Week In Texas, Family Fun & Wedding

We had a great time in Texas with our family.  It was a long drive to Texas with 7 kids in car seats & 13 adults.  We stayed at a beautiful home by the lake that also had a pool.  We all had a blast. Jeremi & Jenni's wedding was beautiful, & the kids loved the dance time!  It was precious.  We have really enjoyed this week with our family & the special memories we have made.  Hope you all doing well, we love you all!

Busy Life

Hello to All!

We just got back from a 2 day camp in Mobery, Missouri.  It was a great time with first grade kids!  We were their missionaries for the week & got a lot of cute & funny questions asked about moving to Haiti.  My favorite was while in line for lunch today, this sweet little girl looked at me, handed me her Bible and said, "Missionary, can you please hold this for me!"  I just about started laughing but told her of course I would!  Lyndlee loved her very first camp time.  She practiced walking all over the camp grounds & would go to anyone that would hold her.  She even joined in on the clapping, singing & dancing with the campers.  Our favorite was today during meal time, all the kids were banging on the tables & singing goofy songs, & Lyndlee joined right in with banging on the tables, I couldn't believe my eyes & thought oh boy, we are in trouble!

We have some road trips planned for the next few weeks with friends & family to Mexico, St. Louis, Joplin & Texas!  Then will be home for 2 weeks, finishing up our packing for Haiti.  After that we will head to Joplin to live with my parents until we fly out middle of August!  

It feels like life is so crazy these days & I imagine it will only get crazier!  But we are ready & excited for it!  The Lord bless you all!  Much love.

Branson fun & back home to boxes!

                                                                    How cute are they?!!

                                                               Stuff to ship to Haiti
                                                               Silly Lyndlee
                                                                     Lyndlee & daddy
                                                 one of the sweet Acrobat girl with Lyndlee
                                                        he needs a few more kids to hold
                                                       Beautiful Chinese Children!
                                                       Lyndlee Jya-Ying
                                                                   

Well, this past weekend we spent in Branson with Jetts & Heardts who also adopted their babies from The Home of God's Love in Taiwan.  They have little Kyler & Ava, who Lyndlee adores & loves to spend time with, of course we love them as well, and consider them both siblings to our Lyndlee.  We went to the Chinese Acrobat Show & they performed just for families that have adopted Chinese babies so it was really awesome to see all these other Chinese children running around.  All three kids, mind you they are all close in age, all close to 1, sat for the entire 2 hour acrobat show & loved it.  It amazed us all.  Lyndlee only started to get a little restless because she kept looking back towards the back & could see the door & she is a go baby and kept pointing towards the door & would say Go!  

After that, we went to Silver Dollar City for the next day, now we weren't for sure how this would turn out, taking 3 one year old babies there but again, they surprised us all & did great! Sunday we hit some outlets stores & ate lunch & then departed our ways.  It was a great weekend with friends!

Then we came home to boxes!  Now that we thought they would be gone by the time we got home, it was just nice to get away from it for a few days.  We shipped our things early to Haiti this past Monday & are praying it all makes it there, guess we will know in August when we arrive! Living these past few weeks has been interesting to say the least, since we packed a lot of our stuff already.  The Lord is teaching us new ways to live!  For instance, Lyndlee is eating in her stroller for meals, since we had to ship her high chair, she doesn't mind, as long as she is getting her food!  Brennan is learning to take a shower with no curtain, he does mind that but I keep telling him just to take bubble baths like Lyndlee & I do, he says no thanks!  I am learning to make dinner with the few dishes, silverware, pots & pans that we have left.  We have learned to sleep with little pillows since we shipped those as well.  The list could go on & on but we are truly blessed!!  We have been sorting & packing for awhile now & come to realize just how blessed we are.  We have so many things, some things that are so silly, material things that mean nothing.  We are getting so excited for our journey to Haiti & for the Lord to use us there!  Please keep us in your prayers.  We have a busy next few months with some camps where we will be the missionaries, brother's wedding in Texas, visits to see friends/family before we leave, a new nephew being born next Tuesday.  Busy, busy times.

We love you all & pray you are well!

