Our daughter's first book!

I am so excited! Our daughter's first book arrived today!

We've been on a spending freeze since we're still funding our adoption. I keep wishing that we could start shopping for our daughter but the timing dictates that we wait.

I really, really wanted my first purchase for my daughter to be a Bible. It's symbolic to me, giving a visual reminder of the desire we have to share Jesus with our children. I spent hours looking for a Chinese/English parallel Bible. I found quite a few but they all use simplified Chinese characters. Our daughter is from Taiwan, which still uses the traditional Chinese characters. If I bought her a simplified character Chinese Bible, she probably wouldn't be able to read it. We finally discovered that we'll need to visit a bookstore while visiting Taiwan to locate a traditional Chinese Bible.

My second attempt was focused on finding a good English children's Bible. I had no idea there are literally thousands of options. I was completely buried in choices and had no idea what to buy. Because I had been saving Amazon credit, I was limited to buying something online instead of through a brick and mortar bookstore where I could spend time browsing.

Fortunately, I love to review books! When I visited Booksneeze's website last month, I discovered that they were offering an NIV Bible for review called The Jesus Bible. The study helps and format are designed for children, while the Scripture translation is the traditional NIV. This Bible is geared for ages 9-12. Perfect! I'll be reading a number of the study helps so that I can review this Bible version, since that's why Booksneeze sent it to me.

I am ecstatic that I finally have something in my hands that was chosen specifically for our daughter. It makes the adoption just a little bit more real.