Ok, so I have been a bit remiss in blogging. I have probably lost most of you but now I have so much to tell you!!! After being home only 6 days we celebrated Thanksgiving at home. We had been wondering how this would work out long before we ever met Amy. Would she be totally overwhelmed by everyone? Would she be shy? Would she feel out of place? Knowing that it was going to potentially be a difficult day for her we decided to have the family over to our house so that she could go hide in her room with a sister if necessary. However, we under estimated our new daughter. She is a tough cookie. She did not mingle very much and though her sisters tried to involve her she wanted to stay near Baba (Daddy). All in all I was very proud of her. She has learned to greet people with "I am pleased to meet you". Oh, if only you could hear her voice and accent when she says it. Truly, it is soooo cute. She liked the turkey and stuffing!!! She also liked the chocolate pie that Auntie Kim made as we all did.
In Amy's picture dictionary she showed us that she likes bowling so the day after Thanksgiving the kids and I and Cass's friend took her bowling. I wasn't sure that she would actually be pleased at the idea so we didn't tell her where we were going until we got there. We figured once she was there she would just have to have fun. As soon as Cass told her what we were doing she became very excited. She was a little confused as to why she had to put on their shoes, she looked at us funny and shrugged her shoulders and put them on. Then she preceded to boss Josh about getting his shoes on (you've got to love it!) I have no idea if she had ever bowled before or not but she definitely liked it and she did pretty well. Of course she had to have a pink ball even though it wasn't the lightest. Isn't fashion always more important? I suspect that we will be doing more of this. Next time we will drag Daddy along and see how he does!
As most of you know we at the Flatt household homeschool at least until high school. We are working on figuring out where Amy needs to be placed in each subject. We had been warned that some of the orphanages do no school so that is what we had prepared ourselves for. Thankfully Amy was in the public school that was just down the street. She is a great reader. Her reading level goes beyond her comprehension level so we will have to move slowly there. However, we bought the Rosetta Stone English and she is loving it. We will be doing an hour in the morning and an hour at the end of the school day. This program is amazing. You begin by recording your voice and then it teaches and corrects how you pronounce each word. Depending on what level you set it at you can't move ahead until you get it just right. Amy tells us that she loves english. Yeah!!! My goodness, that sure makes life easier. Monday I will order her math now that I have figured out where we want to start. Things are coming together. Obviously history and science will be put on the back burner until the comprehension is better.
Operation Christmas Child!!! What an amazing organization. We were able to go and tour with a few of our other homeschool friends. I don't think that Amy had a clue as to much of what was going on but they had games and crafty things that she was able to enjoy. We travelled from station to station to learn about the process and reason behind Operation Christmas Child. At the last station there was a girl from Texas with a heavy accent (y'alls included!). She shared her amazing story with us. She was now 20 and living in Texas but at age 8 she was put into an orphanage in Russia. At age 10 she was adopted by an American family. She had been a recipient of Operation Christmas Child and she told about how it had made her feel. At the end she asked if anyone had questions and let me tell you there were a ton of them. Josh raised his hand and when she called on him he pointed to Amy and said "see that girl over there? We traveled half way across the world to bring that orphan home!". Whoa - I was horrified!! Sure I can laugh now but only because Amy didn't know what was going on. Kids do say the darnedest things. I am praying though that next time it will be someone elses child.
Today we spent the afternoon cleaning our rental house. Talk about gross. I painted, I am not sure what Mike did but I am sure it was more than the rest of us, Cass cleaned bathrooms, Megan painted Kilz over the purple paint and Nikki and Amy scrubbed a hairy, greasy, saucy refrigerator and stove - welcome to the family Amy!!! She didn't complain at all, she is actually a very hard worker. She loves to help. It makes you wonder what life was like for her before. My sweet Cassie (who will be 17 next month) said to me, "Mom, I hope that someday I have a family just like this". I am so proud and grateful for her. I am still waiting for her teenage rebellion to set in!!! When is it supposed to happen?
Now here is the best part of all. First, I want to say that we have been praying fervently for Amy from the day that our hearts were matched with her. God has been faithful to answer those prayers in such a mighty way. I had just been thanking God and thinking that there was only one prayer that I was waiting to see if he would answer but this prayer was more time sensitive. We had been praying that God would be preparing Amy's heart for Him. Thursday she was writing a letter to her old room-mate who arrived in PA on Oct 31 and in the middle of this letter was what looked like a yellow cross. Could it really be? We had only been to church twice and the first time was a disaster as she wasn't feeling well and got sick. Ok, so I say to Amy, "Amy that is very beautiful" and she says in her singsong voice "Is for Jesus!". Whoa. You could have knocked me over with a feather. How could this have happened? Our communication is not that great. I know that I had been praying while in church that even though she couldn't understand the words that God would move in her. Then yesterday she was out playing in the snow with Josh. She came in the house mad. (I had never seen her mad before) I asked her what happened and she said that she was building a heart for Jesus and Josh broke it. Hmmmm. Tonight we watched The Jesus Film in Mandarin. She was very quiet during the movie. After the movie was over she looked at us, smiled and said "I have Jesus! I have Jesus in my heart". God is so faithful and so good. I am overwhelmed by his goodness to me. Amy has been home 15 days now. I never in my wildest dreams imagined that it would happen like this. This is the same girl that was bowing to Buddha 3 weeks ago. I am praising Jesus for being so present, so merciful and so loving.
More later
