Taiwan 2011- Part 2 (THOGL)

We were in Taipei until Wednesday afternoon. We rode along with The Edwards family to THOGL (The Home of God's Love). It's about an hour drive from Taipei to THOGL and I loved it! I could see landmarks or places that I remembered driving past last time and the closer we got to THOGL, the more excited I became. I've watched videos that adoptive parents have taken and when it shows them driving down THOGL's road and pulling into the driveway lined with tall palm trees, I always cry cuz it felt like I should be there, that I should be seeing that in person. I wasn't sure how I would react when this time it actually was ME pulling into the drive and up to the door. I thought I might cry, but I didn't. It was just pure excitement and happiness. We walked in and there was Showhwa! Holding a baby of course, which I almost crushed from hugging Showhwa so hard, lol! It was so SO good to see her after two years!


Within a few minutes it literally felt like I had never left. Everything was exactly the same, except for the babies being different. The rocking chairs looked the same, the bottles were in the same place, babies EVERYWHERE, even the little wooden stool thing was in exactly the same place. It was a comforting chaos.
I walked into the babies sleeping room to say hi to some of the workers and to see the babies that were in there. When you walk through the door, straight in front of you is a set of those "bunk bed" cribs with the doors that slide up and down. As soon as I saw that top crib I started crying. When I worked there two years ago, that was Pan's (Gavin Conklin) crib. Gavin passed away in August when he was just 2 years old. Seeing his old bed immediately brought back so many memories of him. His happy personality, his very infectious and joyous laugh (I always smile when I think about that), the late night "feedings" (he had a hole in his heart that made him so weak he didn't have the energy to eat until he had surgery to correct it). That boy was the happiest baby we had and I still miss him!

Things very quickly fell back to the normal THOGL routine that I remembered. The schedule is still the same so I felt like I jumped back in and was right at home with the feedings and the play-time. We arrived at THOGL the day before Thanksgiving so all that day and Thanksgiving morning, missionaries kept trickling in to celebrate the day together. It was really nice to see some old friends and to meet some new ones and listen to testimonies and stories of what God had done and was doing. I honestly think that was my favorite part... sitting in a group, holding a baby or two of course, and just listening to everyone talking. It just felt like home.
Thanksgiving dinner was incredible! I can't remember who made the chicken and noodles but they were by far my favorite food item there! So yummy! Someone needs to teach me how to make them. That morning the electricity was turned off for a few hours and we actually ate most of the meal without it. I'm impressed with the ladies who got all the food ready and everything set out, without electricity!
There wasn't a lot that happened at THOGL that would be interesting to anyone but me really. I mostly just took care of babies and enjoyed talking with everyone and just being there. I did walk down to the lake a couple of times, but I never did make it up to the temple on the side of the mountain like I was hoping to. There just wasn't enough time for it. (Next time!!!)

When I was in Taiwan two years ago, I didn't get the chance to go to the ocean so one afternoon we decided to take advantage of the sunny (rare) day and go for a few hours. One of the workers at THOGL drove us down there (about 30 minutes) and said he'd come pick us up in a few hours. Wouldn't you know it, about 5 minutes after he drove off... it started to rain. We could see the dark clouds coming in and it looked like it was going to be kinda nasty. We didn't have a way to get a hold of the man (he didn't speak English anyway), and "town" was at least a 15-20 minute walk. We wouldn't have minded walking into town but we knew if we left and he came back and we weren't at the beach, we'd have a problem. We decided to just stay on the main road and walk to see if we could find some type of shelter where we would still be able to see when he came back. The only thing close was an Animal Disease control building (or something like that). We had a couple of hours to kill so we kept walking to see if we could find anything else. When we got to a stop sign at an intersection, we stood on the corner trying to decide what we should do. This lady pulls up next to us, rolls down her window, and asks us in good English if we needed help. :) We told her what had happened and where we were staying and she offered to take us back to the orphanage. We had thought about calling THOGL to see if someone could come get us but we didn't know if the guy that had dropped us off had a cell phone and we were worried he would come back to the beach, not find us, and freak out. Fortunately, after a few calls back and forth between us and THOGL, they were able to get a hold of him and tell him that he didn't have to pick us up. The very nice lady took us to our road and we walked from there. We decided that she was our angel from God. Seriously. How random was it that an English speaking lady would drive out there and pass us 3 American girls standing on the side of the road and take us home?
The annoying thing was that when we got back to THOGL, the sun came out and the day turned beautiful again. Oh well... maybe I'll try the ocean again next time too.

