Steven Curtis Chapman

We had the priviledge of going to a Steven Curtis Chapman concert this past weekend in Beijing. For those of you who don't know him, he is a contemporary Christian singer who we have been fans of for many years. He has adopted 3 little girls from China, and one of his daughters he adopted from PHF. Anyway, we were able to meet and talk with him after the concert, which was pretty neat. He helps support PHF financially as well. So, that was the highlight of our week. Other than that, we continue to stay busy with different things at the orphanage and continue to learn more of the language. Our tutor is going well. John seems to be learning chinese the fastest of all of us. However, I have heard the kids speaking quite a bit chinese these past few days. We continue to be famous everywhere we go, as everyone wants pictures of our little blond haired children whenever we go out.

We had fun celebrating Austin's 4th birthday today. We started out by decorating his room with balloons and streamers the night before his birthday after he was asleep so that he woke up to a decorated room. We haven't found any wrapping paper yet in China, so we had a fun little treasure hunt around the house for him to find his presents. He had a lot of fun with that-Alyson enjoyed helping him too. His favorite present was his new pet turtle. Both the kids were pretty excited about it. (picture of the turtle below).

We hope to send out our first newsletter in the next few weeks, telling you more about the orphanage and different things going on here as well as more detailed prayer requests. Until then, please continue to pray for our family and our work at PHF. Thank-you to all of you who have been keeping in touch through e-mail. It is so great to hear from our friends and family back in the USA.

Blessings,

John, Desiray
Alyson and Austin

Largest ball pit EVER!!!!

This week has been another week of learning how to live in China. We had some good and bad days this week. But, overall we are learning a little more everyday about life in China as well as learning more about the children at the orphanage and our work here. John continues to work at the orphanage daily doing various things. Right now, he is spending most of his time working with the accountants at PHF and getting a handle on their finances. This past week, a project was kicked off to build 3 new children's homes at Shepherd's field. Desiray has started doing some of her work with Child Sponsorship, and plans to start more this week. Her work with PHF is done more slowly as she does not have as much time to be at the orphanage when she is also caring for Alyson and Austin. Speaking of Alyson and Austin-they are still doing well and are continuing pre-school. Mom has also started doing a little homeschooling with them which is going well.

Today we went to Beijing to the BICF (Beijing international Christian Fellowship). It was a wonderful time of Worship with people from all over the world. After church we spent some time in Beijing together as a family (we were able to use a driver from PHF-which is a huge blessing since he knows how to get around and get to different places-plus he speaks a little english).

We went to a place we saw in a "Beijing for Kids" magazine called Fundazzle. It had the largest ball pit we have ever seen. The kids had a blast!! Apparentely all the ball pits that were once in the United States have been moved to China and are now in this one large ball pit in Beijing:) Notice also the picture we took of this sign about not throwing the balls-sometimes the Chinese get their words a little mixed up when they try to write things in English. We thought it was pretty funny.

A few things you can keep in your prayers this week:

-The kids would keep going to pre-school as some days they don't want to go

-Patience as we continue to learn how to live in China, and as we try and learn the language. (Our tutor starts tomorrow)

-2 children from PHF had heart surgeries this week-pray for their continued healing (Elijah and Parker)

-Pray that our Visas would get converted into permanent work visas quickly and with no problems so that we can get our driver's license. (which would help our transportations issues)

Anyway, I guess that is about it for this week.

Blessings,

John, Desiray Alyson and Austin Christen

Does anyone speak english?

Well, we made it through our first week in China. So far things have been pretty good. A lot of changes in our lives that's for sure. After a couple of days of not being able to get around at all without calling a taxi, John decided to buy an electric bike. This can at least get us from our house to Shepherd's Field (the orphanage), and it can also get us to a local Chinese restaurant. If we want to go into Langfang (which is about 15 minutes away) we still have to take a taxi though. The kids were pretty excited about it-they love for Daddy to take them on a ride on the electric scooter as they call it.

