Think Clearly. Love Deeply. Choose Wisely. Live Boldly.

So, I ended my last post with a G. K. Chesterton quote:

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.”

We had a great example of that over the last two days.  On Thursday I got Sophie out of the house for a bit so Katie could work uninterrupted.  We do this from time to time.  I took her down to Cool Springs to the Toys R Us to look around.  While we were there she found the row with all her PBS/Nick Jr. favorites: Dinosaur Train, Sid the Science Kid, Super Why, and Wonder Pets.

Wonder Pets is the special one right now.  We don’t get Nick Jr. so she only gets to watch WP when we let her on Netflix.  There was a box of Wonder Pets plush dolls marked on Clearance.  We found Linny (guinea pig), Tuck (turtle), but no Ming Ming (duck).  We bought the first two and I told her we’d have to see if we could find the other one. After all, it wouldn’t do to have just two of the three characters of a show about teamwork.

Sophie actually sat down in the store aisle and prayed that we’d find it.  Teachable moment.

In the car as we drove to Target I tried to explain to Sophie that if God didn’t answer her prayer, it didn’t mean that He didn’t love her.  I reminded her of how Mom and Dad don’t let her watch all the TV she wants, or eat candy all the time even though those may be things that would seem like fun to do, because in the long term they wouldn’t be good.  Sophie knows the meaning of the word ‘contentment’ and I reminded her that maybe God wanted her to be content with just the two she had.

The next morning I told her we’d run down to Murfreesboro’s Toys R Us to see if they had a  Ming Ming.  They didn’t.  I called Bellevue-no dice.  Where did we finally find a Ming Ming?  Rivergate.  For those of you who don’t know Middle Tennessee geography Murfreesboro is a town about 30 miles southeast of Nashville and Riverate is a suburb of Nashville that’s on the northwest side of town.

So, we spent literally all day driving.  It might have been an inconvenience, but we decided to call it an adventure.  Sophie learned the phrase “make a run for it” when we got caught in an afternoon gully washer in the Charlotte Pike Target parking lot, and we had a very good day as one of Sophie’s last days as an only child.

I tell my students every year that perspective is a huge part of how their year goes.  Attitude isn’t everything, but it’s a large portion.

In a little over an hour we will start another adventure.  As I type this I see flashes of lightning and hear the rumble of thunder.  The radar website tells me we should be good for our 10 am flight, but I know we only have a couple of hours layover in Detroit.  The bags are packed and just under the weight limit.  Important documents are in my backpack in a small portable file folder, and I think things are ready to go.

Thanks again for praying for us, supporting us, loving on us, and just being an awesome community to be a part of.  This family of three is about to become a family of four.

Avengers Assemble, Wagons Ho, Saddle Up Your Horses, Transform and Roll Out.

Talk to you from China.

Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. But rejoice that you participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed. I Peter 4:12-13

I just got to spend the weekend with most of this year’s seniors. They got together to choose a theme verse and project for the school. One of the things I love about where I work is how it cultivates leaders. These 90 some odd seniors spend 3.5 hours searching Scriptures, debating, commenting, praying, getting frustrated, and finally agreeing on THE verse that will direct our upcoming school year. It was an amazing process to watch and be a ‘fly on the wall’.

I’ve been focused way too much on my perceived suffering. I gotta be honest. I am ready to go get Shepherd and bring him home, but Id give just about anything for a good ole JLA Moonbase teleporter. I’d even take one of the Star Trek variety. It’s not that I don’t like to fly. I actually enjoy it. Especially in smaller planes. When dad was a pilot I used to love to tag along whenever I could.

No, I’m not a fan of flying coach…with small children…for 15 hours.  I’ve done that once and I gotta tell you, I am not making light of the childbirthing process in any way, but that adoption plane ride home was my 15 hour labor.

But remember, I’ve said that I have been focused too much on my perceived suffering.  In one week we will be welcoming a little boy into our hearts and home.  It is a joyous occasion, and we are thrilled, but when I take a moment to think about things from his perspective, it’s also sobering.  He has probably been taken from his foster family by now and put back into an orphanage.  To our knowledge he doesn’t speak English.  He’s going to be given to these funny looking, big-nosed strangers (did you know that many Chinese affectionately refer to Americans as ‘big noses’?) to be taken away from everything he has known to be safe and good.  It’s going to be traumatic and it will involve suffering.

One student this weekend made a great point. ‘so that you may be overjoyed when his glory is revealed’ is not referring to the end of time, though that is part of it.  It is referring to anytime Christ’s glory is revealed.  I think one of those times will be a little before 4 in the afternoon when a tired family of 4 arrives home.

I haven’t suffered, but I can participate in suffering in helping Shepherd adjust and learn his new home.

