Introducing Jeremy Yue Yuan Kamberger

Many of you already know this, but Mary and I are returning to China soon to adopt our 7th child, Jeremy Yue Yuan Kamberger. Jeremy is 7 years old and has lived his entire life at the Yueyang orphanage in Hunan province. His chinese name is Yue Yuan Rong.

As you can see from the pictures I've attached, Jeremy was born with no hands. He has learned to adapt to this situation and can do anything the other children in the orphanage can do.

We will post further info regarding our travel dates when that info is received. We anticipate traveling in December.

A lightening strike!

Just as we were leaving church last Sunday the rain began. About 2 minutes after we got home there was a huge boom of thunder and simultaneous flash of lightening right outside the kitchen window. Shortly thereafter I began to tally the damages:

Main computer in the family room- nuked;
Printer- fried;
telephones- no dial tone
DSL- out
DirecTV receiver- nuked (or so I thought).

The local phone company came right out and got the land line and DSL back up. They needed to replace a box on the outside of the house. Initially the DSL didn't come back up. After some testing we found out the surge protector was also fried (the phone line was going thru the surge protector).

About 2 hours after the strike, the DirecTV receiver fired back up and seems to be working OK, although whenever I change channels there is a 2-3 second pause with a green screen before the picture comes in. This is new since the lightening.

As for the computer, the repair place said it would make a nice paperweight! Fortunately, they HAVE been able to salvage the data from my hard drive to DVDs, which I will be able to copy to the new computer I've ordered.

The power of nature is amazing.

An Update

It's been a very busy month or so since we got home from our vacation.

John has been putting in a lot of hours at work, and trying to get a little fishing in during the evenings. The walleye have been hitting again as the lake water temps get lower. During the heat of summer, fishing on Clear Lake eases off a little then picks up again as fall approaches. There are currently 4 nice sized walleye filleted out and in the freezer awaiting the fryer or grill.

Mary recently spent a huge amount of time organizing and doing a garage/yard sale. We were able to get rid of a lot of stuff, much of which was donated by friends and neighbors. The proceeds are going to be used for our upcoming adoption of Jeremy.

Jeriah is back in school, beginning his senior year at Faith Baptist Bible College. He is also still working as the youth pastor at First Baptist in Colfax, IA.

Caitlin is now in her sophomore year in high school. She is still being home-schooled but heads off to Ventura HS for band every other day, goes to piano lessons weekly and does DRIVER'S ED every Wed and Sat. This is a very stressful time for mom and dad!!! There's been 1 "STOP THE CAR NOW!" episode as a stop sign was missed, but overall Caitlin is doing much better as she gains experience behind the wheel.

Grace is in 8th grade and taking the usual subjects in school. She and Mary recently painted her bedroom in cool shades of blue and orange.

Sarabeth is starting 2nd grade and is reading very well. She has recently begun piano lessons and has memorized several Bible verses in the past two weeks. Mary is taking the 3 youngest kids to AWANA in Forest City every Wed afternoon where they spend time learning verses and doing games and activities. She is now riding her 2-wheeler with no training wheels and she and Grace each got their ears pierced (Grace's second set!) on the last night of our vacation.

Juliana and Nathan are doing pre-school several days a week with Mary... and are growing like weeds. They love to ride their bikes (a 2 wheeler with trainers for Nate and a 3-wheeler for Juls) up and down the sidewalk and all the kids enjoy going fishing. Sarabeth and Juliana have recently caught their first fish. Sarabeth hooked a yellow bass and Juliana got a small walleye. Nathan doesn't have the necessary patience yet, but hopefully that will come as he gets a little bigger.