Digging a hole to China

After months of prayer and contemplation, we choose to take Abi out of public school to resume her education at home.  Granted, today is day three of her home based learning but I feel it has been a big blessing to us both so far.  She has been eager to learn and soaks up everything put in front of her.  Today has been a good test for the system as we let them go to church last night.  Abi's been a lot more edgy and testy, but I came into today knowing that might be the case.  I asked the Lord for wisdom this morning in how to handle the situation.  Tears and a full blown melt down were averted by snuggles and hushed tones.  In fact, after that, she was back to her bouncy self and asked to make lunch.  When I thanked her for that act she replied that it was an honor.  If this is our new normal, woohoo!

The curriculum I'm using temporarily (http://allinonehomeschool.com/grades/fourth-grade/) until mine comes in has Ancient Egypt as the history to be studied.  Abi was less than thrilled and vocalized those opinions.  I had her sit down and write out different portions of history that she would prefer to study.  A short list was produced with China being her top interest.  I asked her why she wanted to study China as this interest hasn't been mentioned before.  Abi told me that 'well mom if I'm going to be a missionary in China someday, I figure I should know everything there is about China beforehand'.  That blew me away.  This isn't the first time that she has mentioned wanting to be a missionary when she grows up.  For her to say where she feels led to minister (at the tender age of nine no less) when she knows nothing more than its name is enough to well up some tears in my eyes.

We went to the library and gathered up most of the books pertaining to China.  I'm looking to hopefully find a free program for her to learn Mandarin.  Whether this is truly her calling (who's to say it's not, my dad received his call to ministry at the age of 8) or a childhood interest only time will tell.  In the interim, we're digging a hole to China through the stack of books loaned by the library, and I'm going to nurture her calling to ministry.