I had a great time at THOGL and loved seeing all my old friends!! And the new babies. :)
The Saturday morning after Thanksgiving, we went back to Taipei with the Edwards Family and then took the high speed rail to Tainan to visit Ray of Hope. Blog post about that coming soon. Hopefully sooner than this one. I finally got internet access on my computer at work so it's easier for me to get online during the kids naptime.

Taiwan 2011- Part 1

Finally, the promised blog entry about my trip. I apologize for not getting it done before now. I’ve been back in the U.S. for a week and it’s been a crazy week! I’ve been very busy with work and activities that I had planned before I left. I’ve also been trying to readjust to the time change. I didn’t feel like I’d adjusted to Taiwan time until the very end of our trip, so I think my body was really confused when it got sent back to U.S. time. I’m finally feeling mostly back to normal and able to sleep for almost a full night. 

I'm going to do this in parts. I don't think my brain could handle writing everything in one entry and it'd be a REALLY long entry if I did. 

Our flight over was pretty good. It seemed longer than last time but I may have just forgotten how long almost 14 hours on a plane felt! I had an empty seat next to me so I was able to relax a little bit more and try to get some sleep. I think I slept for a few hours at least. Pretty heavily too. I woke up and the guy that had been next to me was gone. I’m usually a light sleeper and wake up at the slightest sound or touch so I was kind of confused for a minute. I’m not gonna lie: the scene from “Left Behind” went through my head and I briefly wondered if the Rapture had happened and I’d just missed it, lol! The guy had evidently crawled over me and I was just so out of it that I didn’t even know.

Landing in Taiwan felt “normal’. I was overwhelmingly excited or ecstatic; it just felt like I was home. Chad Edwards and JenJen picked us up and took us to the apartment that we were going to stay at in Taipei. We landed in Taiwan around 8:30 pm (Monday evening) so we pretty much just unpacked a little bit, checked out the apartment, ate some snacks and tried to go to sleep. The next morning (Tuesday) we met the Edwards family (who live just up the road) at “Marvin’s” to eat breakfast. Marvin’s is a little restaurant that serves AWESOME food!!!! Last time that Jessica and I were in Taiwan, we rode our bikes probably 7 miles to buy this “fat toast”. It’s really think toast with a chocolate, peanut butter or sweet mayo spread on it. It’s so yummy! I hadn’t had it in 2 years and it tasted even better than I remembered! We also at “don bean” (yeah I have no idea how to spell the English version of a Chinese word so I’m just writing it how it sounded to me!), which is like a tortilla with bacon and egg in it. It was just awesome to sit there on the sidewalk, eating yummy food that I’d craved for two years, and breathing in the Taiwan airJ. I was definitely “home”.

JenJen Chien, lives in Taipei and volunteers once a week at The Home of God’s Love. She, and her friend Renee, had offered to give us a tour of Taipei and take us to some of the popular tourist spots. So after breakfast we headed out for a day FILLED with walking and sightseeing. It had been raining for days in Taipei, but on this day the sun was out and the weather was gorgeous! So we took advantage of it and went to Taipei 101. It’s a skyscraper built in 2004 that was the tallest building in the world. It now ranks 3^rd tallest. I’d never been in a building that tall though and the view was incredible! You could see the entire city and the mountains all around. We ate some amazing ice cream at the top and did a little shopping in the gift shop. We ate lunch in the food court on the bottom floor. I just ate Subway, instead of Taiwanese food. I was feeling pretty tired and a little sick and I didn’t want to risk eating something “unusual”.

