Winter Wonderland

OK…my turn.

Coby and I are sitting here in our room waiting for Natasha to call us and tell us the plan for the rest of the day…so I thought I might just say a little something.
It snowed all night and it has not stopped yet today. The entire town is under a beautiful white sheet of fresh untouched snow. Sitting here on the 6th floor and looking down at, I just wish you all could see it. Woman are walking around in their thick long fur coats and gloves with fur hats that add another foot to their height. Scarves around their necks and if their coats have hoods, they are pulled up. The ladies coats, whether fur or not, have fur around the rim of the hood and the sleeves cuffed. They look like dolls walking around with a ring of fur around their faces and wrists. It is quite beautiful to see.
The men are mostly in black and they too have the tall hats with the sides that fold down to cover their ears. They too have the gloves and the scarves and usually a cigarette out of the side of their mouth that they can puff and blow without using their hands. Crazy! Coby keeps telling me that he is going to pick up smoking. It is all that we smell around here. We were talking to Natasha yesterday on our drive back from the orphanage and she told us that cancer is the leading cause of death here due to the pollution of the coal mines……..I couldn’t find it in me to correct her and tell her it was probably due to all the smoking…..it’s probably a combination of the two.
The children are out about as well. They are in ski jackets and snow bibs and they too have the fur around their heads and scarves around their necks. Some kids have gloves, and some not...that I don’t get. They are so cute. You could push one over and they would bounce right back up due to all the padding they have on.
One thing that is missing, and I have yet to see anyone wearing them, are snow boots. No one is wearing them and I mean no one!!! I am the only one! The ladies wear boots with 2 inch heals and the men wear dress shoes with pointy toes. The soles of the shoes look no thinker then a pancake. It is crazy!!! Some ladies have wedges on their boots, but that is it. And they walk this way! We have yet to see anyone fall, but that could be because they walk SO FAST!! Mom, I think they could really give you a run for your money! They are so quick! My thoughts are because it is so cold…they have to!
And the weather changes so fast! One min. it is snowing and windy and you can feel your face lose feeling and the next the sun is out and the snow is beginning to melt. We walked to the market 2 days ago and going there it was cold, but the sun was out and I was wearing sun glasses. By the time we walked out of the market, it was a blizzard!! You had to cover your face completely, walk looking at the ground and Coby and I held onto each other so we wouldn’t blow away. Crazy!
But we really have loved every min. I have to thank God and praise Him and Him alone for this trip. It has been a complete turn around! Coby has smiled so much, we are both have so much more fun, we are enjoying the company of our translator and agency and we both feel sad today knowing we are saying goodbye to our Neil for a little while. I can honestly say, I can’t wait to come back and I know Coby feels the same way.
Our adventure…yup, I can call it that…has been kind of like the store of the Vineyard Workers in Matthew 20. (I am studying Matthew so I find so many similarities from there) The story talks about a landowner that hires workers throughout the day to work in his vineyard. He agrees to pay them all the same amount of money, but they all started working at different times of the day. At the end of the day, the landowner calls the workers he hired last, first, and the first hired, he calls them last. Then he pays all the workers the same amount of money. Whether they worked all day or just a few hours, he pays them what he agreed to pay them when he hired them.
I picture Coby and me as the workers who were hired first. We were the first ones to begin our adoption journey and we have watched all our other adoption families come after us and finish and given their child. Here we are…..we were the first, but now we are the last. But we are all paid the same……we will all receive our children at the end of the day. For that I am happy! It might not seem fair that we went through so much and our time was longer, but we were told that we would be given a child…..and at the end of the day, God will give us the child that He has so perfectly promised us.
Well, we are off to the orphanage in about 30 min. I will kiss the baby 100 x’s over from all of you!!!