I had this little conversation as I walked with two of my favorite little neighbors. This came from the seven-year-old.
Where are you going?
Well, first, I’m walking you & your sister home [because you live on a dangerous road]. Then I’m going to visit Po Gwee to give him this medicine for the big sore on his leg. And then I’m going to go for a run. Exercise!
Oh, because you’re a little bit fat now and if you run you’ll be a little bit skinny, right?
Well…yes.
This is the one thousandth post to this blog.
If I wrote 100 words per post, that’s 100,000 words.
And since I am not known for my brevity: if each post contains an average of 500 words, that’s 500,000 words. All since we began to move our lives to this little border town six years ago this month.
And what a better way to celebrate the one-thousandth post than to say this: We’re adopting!
It’s true. We’re hoping to welcome a little one into our home this year! We started the process here in Thailand in early 2016, and we’ve just been playing it by ear. We’ve completed all the medical exams, background checks, home studies, and nearly all the paperwork. There are just a few details to fall into place before we are officially on the waiting list!
And they gave us the oh-so-helpful information that on the list we could be waiting a few days or up to three years. So, hey!
Once we are placed, we’re required to stay in-country for about two years as everything is finalized.
And beyond that, we don’t know much. We are so excited that God opened our eyes to this opportunity, which we had no idea of just over a year ago. After years of talking about adoption, we’re able to actually take steps and see things forming, which is an incredible answer to prayer.
In a season where so much hope is required, here’s to hoping for one more little gift!
We had just one more epic celebration before calling it for this year. Our Burmese church, Light of Love, hosts a huge Christmas event each year. It was delayed a bit this year, and actually ended up on New Year’s Eve.
We represented our neighborhood well: 46 friends came with us! We squeezed into three car loads, leaving some of us there quite early. Thankfully, we still have a selfie stick to utilize.
Taking 46 people also involved a checklist on our phones of who came with us to ensure everyone made it back!
Our church is located just across the street from a huge factory, and it meets on Sunday evenings, the one time each week when the factories are closed. It serves communities just like ours, which is really fun to see and be a part of.
The Christmas party brings hundreds of people each year, where they welcome everybody in, sing songs, share the gospel, and then have a huge raffle. The raffle is a big hit, giving away everything from plastic bins and baskets to a rice cooker and bicycle.
Because it’s a very poor community, “raffle” means something totally different. It’s not one or two items–it’s nearer to one hundred. And it’s not a stack of plastic bowls, it’s raffling off each and every plastic bowl. Because of the excitement, sometimes they won’t just call a number, but call it like this:
The first number is…it’s not 2! It’s not 6! It’s 4! And the third number is…5! And the middle number is…What do you think the middle number is? What do you want the middle number to be? It’s 3! 4-3-5! 4-3-5! 435!
Then you have to wait for 435 to make his way through a crowd of hundreds of people to claim his plastic bowl. So while our neighbors were just jumping in their seats to win, Stephen and I were texting back and forth about how this was going to take absolutely forever.
It did.
We did get called on stage to help in calling raffle numbers! Believe me, I did not dilly-dally around. We called those numbers directly. 257 is 257, because it’s simpler in Burmese and because I kind of wanted to go home.
In the end, we managed to take home a small collection of plastic items in the community, including a plastic tray for Stephen! He was cheered the whole way down to the front. I also managed to call the rice cooker on my own ticket 😬 Whoops! Thankfully a neighbor was holding it and came to claim it!
Really, it was fun to see a very Burmese version of Christmas–exactly what the neighbors know and can relate to. And for us, we both left with the same thought: perhaps we’re not too far from normal. Sometimes it feels like our neighborhood is ridiculous–with the stabbings and domestic disputes; when our Christmas meal involves a drunken brawl? You start to wonder where you’ve gone wrong. You start to wonder if you’re just horrible at this.
