This trip to America has come quickly. It was nothing short of a miracle that we made it out the door this past Saturday, and with perhaps all the loose ends tied up! We sacrificed a great deal of sleep for it, but it seems that maybe, just maybe, it worked.
In the last week of December, the little boy in the middle had a piece of tin roof fall onto his leg. The tin sliced his leg wide open. We were away camping for a few days, so he came to tell us when we got back. It was wrapped in a dirty, torn piece of school uniform. He initially wouldn’t let me touch it or see it; his brothers and sisters had forced him to come, in tears. He eventually conceded for me to see it and bandage it myself if I agreed not to take him to the hospital for them to do it. (Noted: This was a risky agreement. There is a reason I’m not a professional.)
It was a huge gash, now too split for the stitches it needed. Since we were beyond stitches, I started cleaning it and changing the bandage every morning. I had a nurse friend come by to clean it more than I was able or willing. The sweet boy was so tough when it was so horrible at the beginning, but he came faithfully each day to the house, and then we’d drive all of them to school—which they loved!
As we discovered we’d be leaving sooner than we thought for America, I started praying it would heal before we left, as it’s hard to keep things clean when we’re away. Putting on a clean bandage in a dirty house on a dirty leg with hands cleaned in unpurified water is, well, not very effective.
And I’m so happy to say that in the last week it made such great strides, completely closing up! It healed up so well!
Amidst the chaos, we managed to fit in a weekend trip to Chiang Mai, where we met up with friends who are currently living in China. We had a fun time touring them around to the zoo and bunny cafe!
I’ll leave a picture from the zoo here—please note the impressive selfie-stick use to include the panda and all three kids!—but the bunny cafe needs a post of it’s own.
We managed to do a trial run of Flour & Flowers with order pick-ups the Friday before we left, and it worked! It was so incredible to see how gracious all the customers were and so kind to continue to ordering without deliveries. Our friend, Liz, is also helping to make sure they have all the ingredients and to sort money each week.
It was certainly no easy task to have everything ready: we have pages of instructions in both Burmese & English, outlining how to sort money, cost, and profits. We have envelopes of change and special situations, all translated and sorted. We have ingredient order lists, with every item photographed and translated, for the ladies to write down what they need and send an “order form” with Liz.
We gave a stack of envelopes to Pranee, the pastor’s wife at our Burmese church, who is helping to deliver salaries each week. This will keep the sewing project & Playhouse continuing; and ensure that Aung Moe has food each week.
We did a test run of the weekly rides to the clinic. While it didn’t go off exactly on time—two hours late!—it happened! And hopefully happens more smoothly this week.
Honestly, pulling all these things together was so much work. It’s hard to scrounge up three months of salaries and get them into the correct currency and sorted in bilingual envelopes! It’s hard to write pages of bilingual instructions! But, I think it all came together, and that is a miracle in itself.
We also went to the clinic with our friend Weh Weh Lwin, who a few weeks ago came to us with a number of swollen lumps on her lymph nodes. It’s been a bit of an ordeal, requiring many trips to the clinic and eventually a biopsy. The biopsy also took some convincing—her husband’s father had previously had similar knots on his neck and went for a biopsy. According to them, after the biopsy, the lumps continued to grow and spread, and then he died four months later. Both were so concerned that the biopsy was the problem, so it took some convincing to note that this was actually a different case all together. We tried to explain he likely had cancer, so even with the biopsy, it was untreatable. In her, the doctors were actually looking for tuberculosis in her lymph nodes, which is both treatable and rarely fatal. But that’s a lot to explain, particularly to a culture that has more fear of “surgery” than I’ve ever known. When I’ve told them about my thyroid surgery and the fact I was put under, had the surgery, and now I’m fine—you’d think I rose from the dead!
But, nonetheless—we managed to convince them to have the biopsy and went to the clinic multiple times for long periods of sitting with their sweet baby girl while the parents had repeated minor breakdowns of worry.
And, in God’s sweet kindness, her last appointment was on Saturday, the day we left. She got a call that the results were in. She doesn’t have tuberculosis nor cancer, and it is just an infection; nothing to worry about! She was ecstatic, and the look on her face made me so thankful we had walked this road with her, right up until three hours before our flight!
God also worked out more than a few details to ensure that we finalized all the paperwork on the house next door! We signed the contract on Tuesday, and swapped keys with Kelvin & Laura on Friday, just in time to lock our bicycles up before we left. We are so thankful to have this when we return and be able to expand a bit.
We headed off to Bangkok on Saturday with a few goals. The first was to find some friends in Bangkok. Remember Musana, who left abruptly to go back and be with her mom? We found her in “Bangkok”—actually a different province and it took us five hours and five modes of transportation to get there— in October. Well, we hoped to see her again, only to find out that she moved!
But—here’s the exciting part—we managed to call her and determine where she was all on our own, without any translating help! She was so excited that we’d be coming and asked for “lots of pictures of her friends and Zen Yaw.”
We found her much more easily this time—
And this time we found the whole family! They have moved so they are all together. She is now living with her mom, stepdad, older sister, younger step sister, aunt, & uncle.
The aunt & uncle are parents to Zen Yaw, the cousin she raised in Mae Sot. It sounds like he and the grandmother will be joining the family next month.
And while that makes me all 😭, it’s actually quite beautiful to see the family reuniting and, even thriving. They are living in an apartment complex that is entirely Burmese. They are simple concrete rooms, but they are renting three—each with it’s own bathroom & thus, indoor plumbing.
