm asking the attendant that just locked up behind us if he knew which bus we should take, three of the buses speed off like they're in the NASCAR circuit. I'm not kidding, I haven't seen a bus speed off that fast since riding the maniac buses in China. It was crazy...so there's one bus left now and the attendant asked us if that was our bus. He didn't know and I said, "I'll go find out." So I go running up to the bus, at which point the driver starts to speed off...very nice. I look back and the attendant signals to the driver to wait - though not very effectively. I still am running up to the bus, but of course it can go faster than me...and it's sort of going just fast enough to keep ahead of me, but not really that fast. The driver even did a stutter stop or two. We did this for about twenty feet before I realize that he's not going to let me catch up to him. I'm not sure why, and I turn around and put my hands in the air - signaling to Vikki confusion and giving up. We're used to this 'China' treatment - but what's bizarre is that it's happening in the "good ol'" USA. So, the driver actually stops after I throw my hands in the air and have given up - and I run up enough to actually be able to enter the bus at which point I signal to Vikki to run up...she's a good 40 feet behind us. As I get on the bus, the driver says to me in his Boston accent, "Hey, yuhreally pushin' yuhluck hehr buddy." Mentally, I am in agreement with him, and thank the nice man for stopping. What's 'funny' is that I'm not exactly sure that I'm on the right bus...I mean, it's a 25% chance, right? However, I did happen to notice 'Riverside' on the bus before I hastily jumped on - which is where we want to go, so all is well - thank God! Had we been stranded at the metro station, Vikki had noticed a couple of cabs there, and we weren't too far from the hotel - so really in that case, we only saved a little money. But, the fact that he was the only driver that 'waited so patiently' for us and that it happened to be the right bus, was a little too coincidental for me - and especially in combination with the other events of the evening I just had to be in awe of my heavenly Father who, in spite of our own selves - our weakness and inadequecies, provided so adequately and wonderfully for us. With God all things are possible, even when they are 'pushin' yuhluck' from a worldly point of view. I don't believe that He had to provide for us in that way, but it sure made our evening a lot nicer, a lot more awesome, and perhaps saved us from a potentially precarious situation.

Lastly, I want to share with you scriptures that the Lord used to teach me recently that all things do come from Him. We don't typically think, in our culture, that events necessarily derive from God - but I think the more proper biblically-based worldview is that ALL things are either done through Him or done in the tolerance of His will, with His foresight and foreknowledge. Even the smallest circumstances are in our life for a reason. Whether we're walking in the perfect will of God or not, all things are either from Him or permitted by Him and can be used by Him.

Consider the viewpoint of David and Abigail in 1 Samuel 25:23-34. It's evident in that passage that they considered God to be a very integral part of the ebb and flow of their lives. I'm going to try to keep that perspective in mind. To realize that the events that I'm surrounded with, and even the choices that people make (like our friend the bus driver, half-waiting for some strange reason to give us a ride back to the hotel) derive from God. That we are in the position that we are in, 'for such a time as this' (Esther 4:14).

The picture below is of Faneuil Hall, really the only place we were able to see while we were in Boston. It was too cold for most of the vendors and street performers to be outside, but there were a few of them. A human statue, a bottle, bucket, tin-can drummer, a break-dance team, a group playing Christmas bells, and a very nice (for our memoirs of Peru) ethnic South American Indian pan-flute band. Nice trip - we forgot to take our camera out, but I bought Vikki a children's book by Martha Zschock that details a lot of the important sites so we can always remember our 'crazy, you're only 29 once' trip to Boston.

2007-11-15T09:04:00.000-05:00

It's five days past, but Vikki celebrated her 29th birthday on Nov. 10th. We had some friends over, Julie and Aaron Clarke and their 8 mo. old son Elijah as well as our new Chinese friends from Shenandoah University, Peng and Miaomiao. Julie and Aaron were in our birth class with us and we came to find out that we went to the same church! They are getting ready to go on a trip to Morocco this week, where they eventually hope to be missionaries some day. It's kind of cool that they may end up there at the same time as Vikki's sister, Laura!

