Their debut

Both kids love to sing.  Daniel tells us that he started performing when he was about Esther's age, maybe even a little younger.  He got a friend in China to e-mail him a file of him singing at about age four--too cute!!  Esther has never been in a formal music program, but she often sings around the house and has a pleasant voice.  She also loves to go up on stage at church after the service and dance with her friend E or talk or sing into the microphones.  So when our church had a "singspiration" night, I signed both kids up.  Esther was to sing "Children, children," a sweet little song from one of her Donut Hole videos, and Daniel prepared "Qing Qing Ting" ("Quietly, Quietly Listen"), a Chinese worship song that has been a favorite of Tim's and mine since we first heard it some years ago.  Tim prepared to accompany Daniel on the guitar.  Then when we did our sound check at church, Daniel asked me to sing with him.

When we got to the night of the performances, Esther got up on stage, took one look at the number of people waiting to hear her, and lay down on the floor, not to arise under her own steam and definitely not to sing.  So I picked Esther up and we moved on to Daniel's song.  Tim played the guitar, Daniel and I sang, and Esther joined in on our second time through.  So it was a real family affair, and a neat opportunity to share something together.  Several people commented afterwards that hearing the song in Chinese really spoke to them.  One person said, "I don't know what heaven will be like when people of all languages come together to praise God, but this makes me wonder about it."

I don't have any pictures, unfortunately.  We dropped our camera in Guangzhou and are just getting around to getting it fixed, so all summer I've been relying on the still picture capacity of our video camera.  That's okay for outdoors, but indoor pictures come out so grainy that I didn't even bother.  We do have video, though, and I'm sure we'll look back someday and really enjoy seeing our children in their American debut!