Hello family & friends,

We hope & pray you are all well. We wanted to send some updates on our life these days.
Lyndlee is doing wonderful, she is 13 months soon & getting into everything, not walking yet but well on her way. She still enjoys food so much, playing with her toys, loves bath time, she really is into reading/looking at books. She loves people, almost everywhere we go, she will find strangers, smile at them & hold her arms out to them which really puts us in a awkward situation because some people will often put there arms out to hold her! What a goof she is. Every Sunday when we pick her up from nursery, they always tell us the same few things: that she did great and that she loves to eat all their snacks. I pretty sure we owe them boxes & boxes of cereal!
About this time last year, we were getting all our adoption paperwork completed and August last year we were in Taiwan picking up our little Lyndlee. And now this summer brings about big changes for us again. We are headed to Haiti! So these next few months we will be busy packing & all that fun stuff and mid August will arrive in Haiti. We will be missionaries at Sonlight Academy. We will both be teaching & we are very excited for this and for the Lord to use us for His ministry there in Haiti.
Sonlight Academy's website is sonlightministries.org and we would love for you all to take a look and see the ministry going on there in Haiti.
Please let us know if you would like to be put on our newsletter list. And also let us know how you would want to receive it: email, facebook, mail.
Please be keeping us in your prayers as we begin to start this new journey in our lives.

We love you all.
Brennan, Janna & Lyndlee Jya-Ying

Gotcha Day!

Well, today is Lyndlee's Gotcha Day!  This day last year was when we received our phone call from Papa Ted in Taiwan, saying he had a baby girl named Jya-Ying just for us!  I remember that night like it was yesterday, seeing that familiar long phone number on my cell phone, giving the phone to Brennan because I already started crying, and then watching his face as he heard about our daughter for the first time!  Papa Ted than asked if I wanted to speak to Mama Bev about Lyndlee but I couldn't speak, no words would come out, so I had to call back the next night!   I remember all the phone calls I made to family that night, waking most up, telling them our baby was finally here.  After years of trying to get pregnant, after about a year and a half on a waiting list for our adoption, the time had finally come!  I remember calling my best friend April and talking about I was a whale for sure, only April will get that one!!  

We celebrated the day by going to Cracker Barrel because Lyndlee LOVES the mac & cheese from there.  I wish I would have had my camera there because her entire face, the high chair, the table, her cup were covered in cheese, I mean covered.  She would not stop eating and kept saying yum, I think she ate about half of mine!   

The pictures are from the park.  There was a little girl swinging by her, so she kept pointing, smiling and talking to her.  She is so friendly everywhere we go!  

What a joy Lyndlee is!  We are so glad she is in our life, praise the Lord.  The next celebration we will be doing will be August 22nd, the day we finally met our Lyndlee & held her for the very first time.  

We hope you are all doing well, we love & miss you all.

Have a great day in the Lord!

Just some pictures

                                                         Lyndlee-the movie star
                                                                Happy 1st Birthday!
                                                                         Loves Hats!
                                                        Taiwan (Lyndlee in pink blanket)
                                                        Our very 1st picture of our baby!

Lyndlee's Birthday Bash!

Well, Lyndlee is one now!  We had her birthday party and had a great time.  She was so cute when she ate her cupcake, she kept just putting her face into it to take a bite and gently touching it with her hands.  I thought for sure she would dig in but she wanted to show everyone what a princess she is, and she had a princess crown on so it was perfect! haha

But it was a great day, a great celebration with family & friends, celebrating the life of our Lyndlee Jya-Ying who was born May 9th, 1:29pm in Lo-Tung, Taiwan.  We still remember the day like it was yesterday when Ted called us saying he had a baby girl for us, going crazy doing all the paperwork, going to all our meetings, all our phone conversations to Taiwan, getting told we could travel to Taiwan, holding Lyndlee for the very first time, and finally bringing her HOME!  The Lord brought our baby girl to us and answered our prayers.  He has blessed us so much!  Praise be to the Lord.

I have had so many different emotions this month, being so thankful for Lyndlee in our lives but also thinking so much about her birth mother.  I thought so much of her on Lyndlee's birthday, wondering if she was missing & thinking of Lyndlee too.  We are so thankful to her and will forever love her and will tell Lyndlee about her.  Thank you Jesus for our Lyndlee.

We love you all.