Trip to China
All Days  |  Next Day

Saturday, December 30, 2006 WE HAVE FINALLY ARRIVED!!! It began well enough, my sister Kathy and her husband Larry came over to Mom’s house late Thursday night…we sat and chatted for a bit then decided to drive down to Philly. It was only, hmmm, 7 hours before the airport opened and 3 hours before we needed to check in – NO PROBLEM! So we got there in record time – and NO cars, practically, on the road; well, some doors were locked so we had to walk about ¼ mile to enter. Did I mention that it was cold? Anyway we got inside to some warmth and found a place to crash for a few hours. Then we went down to the check in with our baggage, we were in the wrong location! We were located in section A and needed to be in section D! Now we were a little pressed for time! We tried to catch the bus, but they pity no one. We hiked about a mile to section D all our bags in tow and entered a considerably longer line. Security was, mmm, interesting. I don’t travel much so all of this was sort of like an adventure for maybe the first 5 seconds. The flight from Philly to O’Hare was uneventful. We were able to grab an earlier flight and had 2 hours in Chicago . We had no problems getting on the plane, it was leaving the ground! Our airplane had an engine problem (lots of smoke) and we were delayed 3 – 4 hours! You get to know people when we were all stuck there; we found about 6 other families adopting on our flight, 3 are in our group. We will be touring Beijing together later today. We are staying at the Gloria plaza Hotel, I can’t tell you much about it since we arrived here about 9:30 PM except the beds are hard….Kathy, Mom’s bed is SOFTER!! Psalm 20: 1 “May the LORD answer you in the day of trouble! May the name of the God of Jacob protect you!” We tour the Great Wall, acrobats and a few other sites today. I’ll write more later. Count down to Grace 3 days!! First- I want to thank all the people who have supported us with our adoption and most of all I want to thank our LORD God for bringing my family to this point in our lives. I have seen God work miracles many times during our adoption. God has opened so many closed doors for us to adopt but now he has allowed us to reach this point. Please hang in there with us and very soon we will have Grace and already know she will be used by our Lord and I’m excited to see what else God has in store for us. It’s 10:30PM- Denise has called it a night and I wanted to get this. It is snowing out that has made for an interesting day. We started he touring with jade factory- way to expensive for us but interesting tour. We watch a demonstration on how the jade is cut and a class on how to pick out fake and tell the differences on the quality of the jade. We then went to an orphanage in Beijing and that was our high light for our day. We were privileged to watch the children put on several dances and sung several songs. The Hershey chocolate was a very big hit and we still have some to pass out to children in Graces location. Kids also built a snowman and Denise posed with it. Both of us were taken by the way the children were so polite and curious about us. After lunch with the children and several photos we were off to the Great Wall-I did mention it snowed and was still snowing?? Snow made the climb that much harder- it was extremely slippery so the ladies stayed down at the bottom and watched us climb to the top. I was expecting it to be harder than it was (excluding the slipperiness of the climb). It was so much harder climbing down. We all made it safely down and to the bus. Next we went to see the Acrobats perform- that was amazing. I will let the photo tell its story. Last we went for the famous Peking Duck. The company was what set this meal apart. Four families, friends who also traveled made it a day to remember. Sorry it has taken me so long to get computer working- so much to do and not enough time. I will go so I can post photos. I will also post photos to drop shots at the top but that has tided me up earlier.

Hang in- I think I have this internet thing licked. I have taken over a hundred photos today and know that it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the next few days. Pray for us and for our family- this has been so very hard for our two daughters but know they support us a hundred percent with Grace.   Grace- God’s gift. We have been truly blessed and know that our journey has not even started yet. We have give Grace to our Lord and pray for his guidance in raising our daughter. David and Denise Phillips Journey of the Heart

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