China Day Sixteen -- Hyrum Turns Eight in China!

Happy 8th Birthday Hyrum!

Today was basically a free day for us.  Helen offered to take us on a tour of some sites in Guangzhou, but we planned on going to church in the morning, so we didn't have a chance to go with the group.  We woke up and got ourselves ready to go to church.  We really had no idea where the church was located in Guangzhou.  We had the address from the church website, but even the people at the hotel desk were not exactly sure where that was.  We decided to just give it a try and see if we showed up in the right place.  If not because Herman is a bishop, and a bishop's permission is required for doing this, we could have a small sacrament service on our own.  It would be okay either way, but I really was hoping to find the church because it is so interesting to see things working in other locations of the world. 

We hopped into two taxis that were parked outside our hotel, and the two men seemed to know where to take us.  It was a pretty long ride considering that the building was supposedly only located five kilometers from our hotel.  When we got to the neighborhood where the church was supposedly located, the taxi in front which held Herman and his group of kids stopped, and the driver exited the vehicle.  He said something to our cab driver.  I guessed that he was asking if the directions to the place were correct.  My cab driver responded to Herman's, and the driver got back in his taxi and drove around the corner.  We saw a young man dressed in a white shirt and tie who looked like a stereotypical Mormon elder, so we guessed that we had come to the right place. 

I was glad that we saw him walking, because just as in Beijing the church was located in an office building on the fourth floor.  We would have been able to find the building, but it would have taken us a while to find the actual church location.  Unlike in Beijing, here in Guangzhou the church does not take up the majority of the 4th floor.  It is actually only a small part of the floor.  It was very tiny, and it didn't really look like a church at all.  It looked like an office space that had been decorated with church items.  The room was already packed when we arrived, but we managed to find ourselves a row of seats in the back.  We were lucky.  Several people who came in after us had to either move to an adjoining room or stand up.  It seems as if this group really needs to find a bigger space in which to meet. 

There had been an Asian area meeting last week, so this week was Fast and Testimony Meeting for the Guangzhou International Branch.  It was such an interesting branch.  It truly was international.  The branch president seemed to be from Ireland, and one of his counselors was Korean, I think.  There were people there from Germany, England, Africa, South America, and the US.  The meeting was conducted in English, but there were lots of interesting accents.  Unlike Beijing, this group did not include very many primary children and youth.  There were actually many older couples in attendence.  There were some big families, but not as many as in Beijing.  The meeting itself was interesting.  There were only a few people who bore their testimonies, but each of them took a very long time doing it.  They were really around fifteen minute talks.  But there were some interesting stories that were shared about the circumstances that led the people to where they found themselves at this time in their lives.

This was Minsy's very first church service.  We didn't have very high hopes about being able to keep her relaxed and quiet during the meeting.  She is a natural wiggle worm, and sitting quietly for an hour when you have never experienced anything like a church service was just not going to happen.  She actually did pretty good.  Herman took her out once, but I think she might have been able to make it most of the time.  It was just hard because the room was so small and crowded.  More space would have allowed her a little room to move, and that would have kept her calmer.  But all in all I'd have to say that I'm very pleased with how things went.  I'm just a bit worried about how difficult it will be to try to manage church services when we return in two weeks, and Herman will be sitting on the stand instead of down with me to help out.  But it'll be fine.  I've managed situations like this before, and I'll be able to manage it again now.  As an added bonus, I now have three older kids who can help me out as needed as well if we need to take Minsy out once in a while.

We only stayed for Sacrament Meeting because we didn't think that Minsy was quite ready for the whole three hour experience.  Also they were practicing for their primary program, so that would leave the other kids sitting on the sidelines watching everything like they had to do when we attended church in Beijing.  We did talk to the branch president for a bit after the meeting concluded.  It was interesting to see how things work for him in Guangzhou.  There is another Chinese branch of the church that meets almost directly after the international branch.  I'm not exactly sure why (but I think it has something to do with the Church's agreement with the Chinese government) but the international branch cannot really come in contact with the Chinese branch.  So the international branch has to conclude every bit of business they have during the time they meet for the three hour block.  It makes the branch president's job absolutely crazy during that time, but he gets it done quickly.  It would be nice to think of Sunday's not having to be all day meetings for Herman, but I can't imagine how he could get everything done for our ward in only three hours.  It would be really hard.