Our first trip to Wal-Mart was quite the experience. When we speak little Chinese and they speak no English it certainly makes for quite the adventure. It took about 20 minutes and about 20 chinese wal-mart employees to try and figure out if we were buying shampoo or conditioner. And we still didnt' know which it was until we got home and tried it ourselves. We will both be getting a tutor beginning next week so hopefully that will help us out a little bit. Our children are famous everywhere we go. Chinese people love little blond haired kids and they just follow us around trying to look at Alyson and Austin. Some even take pictures of them. The good news is they will never get lost because everybody knows who they belong to. Alyson and Austin seem to be oblivious to the fact that we are surrounded by a completely different culture-they just go with the flow.

For all of you who are wondering what the Chinese man in our garage is doing-we found out he works for PHF and he does maintenance work as well as builds and fixes things. He uses our garage as his workshop. Nobody told us this at first so we weren't sure what was going on. He is a very friendly man and we have already had him in our house trying to fix a few things that were broken.











Alyson and Austin started pre-school this week. They did great the first 3 days and by day 4 they were a little tired of going. It is MUCH different then schools in the USA so I can't say I blame them. We are going to try and send them only 3 days a week next week and see if that helps at all. After the first day of pre-school Austin says to me "Mommy, there is only one other person that talks like we do." It is pretty much all chinese, but one teacher does speak some English. The picture is Alyson and Austin on their first day of Pre-school, and also Alyson with her pre-school teacher.






We have met many of our neighbors-the ones right across the street from us are from Iowa, which is pretty neat. The US Doctors at the orphanage live two houses down. They have been such a blessing to us as they have helped us get settled in and taken us to different places that we have needed to go.


This week a team came in from San Fransico and hosted a VBS for the kids. There are a few pictures posted from the VBS that you can see. Alyson and Austin went as well and had a fun time.

John started his work at the orphanage on Monday, and things seem to be going well so far. He has various projects he will be working on at PHF, and will also be leading our fellowship time on Thursday nights with the staff. Desiray will be working on Child sponsorship. Which means taking pictures of all the children who are sponsored by individuals and finding out the progress of the child and then writing a report to be sent to their sponsor. This is updated every 3 months. She hopes to start working on that in the next couple of weeks.

We had our first trip to the McDonalds in China today. The food was great-tasted just like the USA McDonalds. There were a group of boys that were following us into McDonalds (staring at our children) so we got a picture with them by Ronald McDonald.






Here are a few other pictures we took as we were going through some of the rooms at Shepherds field that we thought you might like to see. The sweet little girl next to Alyson was fascinated by Alyson's light up shoes.



Thanks for your prayers-please continue praying for us as we adjust to our new lives in China and begin our work at the orphanage.



Blesssings,
John, Desiray
Alyson and Austin

Who's that Chinese man living in my garage?

After a 13 hour plane ride we made it to China, at least I think that's where we're at:) About halfway through the airplane ride, Austin asked us if the airplane stopped to get gas cause he couldn't feel the plane moving anymore. I am pretty sure we hadn't stopped for gas unless there was a gas station somewhere over the North Pole. The kids did very well on the airplane ride and the flight went smoothly.

We got set up in our new home in the Langfang Developement Zone. The house is nice-it more than met our expectations of what we would be living in. We even have a dryer and a microwave which we weren't sure if we would have or not. The kids were so excited for the first night in our new house that they didn't sleep at all. Or it could have been something to do with the fact that to them it was mid-afternoon. They are slowly starting to adjust better to the time change. They fall asleep off and on during the day, as you can see in the picture they both crashed while we were eating at a local Chinese restaurant. We are still trying to get settled with things we need for our house and figure how to get from one place to the next. However, we do have a middleaged chinese man who comes over every morning and spends most of the day in our garage. We are still investigating what that is all about. We did find out his name is Yui.

Our first day here we went over to visit the new Children's Village complex called Shepherd's Field. It was Children's Day, which means balloons, face paints, stickers, cake, and McDonalds food.

This week we will be learning some of our responsibilites at the orphanage and the kids will be starting their pre-school class at Little Lambs Pre-School.

Please visit the ChinaChristen blog weekly to learn more about what is going on with the Christen Family in China.