the good, the bad, & the ugly.

There are so many titles for this very long, very overdue post.

We have had a very, very full few weeks, and there is so much to share. {Consider yourself warned: it’s long. But God is good!} I initially thought to title this “Living the Dream” or something equally as hopeful, because it feels like so many dreams are coming to fruition. We are seeing relationships really take root. We are seeing a lot of dreams we had for the community unfold.

About a year ago when we left our organization-based, structured life for “community-based development”—or just loving people as we could—I was scared. I was very aware that we were either going to sink or soar, but either seemed oh-so-possible. And we just had to try it to see.

This is the first month I feel like I can say I can see the soaring. I can see it working.

So maybe I could call this living the dream.

But the dream is so messy.

While so much good surrounds us, there is some bad. And the bad is really just a symptom of the ugly. And I don’t think we can acknowledge one without the other.

So here’s to a post, starting with the beautiful, good growth we are seeing, with the bad that still exists, and a little bit of the truly ugly, as well.

_____________________

First, something we are so excited about: our little growing bread business! We are nearly a month in, and we are having a great time. Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo are learning so quickly, and even made the last couple batches by themselves this week while I ran to the hospital.

We have gotten a great response from the expat community here, and we sold about twenty loaves last week!

It just keeps growing, and Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo are so excited. I have written out the recipes in Burmese, so they can nearly do it all themselves; plus, we go over the orders and costs and profits each week, so they can learn the system. It’s been such a great learning process for all of us, as well as such fun to spend every Thursday baking together (and playing games while the bread bakes!) and Friday driving around town and chatting.

It has also helped to boost flower sales, as we have houses that would love to receive both. This is great for Daw Ma Oo, too!  We are so excited about all of this.

_____________________

It has been a season of great|interesting gifts! Just one week after we started the bread-baking, a friend—or series of generous friends—gifted us an OVEN! A great, beautiful oven that looks like a real American oven—just imagine a little mini-version, or maybe what was common in the 1960s.
This is an incredible gift in this town and a rarity—that is why our bread business is taking off! It also has four little burners on top, which is an upgrade from our two-burner stove. All around, this is an incredible gift from a series of generous people, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. God is so good to us!

And on the note of gifts, we also received a series of interesting presents recently, including, but not limited to: a 70s-style beaded door curtain, like you might see in That 70s Show or your 11-year-old girls’ room. It has pearlescent beads to cover your door frame. Not only was it gifted to us, but they also offered to help hang it up at our front door! Oh, my.

The very next day we were gift live crabs. For this one I protested a little, insisting that I wasn’t sure how to cook them. She assured me I simply had to boil them, but just to be careful because they can walk off. (!)

_____________________

Our weekly house church in our home is still going! As with everything in our lives, it never looks exactly like we’d imagine it. We have just a couple adults that come, but a large group of teenaged kids, and then a whole host of younger kids. We have had to figure out how to make it engaging for the kids but include depth for the adults and teenagers.

It has also been so fun to get to know the three students that are translating for us each week. It has been fun to see their interest in Scripture growing.

Despite the many hours of work that go into it each week, it is well worth it. This is one of the dreams we have been waiting for the perfect timing on, and it’s exciting to see it come to fruition. And we are believing that truth will not return void!

_____________________

The young couple we know so well, and the wife is the five-months-pregnant new bread-baker, came to us with a financial issue. They had taken out a small loan a few months ago from a loan shark. Despite paying back some of it each month, they did the math this month and realized they amount they are paying back doesn’t cover interest. They decided she should go back to Burma to live with her family—and to have the baby in a village, where the infant mortality rate is 1 in 5—and he’d keep working here to pay it off.

Not only would this essentially end our growing relationships with them, it would break apart a young couple just as they were welcoming their first child. They are one of the few healthy couples in the community, and we were heart broken on so many fronts.

To make a long story short & to protect them, but also to show the goodness of God: with prayer & discussion, we decided to loan them the money from our own savings. They will be paying us back over the next four months, just interest-free. We were also able to connect her with Partners, where she has begun sewing for them four days a week! They are completely understanding that she is pregnant and willing for her to work as she can over the next few months. She’ll be working there four days a week & baking bread one day a week.

To say the least, this is all a risk. We might never see that money again.

But we also might. And we have seen the way God has answered prayers—providing a job for her, providing translators, providing more ways to show God’s love. And, we pray, keeping a family together.

It seems worth the risk, and it’s a part of the dream we’re living. We want to be here for times such as this.