We headed out of the church building and walked a block to a busier intersection.  We hailed a cab, and Herman gave the driver instructions to send us back to our hotel.  I got into this cab with Savannah, Katie, Minsy, and Hyrum.  As we were driving I was noticing that we were in a very different part of the city than I had seen in the past two days.  It was absolutely beautiful -- very scenic.  There were some very nice apartment buildings and shops along the streets.  I still wasn't familiar enough with the city to worry that we were going in the wrong direction, but in the back of my mind I started to question things a bit.  After driving for twenty minutes or so the driver pulled up into the drive of a Holiday Inn, but it was not my Holiday Inn.  He motioned for me to pay and step out of the cab as he turned off his meter.  I tried to explain in my horribly basic Chinese that we were in the wrong spot.  I used my very best sign language, and still he did not believe me.  He insisted that we were in the right spot.  By some wonderful piece of luck, this morning I had grabbed a hotel card that listed the name and address of our hotel in Chinese characters, so I grabbed this out of my purse and told the driver, "Not here . . . Shifu."  He would not believe me.  At that point I knew I was fighting a losing battle, so I smiled, paid the driver, and told the kids to exit the cab.  I knew that there would be someone inside who would be able to get me to the right place.  As we left the cab I noticed another cab sitting next to the parking lot, waiting for someone to drive.  I walked up to him and asked him if he understood that we needed to be at the Holiday Inn Shifu, not the Holiday Inn Center City.  He nodded yes, and so we got into Cab #2.  This time we were able to get to our hotel smoothly.  Once again I was grateful for the extra time we spent in Beijing having to find our own way around in a place where little English was spoken or understood.  I was able to handle the problem calmly, never worrying that I was stranded with no way to find my way home.  I have more confidence living in these circumstances than I ever expected to have.

Once we returned to the hotel we walked through the neighborhood and finally found a birthday cake for Hyrum.  It was a pretty fancy cake, and the bakery lady was so happy that we got it that she threw in some plates, forks, and candles which are actually super skinny and long (maybe 8 inch) wax sticks that we needed to light. 

A Chinese Birthday Cake -- Interesting.

We decided to head up to the fourteenth floor of the hotel where the pool is located so that we could have our birthday celebration there.  There would be a lot more room for us to maneuver, and at this time of year, even though it is 85 degrees outside, there are very few people who hang around the pool.  We got to the little lounge area near the pool and quickly set up the cake and candles.  I took my position as official photo journalist of the event and started clicking away as the family began, "Happy Birthday to You, Happy . . ."  At this point I thought that I needed to get a good picture of Minsy who would be celebrating with us in her first Blau birthday celebration.  (Now this is the point of the story where there are some out there in the world will tsk tsk and wax on and on about the failings of another mother in the world.  There might be some who will be quick to judge and offer scathing commentary on the next events of the story.  I'd be pleased if everyone could take a quick breath here and understand that there are no comments that anyone else could make that would berate me more than I have berated myself as I have reflected on what happened.  So . . . to continue:)  As I looked around to take Minsy's picture I realized that she was nowhere to be found.  Do you know that feeling that you get when your heart drops like a dead weight right to my toes?  That happened to me at that moment.  I screamed out to stop everyone from singing, and asked where she was.  No one knew.  She had been wearing her squeaky shoes, and we couldn't hear them anywhere.  At that point the eight Blaus sitting there went into panic mode.  Our first horrible thought was that she had wandered into the pool area.  So we all ran there.  Thank goodness she was not.  Then we scattered to every nether region of that rooftop.  There were so many places she could have gone, more than I would have imagined as a casual observer the day before.  I ran to investigate a boiler area with tons of hidden crevices and stairways.  Who knew hotels had such things hidden away?  Everyone else was scattering all around.  Herman decided to head back to the hotel room in case we accidentally left her there.  But I knew, I KNEW, she was in the elevator with us as we came up to the rooftop.  Where had she gone?  She's been the absolute center of our existence since we met her a week earlier.  How could we have let her get away from us?  It made no sense.