We covet and need your prayers.  God is good and merciful.

About that JLA teleporter…

“An inconvenience is only an adventure wrongly considered; an adventure is an inconvenience rightly considered.” G.K. Chesterton

Soli Deo Gloria

OK, I haven’t linked my blog to Facebook in a while because I discovered that most of the people who read this blog are also Facebook friends and I was, in effect, double posting. As someone who hides just about every application that posts to my wall (sorry Farmville folks, you aren’t hidden, just your blueberries) I don’t want to inundate mini-feeds.

In just over a week we leave for China. It is a crazy hectic time that we are growing more excited about daily. Since places like Blogspot and Facebook are not easily accessible in China, this blog will be the best way to share our story as we embark on our adventure. So, those of you on Facebook will get notices when I update here, but you’ll probably have to come to the actual InfiityandJellyDonuts site to see any pictures or video.

Hard to believe in just under two weeks we’ll meet Shepherd. Thanks for your prayers.

I’ve been searching for plane tickets since 3:30 am Thursday morning. Not nonstop, but it’s been ever-present in my mind. The struggle is finding the right balance of cost and security. I don’t envy travel agents. We have a great one now after I narrowed some stuff down.

I think that online pricing places are great if you have flexible dates and a flexible itinerary. When you have specific dates you have to be somewhere by specific times they aren’t as great. I even had one online place give us an itinerary that consisted of all one way tickets for each leg of the journey. A separate ticket from Nashville to LA, then a ticket from LA to Guangzhou. It was about $2000 cheaper than anything else I had found until a good friend pointed out that if one of those planes were late the entire responsibility of missing a flight would be on us.

So, back to shopping. I think we have something, but Delta’s website was messed up last night so we’ll see how much the tickets go up between now and Monday.

By the way, apparently August is the most expensive month to travel to China. Lucky us!

We got a phone call yesterday from our agency. Our Travel Approval has arrived. All that’s left now is to make an appointment with the US consulate’s office and buy tickets (and pack, and get gifts for the officials over there, etc. etc.).

We have requested an appointment ASAP. Please pray that there are some slots left in July and that airline tickets are reasonable on such short notice. Also pray for health for all of us as we get ready to travel.

I’ll try to post pics of Sophie’s birthday later on.

For all you dads out there. This is how we roll.

I have found that God often drops little messages, or signs of encouragement for His Children.  They are often personal, subtle, yet blatant.  The main reason that the fox is my favorite animal is because of a few distinct times in my life when I think God both comforted me and encouraged me by placing one of these creatures in my path.  It isn’t animism or totem worship, any more than Gideon’s fleece or the fish with the coin was.  Why do I share this?  I’ll tell you.

While I was cooking supper tonight Sophie was in her playroom busily working on her ‘project’. She will often work diligently for some time and then come show us what she’s done. This time she called us into the playroom to ‘come see’. There were a bunch of her things wrapped up as only a 5 year old can wrap laying on her chair.

“These are my presents,” she said. “I’m getting rid of some of my toys so Shepherd will get here faster.” She has been right with us as we’ve had 147 Million Orphan sales and yard sales, and doing what we can to pay for this adoption.  Katie and I both teared up.  Sophie was ready to get rid of some of her possessions in order to bring this boy, whom she has never met and will probably fight with…a lot, home.  If that’s not enough to make your throat all lumpy, then she says, “We always say he’s coming home soon, but he never does.  When is he going to be here?  When are we going to China to get him?”

Katie took Sophie over to the wildlife calendar we have on our refrigerator and showed her some of the landmark dates that were going to happen before our tentative trip in August: the 4th of July, Sophie’s birthday, Paw Paw Bunny’s birthday, etc.  Then Katie turned the calendar to August.  You wanna know what the picture for August was?

This is the actual shot.  I found it at the photographer’s website.

As my friend Scott O. says, “God’s got a plan for your plan.”  We would love to be back and home with Shepherd before school starts back in the fall, but for whatever reason, we probably won’t be.  That being said, I am comforted in the fact that our Creator knew our longings from before time began and continually woos us to Him.

He Is There and He Is Not Silent.

Well, summer is in full swing here.  We were beginning to think that it would be a long summer waiting to get Shepherd (now we’re hearing we won’t travel until August) but it is anything but that.  Sophie is participating in swim team this summer for the first time.  Today was her first meet.  She was a bit nervous beforehand (well, considering the fact that she has never swam the length of the pool and one of the coaches had to go in to get her during warmups made us all a little nervous) but she did great.  She was entered in the backstroke and she made it across the pool.  She stopped to grab the rope and rest a couple of times, but she stayed on her back and didn’t turn over too soon at the end, which we hear is a huge no no and will get you DQ’ed.  She got her purple completion ribbon and now, she is ready for future meets.