But at this church Christmas, they had much the same. People got grabby for things. They crowded their way to the front. The pastor’s wife had to pause and ask everyone to calm down, to sit down, to listen and enjoy it without getting carried away. There was a huge crowd of drunken guests in the back, and it even involved a riot that broke into the nearby sewing factory, requiring a visit from the police and military.
So, y’know–we left feeling like we might not be so crazy. And on that note, we called it a wrap for our Epic Christmas 2016 😀
{Whew, part 1 & 2 were all in one day. Epic might not be a strong enough word!}
On Friday, 23 December, we had our usual Flour & Flowers day. We did make it a little extra-epic by adding a special cinnamon roll week, so that customers could order cinnamon rolls to have Christmas Eve or Christmas morning with their families. This was a HUGE hit, and we sold 24 pans of cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing!
We also gave out Christmas cookies to all of our customers that week to say thank you for their kindness and support.
And then it was just a huge week all around! We baked from 6am to 1:30pm, and then came back together about 2:30 to load up the car. We also had some special Christmas gifts for the Flour & Flower ladies.
For the bakers, we had some coordinating aprons made for them. For the woman who delivers flowers, we bought her a new bag. It was quite similar to her favorite, but in a nice leather and much higher quality. She was thrilled, and loaded it up right then to take with us.
And then we snapped a photo of all of us. So thankful we get to continue building relationships with all these women & help each of their families.
On Christmas Eve, amidst packing more and more presents, we also had OneHouse worship that evening. This month we met out at a friend’s house for a candlelight service in the rice fields. It was beautiful with just starlight and candlelight.
We let some of the neighbors come along, and we had the carols & Scriptures available in English, Burmese & Thai. {So much work for Stephen! He’s got some amazing projects going with worship music in multiple languages. It’s slow-going and usually in the background of medical emergencies and chaos, but it’s incredible. It’s so unifying to hear the same song sung in many languages.}
The kids did so well and made us proud. They sang along as best they could, and sang so loudly when we got to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and Joy to the World, which they had sung for their parents on Thursday.
We also had zero fire emergencies in our crew, which is notable! I was holding Zen Yaw, and trying to help him keep his candle upright and lit. When the wind would blow, I’d use my hand to protect his flame. After a few times, he learned what I was doing and he’d do the same for my candle. So adorable. 😍 He’s been doing so good recently at sitting through church, and comes with us usually. Most every day he comes by the house and asks if we’re going to church today. Honestly, I think it’s because he knows he’ll be held for a couple of hours, but I’m okay with that!
For Christmas Day, we celebrated on our own for most of the morning.
We had a number of gifts from the community to open, which included:
A shirt (Smile Star), perfume (or cologne? It’s hard to say), a blue fuzzy scrunchi, a school notebook, and two handmade scarves (with yarn we’d been giving out in the community). I also feel like you need a close up of the description on the perfume/cologne:
Tempting, eh? 😂
I was also given a beautiful sarong, too, but it was already worn and in the wash!
For the afternoon and evening on Christmas, we went to the Fetter’s house, who graciously let us pretend to be a part of their family! Their two oldest girls are visiting from university over the holidays, and it was just so fun to have their whole family together again, and us pretending to be a part of it!
We also got to put Stephen’s new selfie-stick to good use! #coolestgadgetever
It was a quiet Christmas with no hospital visits, only a few wounds to change or bandage, and overall, fairly peaceful. That was a huge gift.
And that is precisely why we decided to give out gifts on the 26th. It is a bit overwhelming to hand out gifts to over 300 people, and that is also why we don’t have many photos of this. Once you come out with bags in hand, it’s herds and crowds and chaos.
But we survived another year!
And gifts this year were so much fun. It gets more and more fun each year as we know people better. We were brave enough to buy clothes and shoes this year, feeling like we could even guess sizes pretty well.