After 101, we went to this huge Ferris wheel! I’m not normally a fan of any type of ride, but this Ferris Wheel was V-E-R-Y slow moving so I decided to try it. I’m so glad I did, cuz once again the view was spectacular! I just LOVE the mountains in Taiwan! Renee couldn’t even look out when we got to the top. She got her Bible out and said she was just going to read it until we came back down. We were teasing her about reading the Bible but not acting on it, we brought up the verse that says “I lift my eyes to the hills”. J

The people there are so friendly. We asked this one girl to take a picture of all of us in front of the Ferris wheel and we ended up talking to her for about 20 minutes. She was from Malaysia and had just moved to Taiwan because that’s where her fiancée lives. She wanted to know all about our trip so she could make sure we saw everything important that Taiwan had to offerJ We exchanged Facebook information and JenJen gave them her # too. Her fiancée called later that week just to make sure our trip was going good and that we didn’t need anything. Super nice people! (I may have also just liked her cuz she asked if I was a model, lolJ)

We went to a place called something like “Donshuey”. (Someone who knows the real way to say/spell these names, please correct me!!!!). It was starting to get dark so we went to a small Night Market and looked around. There are Night Markets pretty much everywhere there and it’s just a lot of little shops and booths filled with all kinds of things. We also went on a boat ride, which was really cool! I loved getting the chance to relax and just watch the city lights. It was around 5:30-6:00 and by this point we’d been walking since about 9am.

We were all exhausted by this time so we went back to the apartment and crashed! I was very glad we had the chance to have a day of sightseeing though. The last time I was there, the only place I went other than THOGL was Taroko Gorge. It was beautiful but I had worked all through the night, spent that day walking around, and then came back and worked another night shift. So I was so exhausted I didn’t get to enjoy it as much as I would’ve liked to.

I know my descriptions are not doing any of this justice. It was an incredible day full of beautiful views and special experiences. You should just go visit Taiwan yourself so you can see it all!

More to come… soon. I promise.

Love is an Action

A week or so ago I was driving home and was really hungry! I thought about stopping at Taco Bell, but decided I'd just go home and eat some frozen pizza (which I like better than any other kind!). I was in a slightly bad mood, though I don't remember why, and when I got home and opened the freezer to find NO pizza... I got a little upset.  I remember saying something like, "Seriously? I didn't stop at Taco Bell because I was going to eat pizza", and shut the door a little harder than needed. It took about 5 seconds and then a feeling of shame came over me as I thought of all the people in the world, some FAR away and some closer than I like to think, that didn't have ANYTHING to eat for dinner, or all day for that matter. I almost started crying right there because I was so disgusted with myself.

It made me start thinking about everything else that I have and take for granted. I have a car that takes me anywhere I need to go, I have money for everything I need, I have a great job... all things that MILLIONS of people in this world somehow manage to live without.
I don't ever want to complain about something that I have been blessed with, and I'm praying that anytime that I start to, I will stop and just be thankful instead.

I've been reading "The Hole in our Gospel" by Richard Stearns. He is president of World Vision and has an awesome testimony of how God called him to step into that role. The book is full of good information, heart-breaking stories and pictures, and a call to ACT. It's great for us when our hearts break over the injustice and unfairness in the world, but it doesn't do the victims any good. There are so many ways that we can change a life. What's stopping you?

Here are two ideas for you:

I became a "mom" to a 14 yr old boy at an orphanage in Ethiopia yesterday. He can speak/write English and has a Facebook. It's a more instant form of communication, one that I don't have with my two Compassion International sponsor children, and I'm excited to start building a relationship with him.
My pastors family adopted two children from Ethiopia, and she is "mom" to two boys at the same orphanage. They actually have taken her last name for themselves, they even use it on Facebook. It's pretty awesome!

If you're interested in becoming a "mom" for one of these boys (ages 6-20), contact me and I can get you in touch with the right people.  I think the only real criteria is that you are a Christian. It's not a sponsorship, it's just mentoring and loving on a child that will never have a real family.