As I searched and searched my panic was reaching a fever pitch.  How in the world were we ever going to find her?  This was a city of 10 million residents.  Minsy was not going to stand out a bit.  There are so many people walking around that she could easily disappear into a crowd, and we'd never find her.  Plus she still was getting to know us.  She wouldn't have any idea how to describe who we were or what had happened.  I was freaking out a bit.  I stopped myself and said a quick prayer in the exercise room so that we could quickly find her.  Soon I heard the chatter of the rest of the Blaus and the blessed sound of Minsy's squeaky shoes pounding the pavement.  I ran back toward the pool where the elevators are located and found everyone there.    Herman had gone back to our floor, and when the elevator doors opened he found Minsy with a hotel employee.  She told him that Minsy had just followed her around as she was doing her job.  She wondered who she belonged to, but she hadn't yet brought her somewhere to search for us. 

I was so grateful that we were able to quickly find her.  Thank goodness for that.  I have no idea what happened.  Did she get back on the elevator after we all departed and luckily get deposited back on our floor?  Did she never get on the elevator to begin with?  She had only been missing for about ten minutes, but I'll probably never know what exactly led to her separation from us.  I'm just so glad that she made it back.  It worries me a lot that she was willing to just hook onto the first available person she encountered, not crying or  fussing at all when we were nowhere to be found.  It just reinforced the need for us to be hypervigilant with her as we care for her, especially until she forms a real attachment to us that will help her to understand the danger of being separated from us in situations like she found herself today.  I was happy that an international incident was averted and that I got my baby back.  Yikes!  What a horrible experience!

Lighting the giant candles

So after that crazy experience we headed back to the rooftop to reacquaint ourselves with Hyrum's cake and the half burned candles -- this time with Minsy firmly in our hands.  We began singing again and got through the song without any incidents.  Hyrum was so excited to have his birthday in China.  Other than the cake we didn't really do anything outstanding for the day at this time.  It was just nice to spend more time together as a family on the rooftop of the Holiday Inn and talk about Hyrum and what a blessing he is in our family.  He has always been a super sweetheart.  He has been so excited for this day to come.  For the last week we have gotten daily, and sometimes hourly, updates on when this day would occur.  It is so hard to believe that he has grown so quickly.  Although we still lump him in with the younger kids, he is getting to be a mature little man who is a big helper in our family.

Minsy LOVED the cake!

After the cake celebration Herman and I took Hyrum with us to head to an electronics store somewhere in the city.  After having such an absolutely crazy time with Dell in China, trying to get a new computer cord so that we could charge our laptop, we finally decided that we would ask Helen if she could call them and speak to them in Chinese and figure out a solution.  She was super sweet and did this for us.  After calling the customer service number in China she found that she was unable to get any better help for us, but she then called our hotel and asked if there was anyone there who knew where we could get some help.  There was a guy at the front desk who knew exactly where we needed to go, so she sent us to him.  He told us the place to go, and he wrote down the address and the part we needed in Chinese characters so that we could easily find what we needed.  So Herman and I headed out with Hyrum to get the cord.  It was done in a breeze.  I wondered why we hadn't tried this solution before.  It would have made things much easier.  So now that we have the laptop back we can once again bypass the Chinese internet restrictions and type on a good keyboard without having to pay the ridiculous fees charged by our hotels for using their business center.  Hopefully that will allow me to finally get things caught up on this blog.  I'm running a few days behind right now.

