Born in China

This morning we were back where we belonged, back on board at KidPak for another great service.  This morning was our "end-of-the-fast" service, one where the church staff prayed for everyone who wanted prayer for anything they've been fasting for.  

We had a fun skit this morning, one where Nerdo was given tickets to "go into all the world" with.  Dawn, our engineer, went out to prepare people's hearts to hear the message, and she even helped Nerdo know what to say.

Here he is with the tickets, and of course he was able to bring people all on board, as our series is called "All Aboard!"  That means God wants everyone on board, and doesn't want anyone to perish or miss out on this trip to heaven.

Afterwards, we were praying for the children as they left on their way, and presumably go home to scarf some candy!  But seriously, there were many of these kids actually fasting candy and even meat.   Some were giving up video games and screen time all these weeks, and that's just fantastic.  More importantly, there was prayer, and reading the Bible as well.  Madison has been fasting all this time too, and of course we're quite proud of her.

This morning, we were finally able to open that box of Whoopie Pies, or at least one of them.  We brought in twelve of the Whoopie Pies from our Maine friends, and of course those were gobbled down pretty quickly by staff and volunteers.  We'll bring in the rest on Tuesday.  They actually sent us two dozen!  These things are like neutron bombs of sugar - I'm not sure how such a liberal state like Maine with so many regulations has approved these desserts of death.  But judging by the reactions of those who ate them this morning - including Madison - it seems everyone was grateful for state officials looked the other way when approving the export of this sugar-infested contraband.

Anyway, we went home this afternoon and had a quiet rest-of-the-day.  We had leftover Chinese food from yesterday, which was still delicious of course.

There was bath time, and there was still a bit of homework to do, plus some piano practice as well.

Madison was watching some episodes of "Clone Wars," but we also had on "Born in China," which was good - did you know that pandas eat 40 pounds of bamboo each day?  This was a visually stunning movie, with so much imagery from China, it felt like we were back there again.  Madison, of course, was actually born in China too.  That's one of the reasons that we had this playing, just to have imagery and reminders of her heritage, really not that long ago.

The movie follows the lives of a few different animals that are specific to China.  Of course, the panda is the star of the movie. There are two pandas, a mother and a child that is growing up and hopefully learning to climb trees.  The movie mentions how pandas need to climb trees to avoid predators, but I don't remember them saying specifically what those predators are.  Given that a fully sized panda is a rather formidable opponent, I suspect there aren't many.  So, looking it up online here, we found that panda cubs are the ones that are in danger from jackals and yellow-throated martens (which I had to look up).  But ironically, they're in danger from one of the other stars of this documentary:  the snow leopard.

The snow leopard's story was tragic, as viewers kept thinking there was going to be something good that happens next to Dawa and her two children.  Dawa is relentless as a mother, but sometimes this fallen planet we live on can be more even relentless.  We just read that the kids survived, so that's good.

I'm going to propose a sequel where they grow up, train and use their Chinese skills to take out the wicked snow leopards that drove them from their land and were responsible for the death of their mom.  One by one, the bad snow leopards are picked off, until the ultimate face-off with the snow leopard boss, who of course leaps out to avenge the death of her gang, but misses and plunges off the side of a cliff or something.  And so vengeance is served up cold, and the land's original owners return and everyone is happy.  Except for the mountain goats.  The end.

Despite the harsh reality of nature and the fact that we live in a fallen world, this was a beautiful movie to see, with wonderful landscapes of China filling the screen, showing all the seasons of this beautiful place.

Speaking of beautiful, we finished "Where the Mountain Meets the Moon" tonight, and it had such a wonderful ending.  This was a great book to read during this season, but really a fantastic read any time of the year.  The last chapter was just such a nice ending to it all, and a very nice way to go to sleep tonight, after prayers, kisses and zerberts.