Roger in China
Why Lydia? (meaning “from the region of Lydia”)
About two years ago, we were reading the story of George Mueller to our kids around the breakfast table. George Mueller’s life is absolutely amazing. He is a man who lived in Bristol, England during the 1800’s and is credited with saving the lives of over 10,000 orphans. The most amazing thing about his life is that he built the orphanages without ever requesting a single penny from anyone. He simply trusted God to provide all of his needs. He began the undertaking of building the great Bristol orphanages with only two shillings (50 cents) in his pocket; but in answer to prayer and without making his needs known, he received the means necessary to erect the orphanages and to feed the orphans day by day for sixty years. In all that time the children did not have to go without a meal.
Here is our kids’ favorite story from that book…..once they had no food to feed the orphans and yet George gathered all the orphans around the table and began to thank the Lord for the food. At the end of the prayer, he said, “Amen”, and that’s when they heard a knock at the door. A milk truck had broken down on the road right outside the orphanage and all the milk was going to spoil, so the driver gave it to the orphans.
George Mueller’s eldest daughter was named Lydia. When George was about 70, he began a life as a traveling evangelist and allowed Lydia to take over as the caretaker of the orphanages, along with her husband. At that point, all of us shouted, “We have to name our new baby, Lydia!!!!”
In addition Lydia was one of the first converts to Christianity during one of Paul missionary journeys (see Acts 16:14). She was a dealer in purple cloth. We are sure Lydia’s favorite color will be purple 
Check out Wikipedia for more information on George Muller.
Why Regina? (meaning “Queen”)
Earlier this year we lost our dear Uncle Roger to an unexpected heart attack. He was an amazing person and always had a interest in China. In fact he and Aunt Linda actually came to visit us when we lived in China in 1995. We will never forget the good times we had traveling across China with Roger. He had an adventuresome spirit and we felt it would be appropriate to honor his legacy by naming our baby after him. Since Roger’s middle name is Gene we just combined his first and middle name together and came up with Regina.