Hyrum really wanted to be baptized in China on his birthday now that he is eight.  We weren't exactly sure how this would work out, but we were willing to give it a try.  How cool would it be to be able to say that you were baptized in China?  The first part of the puzzle was solved when we arrived here and found that one of the couples adopting in our group is also Mormon.  Then we found out that his brother was spending the weekend with them, flying in from Shanghai where he lives.  That gave us two elders who could witness the baptism.  We then needed to get the permission of the local branch president to do the baptism in the hotel pool.  He had no problem with this and easily gave us the permission we needed.  Hyrum also needed the permission of his bishop, and since that is Herman, that was easy to obtain.  The problem was that all day Bart and his brother were gone.  It turned out that they were detained by a man who was trying to get them to invest in his company, and it took all day instead of a few hours as they had planned.  That meant that Bart's brother, Brett, only had time to get back to the hotel, collect his stuff, and head to the airport.  Luckily, Herman caught them on the elevator as they were coming back to their room, and they agreed to witness the baptism before Brett left.  That meant that we had to book it up to the pool right away.

Our extremely large (and very cold) baptismal font

Getting ready for the big event.

Before entering the water

We did the actual baptism right away so that Brett could meet his driver down in the drive.  Luckily, the pool was abandoned, so we didn't have to explain what was going on to anyone.  The water was freezing, so it wasn't the most comfortable baptism ever, but it got the job done.  It was easy for Hyrum to be submerged after the prayer because the water level was already almost over his head.  He was glowing as he came back out of the water.  You could see his excitement.  Bart and Brett left right away, but we got Herman and Hyrum into some robes and headed over to the lounge area to have a more traditional baptismal service where we had the chance to talk about baptism and what it means.  Everyone had a chance to bear their testimonies, and Hyrum talked a bit about his feelings about being baptized.  He was very excited for this opportunity.  It was an unconventional baptism, to be sure, but it was still a wonderful ordinance to witness.  It will be a day that he'll remember forever, I'm sure.  Herman confirmed him back in our hotel room so that we didn't need to worry about anyone walking in on the prayer, so Hyrum gets to now set out as one of the newest members of the Church.  Hurray!

After the big event!

Hyrum shared his feelings about getting baptized with the family
after the baptism.

Hyrum got to choose where we had supper tonight, and he decided that he wanted to eat at Pizza Hut.  There is one very near our hotel, so we headed there.  The menu was pretty interesting.  There were some unconventional toppings on the pizza, and there was the option of having rice with your meal.  It seemed like this Pizza Hut was a bit more higher end than the one located in St. Robert.  They offered some pretty fancy desserts and side dishes.  I don't know if all Pizza Huts in China are this way or if it is just this one, but it was interesting.  We got a cheese pizza, like always, but then we also ordered a pizza called the Surf and Turf that had half of the pizza with crab, shrimp, and things like that, and the other half with chicken, beef, and sausage.  It was pretty interesting.  The surf part of the pizza tasted almost exactly like the cheesy crab that is served at Chopsticks in St. Robert.  The turf side tasted a lot like meat does in China.  I can't really explain it.  It just is what it is.  It was pretty good though.  Of the US chains that we have visited in China, this one tasted the best to me.

The kinds of foods featured at a
China Pizza Hut

Enjoying some unusual (and extremely spicy) pizza

 So a day of celebration and adventure, with a bit of panic thrown in on the side finally ended.  We are nearing the end of our time in China.  It is so hard to believe it is almost over.  Our time with Minsy has been absolutely amazing.  After a few days of being Mama for her, it seems as if she is now calling me "jyeh, jyeh" which means sister in Chinese.  It's okay.  I'll take it.  She's a darling!

Tomorrow we head back to the medical clinic so that they can read her TB results.  She has got a nasty looking reaction site.  I'm hoping and praying that it is smaller than the 10 mm they look for before requiring an xray.  I just want to get her back to the US exactly as planned, without complications.  Fingers crossed!