I have been busy as well.  I am teaching senior English next year, which means I have a lot of reading to do, as well as a new textbook for anatomy.  It’s been good, but we’ve spent a lot of time in the car.  Which gives us a lot of time to listen to music.  Sophie’s taste are growing and Katie and I have to be careful in what we listen to because she is *very* good at picking up on lyrics.  She heard some Joan Jett and asked Katie, “Mom, what’s Rock and Roll?”  “It’s music, do you like it?”  “Oh, yes!”

When it’s my turn to choose the tunes we get a bit more eclectic, opting for the singalongs.  I’ll leave you with one of her current favorites.

UPDATE TO THE UPDATE:  Final total: $1800.  We are so close to having all expenses for this adoption paid.  I can’t tell you how overwhelmed we feel, in a good way!

UPDATE!:  Sophie made over $100 with her lemonade stand.  A huge thanks to Lisa and Tori and Cora for helping!  We haven’t gotten the final total yet, but we think we made at least $1000 for our adoption.  Praise God!

I’m taking a brief break from helping set up for our 147 Million Orphans fund raiser.  We hope that this will help us get much closer to the $2500 or so we need to bring Shepherd home.

We are down to paying for hotels, meals, tips, etc. so it’s crunch time.  We got a bit of disheartening news last week when we found out we probably won’t travel until August.  Besides the wait, that’s also right when Sophie and I both start school.  God’s timing is perfect, though and it’s all good.

30 minutes until showtime.  We have about 70 people RSVP’ed to attend so it will be a busy afternoon.  I’ll try to update later with how we’re doing.

UPDATE: I changed my Grooveshark Playlist to reflect the beginning of Summer!  Enjoy while you read.

Well, today was the last faculty meeting of the 2009-2010 school year. Those are always good but tiring because they bring an end to graduation weekend. I was honored and humbled to be one of the two baccalaureate speakers this year. When I speak in front of a crowd I go into a kind of fog or zone. It seems the bigger the crowd, the heavier the fog because that 12 to 14 minutes or so is a blur. They have it recorded, but I hate listening to myself so I don’t know if I will listen to it. Still, I received some very kind comments, so I guess I did OK.

Graduation was much more relaxing, but bittersweet. I once had another teacher tell me, “if you teach seniors, and your heart’s not breaking in May, then you haven’t done your job.” I don’t know if that’s totally true, but if it is, then this was a successful year.

Sunday night after graduation the senior moms always head up a party for the seniors. Usually it’s a riverboat cruise in downtown Nashville on the General Jackson, but due to the flooding the dock was washed away so there was no cruise. Instead one mom used her connections to rent out the private executive club at LP field.

It was a blast. DJ, karaoke, Dance Dance Revolution, and a couple of Wii stations made it better than the Riverboat. I may or may not have taught some guys the proper way to light a cigar, but I did enjoy a nice pipe on a balcony overlooking downtown Nashville.  Yes, I did dance a little, and yes I am still as bad at it as I was in high school. I think my final report card for the year was Public Speaking-A-, Stanky Leg- D.

So after the midnight return, I got home and in bed about 1 am with an 8 am faculty meeting. I woke up at 5:45 awake, but still tired. It was that feeling where I knew if I tried to sleep for another hour I would be toast, so that’s why I’m a little tired.

I’m looking forward to summer, though it promises to be a busy one. I’m going to be teaching senior English next year which means I have the reading list to go through this summer as well as a new A&P book to learn.  Also have a hopeful trip to see the in-laws (haven’t visited with them in a year) and my 20 year high school reunion (WooHoo).

Hopefully, with all that I will have time to post more regularly.

Most of you have heard about the Nashville flood.  It’s bad.  And it’s hard to describe.  Nashville will survive, but it will never be the same.

I encourage you to look at some of the pictures and give to the Red Cross for the Tennessee Flood Relief efforts.  More later.  We are fine, and our house is fine.

Link1

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Wow.  If you’re watching the news you might hear something about the flooding in Nashville.  Fortunately, we live on a hill.  Less than a mile or two in 3 directions there are roads underwater.  There’s more rain tonight.  We should be fine, but we have friends nearby that have water getting pretty close to the doorstep.  Prayers appreciated.

More rain in the forecast.  Fortunately, Katie went to the grocery store this afternoon and had a scary moment as she had to drive through a flooded section of road to get home.  I also heard a report that there’s water in the bottom floor of at least one of the buildings at my school.

We’ve all been hit by some sort of bug at the Hollis house.  Recovery is slow and frustrating.  It’s rough when all of us are sick.  I am thankful this is happening now and not in China.  I promised some Easter pics.  Here they are.