This is such a big improvement, and we’re excited for her. She’s also healthier; no longer malnourished. Our only sadness is that she can’t go to school there and there aren’t many kids her age. She helps with the younger kids and we continue to bring her English & math practice books. We’re working on a few other ideas to help her keep learning.
Even as we left, it was so joyful. I feel like she really understands how much she is loved. It is such a relief that we can go visit her and see her, quite easily enough. It’s a miracle, really, to have found her twice in the monstrosity of Bangkok, that really isn’t even Bangkok! But God is good. It’s such a picture of redemption for me, and I’m so thankful.
After we met Musana, we trekked back across Bangkok to meet another neighbor! Thida, who manages Playhouse hours after school, has seven kids. One of them, their 14-year-old girl, moved to Bangkok this year to work. We’ve been quite uneasy about it—talking to Thida about trafficking and how unsafe jobs like that can be for young girls. They have not been easy conversations, emotionally or practically. And she’s still there, so I’d consider them somewhat unsuccessful. But, we really wanted to be able to see Mwei Mwei—to see that she’s doing alright, to ask in person how she is and if she likes it, and to give her a Christmas gift like the rest of her family got!
To find her, we started with our Burmese teacher helping us to translate. He got the name of a mall that she lived near, but we couldn’t seem to find it. After a few unsuccessful attempts, we called Mwei Mwei with her mom there, who I can communicate with quite easily since we talk often. Basically, she’s aware of my vocabulary limits and works with me. Those are the best kinds of friends, really—so gracious.
Well, we managed to find the area of town she was living in, and then what we thought was the mall name. It was one of these:
What’s the name of the mall?
Nyamyawan.
Ok…there’s one here called Ngamwongwan.
Yeah! That’s it! Wow! Computers are amazing!
Can you say it again? I’m not sure we’re saying the same thing.
Nyamyawan.
Yeah, I’m not sure those are the same. They sound different.
No! I think the same!
Oh, okay…well, it’s near a university. Can you ask her if she sees lots of university students or knows there is a university nearby?
Yes! Two!
Okay, yes…{I’m trying to determine how to confirm it’s the same place. The names are close, but so are the names of everything in Bangkok, particularly when they are speaking with a Burmese accent and I’m speaking with an English accent and we’re both saying Thai words, which we don’t speak. Talk about lost in translation. This is point where her mom is convinced its the right place, and wants to arrange where we’ll meet.}
Mwei Mwei said there is a place that you can walk above the road and go into the mall. Do you know this place?
{Now I’m Google Image-ing the mall, and Thida looks over to see a walkway going into the mall.}
Like this! Wow! That’s amazing! So cool! Computers are so cool! You found the picture just like she said!
I didn’t have the heart to tell her there are likely a million of those walkways throughout Bangkok and that every mall I’ve seen has two or three of them. But she was so impressed and so certain we’d see her daughter, we had to try.
But—we were! Mwei Mwei and her friend that she works with came, and we were able to have ice cream, chat, share photos, and give gifts.
Again, nothing short of a miracle—the communication to find her as well as actually finding her in a city of that size. God was so gracious.
And then it continues just a bit further. The next day was Monday, the only business day we were in Bangkok. We needed to meet with our adoption caseworker, since their office in Bangkok. We also needed to get fingerprinted at the police headquarters (again! I’ve lost count). The biggest challenge was this: we hadn’t been able to set up an appointment with our caseworker. We had sent three or four emails, called and left messages; we weren’t getting any replies, and we had this one day that we needed to make it work before we went back to the States.
You see, in many ways this adoption has gone so smoothly—for Thailand, in particular. A lot of things have come together and clearly had God’s favor all over it. That said, it has been a very foreign experience. We are on our third caseworker, and most of them have given us different answers to questions. It’s extremely difficult to contact any of these caseworkers—often we wait weeks for an email back and spend weeks trying to set up an appointment for the times we’re in Bangkok. And even with an appointment, we tend to get thirty minutes or so to ask every question we can and try to get them to like us and remember us.
We had some deadlines and important questions to ask her—multiple things that had the potential to delay our adoption months and even a year more. So after many calls and emails, we decided to go and hope to catch her—and also hope for the favor that she’d be happy to meet with us and not be frustrated.
We said a lot of prayers for this.
After finishing our fingerprints, we grabbed a coffee and headed off to the government offices. When we got there and told them our names and that we were hoping to meet with our caseworker, they recognized our surname—that’d we’d called and emailed many times 🙄
They sat us in an office and we waited, quite nervously.
But God was so good. He sent us with all the favor. She was so kind and understanding; she was glad we came. She sat with us for about an hour and half, sorting through paperwork and answering questions. She was actually our caseworker in the sense I imagined it, and we were so thankful.
We still have a few deadlines that worry us, and when she says “she’ll email us” about all these things, hopefully she really and truly will! We both left so encouraged though.
Really, we left Mae Sot and Thailand altogether encouraged. God is doing some incredible things, and it was really difficult to leave. We are falling so deeply in love with this community. We are loving the doors God is opening and we are thankful to do life with these friends.
I say all that for this: God readied things in Mae Sot for us in miraculous ways. He healed up wounds and helped test results come in time; he helped us find two needles in a very big haystack in just one day in “Bangkok”; he allowed us to meet with our caseworker and blessed the entire situation. He is allowing so many things to continue while we’re away, and it’s unbelievable.