_____________________

Another dream that has come true: OneHouse worship night! We haven’t shared much about this yet, and there is too much to say for this already-too-long blog. But we have started hosting worship nights once-a-month for the Mae Sot community. For now, it is mostly foreigners, with a few Thai & Burmese. It is part of a larger dream to translate worship music into local languages, but we saw the first stage unfold this past month, and that is beautiful! This is a dream God put in Stephen years ago, and to see even the beginnings of it take root is just worthy of a shout-out.

_____________________
Do you see the goodness? These are dreams we’ve had for this community: worship in our home, a little house church with our neighbors, growing businesses and relationships.

But even in the incredible joys, we still live where we live.

One of our friends had a roof fall on him at work last week. As an illegal migrant worker, he wasn’t on a safe construction site or wearing proper gear. There is no insurance, workers compensation, or unions to defend him. He was dropped off at the hospital with $60.

So he & his wife called us.

He had a huge gash on his neck—he was very lucky not to be decapitated from the looks of it—that required significant stitches. He broke either his femur or his hip—when you don’t know the correct word, its difficult to point too specifically in this region! He was in the hospital for a week and had surgery to put a bolt into his leg/hip.  He will be on crutches for a minimum of six more weeks. His hospital bills came to about $300.

Despite the horrible situation, the family was beautiful. They negotiated the hospital bill with social services and asked us for nothing. We simply gave the wife & their youngest child rides to and from the hospital for the week. We are now helping them with food for this time when he cannot work; and helping them to get to follow-up appointments. She is starting work near their house, but it is just unrealistic for her to be able to provide enough for the family to eat.  And $10 a week can go a long way for rice, fish paste, and vegetables.

_____________________

Another day, we were called because a woman was bleeding excessively. I will try to protect you from the details, but she had excessive vaginal bleeding with the Western comforts of pads & tampons. She wasn’t pregnant as far as knew, but needed to get to the hospital.
Our car was currently in the shop, so she & a friend climbed onto the motorbike and I drove off. She was weak and simply fell against my back as we drove, requiring me to hold a constant push-up as we drove across town to the clinic. I was shaking by the time we arrived, and I, too, was covered in blood.

This moment, I was not living the dream.

_____________________

This weekend another woman came to our door to have her bandage changed. She had been to the clinic the day before, and a friend told her I’d be willing to change her bandage each day so she didn’t have to pay to go across town every day.

I said that was fine and pulled off her bandage.

She had been stabbed in the back by her husband.

_____________________

And even in the “bad” situations, they are just symptoms of the ugly.

It is the symptoms of living in poverty; of being an illegal migrant. Symptoms of brokenness.

During our afternoon of bread-baking last week, I talked with Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo about another woman in the community who has had some physical abuse. I told them—as I told her before, and this other woman—that they could always come to our house. We were happy to let them sleep here, and Stephen is more than willing to fend off a drunken husband.

And as we talked, I asked them about husbands hitting wives; I told them it wasn’t good in America. Was it okay here?

They said that a little bit was okay.

I recently finished three books on development in impoverished communities, discussing everything from human trafficking to loan-shark problems in impoverished areas, to starvation & factory jobs. I read about stories that come across our porch day after day.  There were so many things I learned and so many things I saw in the stories so much like our own lives.

One theme I saw is this: when people are living in the margin, getting by from day to day or paycheck to paycheck, one small thing can push you over the edge. One small, unexpected problem leads you to make drastic, life changing decisions.

In our own community, we saw a family a few months ago—a  great family that has some strong family values, and they are making it most days. But school registration went up this year, and they couldn’t afford to send both teenage girls to school, so the 12-year-old was sent off to work.

It was just a school fee; a one-time $30 fee they couldn’t afford, that led to a 12-year-old ending her education, being sent off to work, outside of the home, and in all honesty, putting her on the slippery slope to abused labor and human trafficking.

Or this family with the debt problem: it was just one month they came up short; one quick decision to take out a loan. And before they know it, it is pulling their family apart as they try to get out. But if everyone you know is in poverty, who do you ask for help? If you have no papers, how do you take out a loan with protection? If you have no options, how do you prevent this?

And I think, practically, this is so much of what we are here for—to keep a flooded house, a medical emergency, an accident at work, an increased school fee, or a loan, from becoming the start of broken families, prostitution, or unending debt.

Beyond that, we hope to be Jesus in these situations. As we share about the stories of the Bible each week; the stories of God caring for his people, we hope they will see God caring for them, too. We hope to be a part of the answered prayers.

_____________________

There is so much good; there is so much fruit and so many dreams coming true. There is so much bad, and so much more ugly. But really, God is in it all.