We colored eggs.  We like to use a white crayon to block the colors and do multiple dips for designs.

And Sophie went on a couple of Easter Egg hunts.  I enjoyed watching her both times because in one hunt, she was among the oldest kids and in another hunt she was one of the youngest.  It’s fun to watch how kids react in those situations.  Here she is scrambling around and with her take.

Our agency called this afternoon.  Our referral/LOA (Letter of Acceptance) for Shepherd is with them and they are FedExing it to us.  We should have it tomorrow and get it back to them on Wednesday to start processing our travel arrangements.  This also means we can now post pictures, etc.  Expect more.

Shepherd Ryan Wang Hollis

OK, I’ve been putting off uploading pictures from Easter Week, but I will soon, I promise. I left you hanging with the kitten video, I know. Allow me to share a random rumination to help start off your week.

As a teacher I am always on the lookout for analogies and illustrations to help teach some of the more abstract concepts in science and English.  For those who are scientifically minded, sometimes an abstract definition is enough, but I teach kids that use all different parts of their brains, so my challenge is to try to connect with all the different ways of thinking.  I think I stumbled upon one today while listening to Pandora.

Emergent properties is a concept seen in biology where two of three things working together exhibit properties that the individual parts themselves do not have.  The whole is greater than the sum of its parts.  Tissues are groups of cells working together, but you can’t put a bunch of cells in a petri dish and magically get tissues.  The tissue, as a group of cells do *more* than just a group of cells.  In the same way, a pair of scissors is more than two blades and a screw holding them together.  There is something about the arrangement of those pieces that make a pair of scissor more than just its parts.  Try taking them apart and cutting paper.

Now, some of you get it, and some of you are going, huh?  So, I’ve only done part of my job.  Let me try a different way:

Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young.  Listen to any CSN&Y song and then listen to the same song done by just one of the artists.  “Judy Blue Eyes” by Stephen Sills and then follow it up with the group version.  Which do you like better?  I listen to Neil Young and I think, “meh, that’s OK” (sorry Hank), but listen to Crosby, Stills and Nash as opposed to CSN&Y and you can definitely hear a difference.

I love being able to find something ‘outside the box’ and communicate something to my students where they get it.

Now if I can just find a way to teach them who Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young are…

Not a lot, but we had a good weekend.  Too tired to upload pictures, now.  So…watch this.

I’m glad it’s Friday.  We have a Seder Meal at church tonight and then I hope I get to see Emmett.

In the adoption world, we are still just waiting.  All of our stuff is in, and we are in a holding pattern.

That’s about all I got.  I don’t have any more energy to talk about Health Care, or politics.  I’m looking forward to hopefully having some time at home to veg.

What are your weekend plans?

Some of you have signed up for Swagbucks at swagbucks.com using my referral link, which let’s me earn swagbucks when you do just for using the search bar.  Thanks.  If you haven’t checked it out yet, the link is right there.  You know you want to

Have a great weekend!

Not like this one.

I’m usually very suspicious of getting something for nothing, or very little. I’ve been doing Swag Bucks for a couple of weeks now, and I ‘m still suspicious, but I’m also impressed.

Swag Bucks are virtual currency. You ‘earn’ them by using the Swag Bucks toolbar for your searches (powered by Google and Ask so you get good results) entering codes that are often hidden on the website, and following Swag Bucks on Twitter and Facebook. The prizes you can ‘buy’ with Swag Bucks are impressive, and as you might suspect the more expensive a prize is in real life, the more Swag Bucks it costs. I’ve been signed up for a couple of weeks now and I’ve earned just under 600 Swag Bucks. That’s a far cry from the 38,000 Swag Bucks you need for the iPhone 3GS, but not bad for the 2800 Swag Buck wireless Xbox 360 controller. All for using a different search bar.

I was also concerned that this was a passing fad, or a business that wouldn’t last long, but Swag Bucks just celebrated its 2nd birthday last week. The drawbacks? Well when you searched some of the first results are ‘Sponsored by’ so you might not get exactly what you’re looking for in the first few hits, the codes that are given out are usually only good for a few hours (I have literally missed some codes by 5 minutes on more than one occasion), and the rewards for searching with the toolbar are random, but that’s OK with me, I usually spend a few minutes each day Googling random stuff.

Then there are the referrals. If you look around swagbucks.com and decide to sign up, I’d appreciate it if you used my referral link. When you win by searching, I’ll win too, so there’s a small bit of “Welcome to Amway” feel, but it’s totally free.  If you don’t like the tool bar, but you still want to win by searching, you can switch your browser bar to use the swagbucks engine.

No pressure.  I’m not giving out emails or anything like that.  When I win something cool I might post it on Facebook.  Give it a look and if you decide to sign up, I’d appreciate the referral.