I like Chinese...I like Chinese...(sing with me!)

Last night I had another China Missions Trip team meeting. It looks like the team is slowly coming together. I'm pretty committed to going now, which means that I'm going to have to start working on raising funds. I've paid $600 already, which leaves $2400 more to go. This is not exactly the best year for extra expenses, so I'm really relying on God to make this thing happen. Rachel's last day at Lakeview is April 7th, after which we will no longer have her income. I heard from a co-worker that the hospital cost of having a new baby is about $14000, of which we will need to pay 10%, or $1400. The China trip will cost $3000, and I still need $2400. So, a 40% income drop and an additional $3800 in expenses weighs a little heavy on my mind. At church, we hear lots of stories about God providing money in unexpected ways. But, it's hard to internalize that and believe that God is interested in doing something like that for ME. I'm definitely a "man of science" when it comes to money. But, God provided unexpected money for me and Rachel for the trip to Holland in 2004, so I'm praying that He does a miracle again.

To celebrate my victory over the dreaded Z4HP assay at work (my previously-mentioned, ultra-challenging project), I bought a new board game last Friday. It's called Memoir '44, and it's a military skirmish game that re-creates battles from WWII on and around D-Day. I've never been much of a wargamer, but I had read that this game is a good "wargame for non-wargamers". RD and I played on Sunday night, and I LOVE it. The board is configurable, so you can set it up for different terrain and scenarios. The rulesbook includes 16 scenarios, so replayability is very high. We tried the "Omaha Beach" scenario, which is pretty much a re-creation of the first 20 minutes of "Saving Private Ryan". We played twice, with each of us trying our hand a the Axis and Allied forces. In both games, the Axis player pretty much cleaned up. Anyway, it's a really fun game, and it doesn't take hours and hours to play. Which is nice, because I rarely have hours and hours to do anything these days.

I didn't check my weight this weekend, so I'll have to report on that later this week.