For Vikki's birthday, we ate dessert Saturday night and played cranium together. In retrospect, it was probably not the best game for our Chinese friends, who weren't familiar with most of the American cultural questions! We had fun though, even Peng and Miaomiao - and it's always fun to see Elijah and Audriana interact. That Sunday night we went to Julie and Aaron's small group Bible study, where they're looking at the book 'Waking the Dead' by John Eldredge. It was the first time I can remember being in one house with so many babies! We had four babies all less than a year old and another child who was less than three! Aaron had a hard time competing for our attention. =)

We're getting ready to go on a trip tomorrow to Boston, where I purchased tickets to a 'Give me Your Poor' concert featuring Natalie Merchant for Vikki's birthday. We're excited about it, will drive up Friday to see the concert and then do some touring in Boston the following morning before heading the eight hours it takes to get back. It will be the longest that Audriana has been away from her mother and that was a concern because she's still nursing. Grammy kept her overnight and a whole day last week in order to do a test run to see if she would make it! They both did, though Grammy had to wake up every half hour or so until 4 a.m. that night! Still, she is supposedly ready to try again! Good luck Grammy...we'll let you know how it goes.

Post Halloween

2007-11-03T14:10:00.000-04:00

Hi!

You all can see Audriana's sheep costume in the pictures above - while she didn't participate in Halloween activities (she was actually at church with Grammy and Pa Paw), she did have fun. I think her whole cradle roll class was in costume...meanwhile, her mommy and daddy were at work teaching English-learning members of the hispanic community here in Winchester.

I (Jay) had probably the scariest Halloween of my life...Audriana had her first 'hard' fall that day - she face planted onto the rock-face fireplace area. What made it worse is that she caught the edge, where the angle made it a lot scarier for me. We've since put a temporary stop over the edge (a blanket folded over itself four or five times). She was screaming in a shrill voice that I hope I don't have to hear again...I really wondered whether we had to take her to the ER. Vikki helped calm me down some...

We had our first 'trick-or-treater' at 4:30 that afternoon - and it was mostly a trick...on our way out to dinner and work, I caught a glimpse of a bear meandering into the woods behind our house. That freaked me out pretty good...I've only seen bears in zoos, afterall. Apparently, people don't seem to be concerned about the black bears 'round here. Lisa Strimple assured me that they are usually only dangerous when threatened, or when a mother has cubs. She actually thought it was cool. I'll remember that next time. Bear in the backyard = cool.

The pictures above are mostly of our international student outreach at Shenandoah University, but there are also some pics of our trip to Gettysburg, and a trip to Skyline Drive. We may actually get ready here in a little bit and go up to see Skyline today...it's a beautiful day!

God bless!

Two weeks have passed already!

2007-10-20T16:16:00.001-04:00

Wow! I didn't really feel like posting today, but after noticing that the last time I did was two weeks ago, I feel compelled...I'm not even sure how many of you even read this! =)

Here are some tidbits of our life:

Today is Audriana's 7 month birthday! She celebrated by having a breakfast of waffle bits and mommy's milk, playing with her toys (which is an everyday event), doing a webcast for her Grandmother and Nano (that's my dad), licking my hat, ripping pages from my Sports Illustrated, and by taking several cat naps to help her get over her fever she started yesterday.

She at one point had a fever as high as 102.9, but has been just about as smily and cheerful as usual. We were supposed to go out to Skyline Drive today with some new Chinese friends of ours, Peng and Miaomiao, but had to cancel because of Audriana's fever.

The leaves are turning and falling already even though it's uncharacteristically warm for this time of year. It's been beautiful though, and I just love the Shenandoah Valley - the mountains, woodlands, landscape truly make living in Winchester a wonderful experience. We just praise God for his faithfulness and for having led us to be here and experience a part of his beautiful creation...

I guess the main reason that we haven't posted in so long is that we stay pretty busy during the week and we had visitors from Oregon to our house this past weekend. Chuck and Nelda Harle...were with us Saturday and Sunday. We actually went up to Gettysburg, PA on Saturday to tour the battlefield - which was a neat experience. I purchased the audio tour for anyone who would like to borrow it. =) They were in town to tell us about a really neat opportunity to work with some other friends of ours, Buster and Amy Canfield, whose blog you can catch at http://tonythered.com/canfields/...

