JUNE 24, 2009!

The day started at 4:30 am getting packed up and ready for a 7:40 am flight out of Beijing to Zhengzhou.  The Beijing airport is beautiful, modern, and the people able to communicate in English to help us through the process.  At our arrival, we met our guide and translator in charge of guiding us through the adoption process, Celine, and another mother and her 13 year old daughter who are adopting a 13 year old girl from the same orphanage.  We have made a new friend in Patty, the mother; this is their 3rd Chinese adoption, their 5th child, and they are a beautiful Christian family.  The first stop was a government office, and this is where we met the girls!  June 24, 2009 is the 5th biggest day in the Amburgy family!  We sat down with them, had to sign many documents with the guide explaining them since they were in Chinese.  Overall, it went very well!  Of course there was shyness with the girls, lots of waiting, and the huge words of "you are now the legal parents of Ginger and Maggie!  We had a 2 hour drive to LouYang in the same day, arrived at our hotel, and had to figure out how to sleep seven, how to tell the girls we were going to eat, (Pizza Hut, Chinese style!  The girls had spaghetti!) and then getting them through showers and in their new jammies!  Michael, our wonderful friend and friend of the girls, came over and we had a good visit.  He is able to speak anything he wants in Chinese and this, along with sharing a mutual love of Christ has made a miraculous friendship between us.  He truly loves the girls and the other kids and has a great relationship with them that is fun to watch - it was good to see them together!.  We gave them a backpack full of fun things to do and help them learn!  My favorite thing was climbing into bed between them with "My First Bible Story Book" in Chinese and English.  They read to me the story in Chinese (it is amazing that those characters can ever be learned and have meaning and phonics!) and they are great readers.  Then I read it to them in English.  We read 4 stories before we said good night and tucked them in, and they slept very well!  We are very thankful for His incredible provision for this day!