Also, check out Compassion International. It's $38 dollars a month and guarantees that the child with receive an education, food, basic supplies and most importantly they will hear about Jesus. I sponsor two children with Compassion. One I've had for about 4 years and the other I just got in February. I'll admit that I do not write them as often as I should, but I am trying to get better with that. I've commited to writing at least once a month and sending a small gift as often as I can (stickers, coloring pages etc...). There's no better feeling than when I get a letter from India and a 15 yr old girl calls me "sister" and tells me that she and her family are so thankful for me and that they pray for me every day. It's humbling and awesome to know that my letters to her are some of her most prized possessions. It's also cool to hear her plans for the future and to know that I'm a huge part in those plans actually being possible!

Pray about it. If God asks you to do it, he'll provide the way for you to do it. What's more important? Saving and giving hope to a life, or spending money on stuff we don't really need?
And go check out their website and look through the pictures. How can you say no after that?

I am so far from where I want to and should be, but I'm thankful that I am changing and that I am being affected by the things I read and hear about.

"Let us not love with words or speech but with ACTIONS and in truth". 1 John 3:18

Necklace Giveaway

Since I only had a few entries for my giveaway, I'm going to give one to both of them! I don't have your email addresses, so hopefully you will both check back and read this!

Team Thompson

fantigrossi

You BOTH get the "Taiwan (im)Patiently Waiting" necklace from The Adopt Shoppt (www.etsy.com/shop/theadoptshoppe)!

Send me an email and give me your addresses and I'll get those out to you!!!! Congratulations!
kedziepearls@yahoo.com is my email address.

There is so much on my mind right now. I've discovered several new blogs this week, all relating to adoption or orphan care. I'm certain the one or both are in my future. The pictures and the stories that I have seen the past few days have broken me and also strengthened my desire and passion to make a change. Right now I have no idea what that is or will be or how I will accomplish it. I just know the passion that had been fading this last year, is very much back and stronger than ever!

I was reading the verse in James that says something like "When you know what you should do, and don't do it... you are sinning". That is powerful. My friend Jessica (http://www.thisworldmyfaith.blogspot.com/) once told me "We've seen it. We've seen the orphans and the needs. We are now responsible". She's right. I have seen babies that have no one else to care for them. I've not only seen them, I've held them in my arms and fed them at 2am. I have seen a 3 month old that wouldn't smile and that was lethargic and "out of it" all the time due being neglected by his alcoholic and drug addicted mother. I also got to be a part in seeing him become a normal, happy, healthy AWESOME little boy who know lives with a family that takes very good care of him. I've seen the need... what am I going to do about it.

I said on Facebook that spending 3 months in Taiwan, working at an orphanage, was not enough. Yeah I gave up my comfortable American life and flew 7000 miles away to live in a place I knew nothing about with people I had never met or even talked to. But that's nothing. Nothing compared to what so many Christians do (http://www.servinghischildreninuganda.blogspot.com/).

We say "God hasn't called me to do that." God says..." Religion that God accepts as pure and without fault is this: caring for orphans or widows who need help..."
We have already been "called". Maybe not all in the same capacity. But are we even doing ANYTHING? For those of us that are doing something... is it ENOUGH?

Necklace Giveaway!

Hey all!

I've been inspired and I'm now gonna do my own giveaway! I want to buy one of The Adopt Shoppe necklaces for someone. I'm choosing the "Taiwan Waiting (im)Patiently" http://www.etsy.com/listing/64590641/taiwan-adoption-waiting-impatiently one just because of my connection to Taiwan and adoption. So I want to give one of those to someone who is currently in the adoption process from Taiwan. If you are, or know someone who is..., send me a message on Facebook, or leave a comment here, and they'll get entered!
And check out http://www.etsy.com/shop/theadoptshoppe for other awesome stuff!

Monogram Boutique: ~Let's welcome 2011 with a giveaway~

Monogram Boutique: ~Let's welcome 2011 with a giveaway~: "I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday and Happy New Year! We did just about nothing, which was WONDERFUL :) Well I can't think of a ..."