I got in late last night after running up to Frederick, Maryland with my Chinese friend Paul...That's always a fun time.

We're getting ready for a pig roast this coming Saturday in which we should have a bunch of international students over at the home of another couple who are going to great lengths to set it up. I think they are building a pit for roasting the pig - should be a fun time.

Audriana went to Picture People (professional photo studio) in the mall here in Winchester and had a free 8x10 made of her in a sheep costume that her mother picked out for her before she was born. If anyone would like a wallet size copy of the (cute) picture, let me know and I'll rib Vikki into getting a sheet or two or however many we need to share with you. =) I actually would like to get some anyway, but it would be nice to know who to send them to.

...We worked on this some over this past week and have finished a position for 2 Corinthians 4:7. I've published our position on Google Docs if anyone is interested in reading it. Click the link below to take you there:
http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfpfp3d_0vctz6w

Our love to you!

Saturday...

2007-10-06T14:21:00.000-04:00

Today Vikki and I went out for a 'date.' There's this really cool 'pollo a la brasa' restaurant in Winchester that's run by a native Bolivian. It's the closest thing to latino rotisserie chicken that I've had since our research trip to Peru in the summer of '02. We had authentic Inca Kola, and yuca (Audriana especially liked the yuca), to go along with the chicken. Wow it's great...the only thing I didn't like was that I tried to speak Spanish to the owner and he was totally unimpressed. I mean I'm getting pretty good at speaking Spanish, and it didn't mean much to him at all. I remarked to Vikki that maybe he gets a lot of people trying to practice their Spanish on him...but I think it's more than that. Something about speaking the native language of the people in their country is impressive to the people of the country, but speaking a foreign language in your native country to others who speak the foreign language as their native language isn't. (i.e. speaking Chinese in China is adored by Chinese people, but it doesn't mean as much to speak Chinese to someone in America) It's like there's an inner circle of native speakers and you're not allowed in that circle...something like that.

Weird.

Anyway, for those of you who were wondering what yuca is, here's the definition from Wikipedia: "The cassava, casava, yuca or manioc (Manihot esculenta) is an a woody shrub of the Euphorbiaceae (spurge family) native to South America that is extensively cultivated as an annual crop in tropical and subtropical regions for its edible starchy tuberous root, a major source of carbohydrates. Indeed, cassava is the third largest source of carbohydrates for human food in the world, with Africa its largest center of production.[1]"

Audriana loved it. She's starting to pull up on furniture and other objects now. Her mother tells me that she maneuvered from her belly to sitting up on her bottom for the first time today!

some thoughts

2007-09-28T09:30:00.000-04:00

The last few nights I've spent my time alone without my family for the first time of its existence. Vikki and I both taught Wednesday night at Daniel Morgan Middle School, where we teach every Monday and Wednesday to adults. Our program, Northern Shenandoah Valley Adult Education (NSVAE), is almost exclusively comprised of hispanics - though there are some asian and european immigrants here as well. We have a deal worked out with Roger and Janie Luttrell (my mother and father-in-law) to spend the night with them on Wednesday evenings after class, which requires a twenty to thirty minute drive up highway 81 before we get to Inwood, West Virginia. That works out great because Grammy and Pa Pa get to spend time with Audriana and we get free childcare! =) However, this Thursday I had accidentally scheduled a substitute position for myself so I didn't go up to spend the night in Inwood Wednesday night. Vikki also substituted for NSVAE Thursday night, so Grammy and Pa Pa had double duty two nights in a row. So Vikki spent the night with them again and I am going to work in about an hour or so to sub at John Handley high school.

So, I've been a bachelor of sorts the last two nights. Man, that first night was weird. It was the first time that I've ever had an empty house like that. We live in the basement apartment of some ministry partners of ours, Tom and Lisa Strimple, with whom we reach out to international students at Shenandoah University. But even they were gone on a vacation to Hawaii, from which they returned last night. That empty house....it was sort of lonely and spooky at first. I've always had family, and then college with either roomates or housemates to share my life with - and while temporary, it was weird to be all alone like that. Jael, I can relate more to just wanting conversation like you were saying now...

