Robertson Tribe Updates

Daddy is home and life is still crazy. He got home around 6 Friday evening and we spent the evening getting ready for our busy day Saturday. I was heading in one direction, ALL BY MYSELF, to this women’s conference… http://www.cwc.org.hk/ and Daddy, not knowing what to do with all the kids all day (?!) met up with another “mom-less” family and spent the day together. They hiked, picked strawberries (ick! nothing like the ones from “back home”) and played outside. They had a great time. Certainly not as much fun as I had though.

The day was a much needed break for me. I was able to ride the bus our mom’s group chartered (super cheap over here) and got to ride all the way, not having to worry about what train I was on, what bus to take, etc. What a luxury! I got to see a big part of Hong Kong , island side (yes, there are two parts to HKG…we live on the “mainland” side) which is gorgeous! Just the ride alone made my day worth it.

The main speaker was fantastic and I chose two additional workshops to attend. The first one wasn’t what I hoped it would be, but I did make a Maine connection there. The woman leading the workshop had a son that nearly died when he fell off the rocks at Portland Head Light in Cape Elizabeth, Maine. She had a picture of the newspaper article (part of the presentation) and I was thinking, “Why does that look so familiar? Where have I see those rocks/area before?” OH WOW! It was amazing. I vaguely remembered the story as she explained it to me.

I made another Maine connection too! I met the former pastor’s wife from Mars Hill, Maine!! Her husband pastors a church here in Hong Kong now. For those ladies reading this from HCBC, Perrin and Wendy Todd attend their former church in Maine. Now THAT is a small world!!!!!! I also met another lady who lived in Lovell for a few years. Isn’t that just crazy? All the way on the other side of the world, and I met people from Maine, a state with a teeny, tiny population compared to the rest of the world, in the most densely populated city in the world. It makes my head hurt.

The second workshop was AMAZING! It was entitled, “Encouragement for Moms”. The perspective it took was very different and it ministered to me in a big way. She talked about how God uses our children to sanctify us. She also reminded us that the feelings of pride, joy, disappointment, frustration, etc we feel about our own children, are exactly what God feels about us; what he feels about ME. Wow. I can’t really explain how much that moved me, but it did. It was certainly an encouragement for this Mama.

This week we are working through some visa issues. There is paperwork that hasn’t been processed/completed in time, so now we are here “illegally”. We are working through that though, and it won’t be a big deal. It may necessitate a day trip to a nearby country though so we can exit and enter the country and get our passports stamped. Pretty strange, huh?

The past couple of weeks have been really rough for me. I’ve been struggling mentally and spiritually. I feel sad, can’t find anything positive about being here, I’m not enjoying anything, not exactly miserable, but not happy, tired of having people stare at me, tired of being a minority, etc. I ended up e-mailing two dear friends that live here and would understand to ask for prayer, advice, a kick in the behind…whatever it sounded like I needed. They both called to encourage me and both said, “Well dear, you are totally normal. You are going through the second stage of culture shock. The first stage, the honeymoon stage, is over.” Great. I’m normal. Hey, wait a minute, there are STAGES to culture shock?

This entry was posted on Monday, March 3rd, 2008 at 3:17 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.