Mikayla's birthday was almost a month ago now. This morning K-lee and I were playing with a stuffed bear someone picked up for her at a local store. As we were playing I noticed that it had a battery pack. So being the guy that I am I quickly found a few batteries to see what this toy had to say. I stuffed the battery pack back into the belly of the panda, and searched for the pressure switch to turn this thing on. I finally found it on one of the bears hand and at 7 am this morning we had a very loud Chinese voice booming out in our apartment. Both K-lee and I just stood with our eyes and mouths wide open looking at this panda bear. At the end I thought I had noticed some English so I pressed the hand again. Sure enough the panda was bi-lingual and said "Thank you for using Western Union for all your international money transfers." I'm sure whoever bought the bear for K-lee's birthday didn't even realize the gift they had given.
For the past few weeks, besides trying to buy property, I have been working on spiritual gifts. Shauna and I have taken an assessment to see if our giftings have changed and one of the things we noticed is that Shauna's have changed more to the side of mercy, helps, and hospitality. Gifts that we think go pretty good with being a mother. My, Jeff's, gifts have changed from being teacher to more exhorter which for this assessment was practical application of truths. Both Shauna and I thought it was interesting how God has given us gifts to help us in what God wants us to focus on right now. We did not look at the assessment with eyes and mouths wide open like K-lee and I looked at the bear this morning but it was a nice reminder of how God cares for us, sometimes in unexpected ways.