Anyway - so I also discovered that this blog is now not as useful as I first thought it would be. So, China blocks practically all blogs on the face of the earth, er...cyberspace and none of the Chinese friends with which I hoped to be in touch with can even open this to read it! What's more, probably none of you could read the extremely cool Chinese characters I posted because you don't have Chinese language support installed on your computer. So, that was futile! This blog will now be exclusively for those of you in the western hemisphere with whom we stay in contact. Which, unfortunately for me means no more cool Chinese practice.

Can anyone read this: 再见！

Well, that's Chinese for goodbye in case anyone cares to install Chinese language support. =)

Saturday out with the family...

2007-09-22T17:12:00.000-04:00

Vikki and I went out for a 'date' today and enjoyed what will probably be one of our last warm Saturdays of the year. The weather is turning soon, and people are already thinking of fall. We went to an Apple Harvest Craft Show and paid $5 admission/person, only to find out that if we'd waited five more minutes, it would have been free! Vikki had been wanting to go for a walk and it was nice to stroll around and see all the handiwork others had done. Today I'm trying to learn more about our camcorder so that we will be able to make DVD's of our home videos of Audriana. This morning Audriana and I went out to feed the three ponds of fish that the Strimples have - they are away on vacation to Hawaii. She would giggle at the catfish splashing around in the water. We also had the privilige of seeing a monarch butterfly upclose, and she seemed fascinated by it - though when it flew around it was hard for her to keep up with it. A beautiful day is drawing to its end and we are blessed...

Audriana really wanted to post something...

2007-09-20T20:53:00.000-04:00

x , opionpqdl. bm ggbb- x 4bbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb 6XCV

I think that means, "Blessings to all! :)"

Needing some help from friends in China...

2007-09-18T11:35:00.000-04:00

你好！请帮我们。我们不知道你们会不会看到之个website. 如果你会看，清说了！在一个朋友不会看了。我们要帮他看我们的website. 如果你要correct我中文我感谢你!

Hi! Please help us. We don't know if you can see this website. If you can see it, please tell us! One of our friends can't see it. We want to help her see our website. If you want to correct my Chinese, I thank you very much!

Keeping in touch...

2007-09-16T14:15:00.000-04:00

Hi guys,

I know that for many of you, you're wondering if we dropped off the face of the earth. The sad truth of the matter is that we can't keep up with all our e-mails anymore. I'm hoping that we'll be able to use this tool to keep in touch, so that at least you will be able to see what's going on with us. We'll still do e-mail, but we may try to blog more so that you will hear more from us. I feel sorry for all our wonderful Chinese friends who go months without hearing from us!

Probably most of you have not heard that recently Vikki and I decided to look at returning to China. We are thinking of coming back in the fall of '08 or spring of '09. That's all we know for now, but we are excited and are going to be making a plan for returning, Lord willing.

Here are some things that we'd like from you...

1) Definitely still keep in touch with us - we love hearing from all of you!
2) Let us know if you'd like to hear from us, whether you e-mail, want to ask a question, or whatever - let us know and we'll try to either blog, write, or call as soon as possible.
3) Be patient with us as we try to learn about this blog stuff - we don't really know what we're doing! If you have any tips for us, we'd be interested in hearing them.

Thanks, God bless you, and we hope to be in touch more in the future!

Love,

Jay and Vikki

2007-09-13T22:22:00.000-04:00

Hello all! I know it has been a long time since you have heard anything substantial from us... we are a little slow at doing things that we set out to do sometimes :) but now we have a blog page and Jay is excited about writing on it, so you may hear from us a little more often.

Jay and I just started teaching classes yesterday. I was a little nervous, but it was actually a lot of fun. We teach Hispanic adults English. It is a really neat population to work with, and I might even improve my Spanish a little. I already learned something - "corte gramas" means landscaper and "arriba" means top.

Well, it's late, so I will let Jay post some later. :) We love you all!