Six years in, I also realized why I like Christmas gifts in the community so much: it’s one chance to give so freely, and no one asks again. For so much of the year we are surrounded by poverty: kids without shoes, clothes with gaping holes, kids playing with broken toys. We watch our neighbors join us for church in clothes that no longer fit: I saw one man with us wearing pants that were well past fitting–he just had them open in the front, tied with a belt/string, and then pulled his shirt down over it. I see our neighbors embarrassed when they aren’t dressed as well as others. I see kids off to school barefoot.
And yet every decision has to be weighed–if I give them a new shirt, how many more will come? If we buy him shoes, how many more will we need?
But Christmas is different. For the neighbors, it’s this crazy American holiday where people give gifts! Its the one day we get away with just giving ridiculously.
“Ridiculously”–We usually have a budget of 100 baht per person, or $3. This year, I sent Stephen a text from the market: Is our budget still 100/person? I think it should be 200…All the good stuff is expensive. To which he replied, Yes to 250 per person!
So we were a little more flexible for our closest friends this year. Each person got a loose budget of a couple hundred baht, plus soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. For the families we don’t know well, we have “family presents”– a nice blanket, baby powder, soap, toothpaste, & toothbrushes. We found some incredible deals this year, which made it so fun. We found some football jerseys for just $1 each, and kids’ fleece pants for just 80 cents! I found women’s sarongs for just $2! We found some footballs for about $5, so we gave those to a few of the older boys, particularly after watching them play football in the street with a shoe and a bowl over the past few weeks. We found stuffed animals, simple jewelry, small purses, and superhero figurines for the kids; watches, shoes, and longyis for the men; sarongs, shirts, and shoes for the women.
We also included special gifts for the youth that have been joining us at church each week–we got the girls new dresses and the boys button-up shirts. For the three families that don’t have electricity, we got them rechargeable lanterns, and let them know they can send them with their kids to recharge them at our house while the kids play in the afternoon.
Like I said, Christmas is such a great opportunity to fill the needs you’ve been seeing for months, and you finally get to try to alleviate them, if even for a moment.
This year, we packed up all the gifts at a friend’s house down the road, where we “rented” their guest room for the month. It gave us a secret place to wrap presents and store them, which was beyond helpful!
On the 26th, we loaded up the car for one “area” of the neighborhood at a time. Our car would look like this:
We’d deliver them all, and then re-fill! It took about 5 carloads and three hours.
It was so fun to see the kids delighted–trying on new clothes, oohing and aahing over each new item they pulled out of their bag. Two of the kids came by the house later and I asked if they were happy, to which the older girl said, No, I’m VERY happy! 😍
Here’s ZuZu in her new kitty cat pants, and Win Moe in her cozy little outfit (with ears!).
And then we headed out of town! It can get a little crazy, so we had things packed up to camp and left for a few days in the mountains. It was very cold and we were very tired, so we spent three days mostly sleeping and reading. Here we are very happy and rested, but perhaps still sleeping a little.
You’d think that by the 31st “Christmas” would be be coming to close, but not yet. This part of the world just loves celebrations. Part 4 still to come 😀
On Thursday evening, we had a community Christmas, starting with a skit from the kids!
We had practiced Joy to the World & Hark! The Herald Angels Sing in Burmese the day before during Open House, but we only practiced the skit that day. It was utter chaos, but thankfully we had the help of a translator, as “shepherds” and “wisemen” aren’t really in my Burmese vernacular.
We had four kids each reading a part of the Christmas story from the Bible, all in literary Burmese. They were so brave to read it right into a microphone! We picked some of the best students for these roles.
Mary was pretty easy to choose, as sweet Yaminoo always has her new baby brother on her shoulder. Since he doesn’t let any one else hold him, they made the perfect little Jesus & Mary duo. (After which the kids are still calling him Jesus!)
From there we assigned out as many parts as we could, and after one run-through, we handed out costumes!
The kids loved the costumes, and I think it made it feel real for them. As the parents all gathered outside of our gate at 6pm, all the kids suddenly felt nervous and got stage-fright! It was so cute to see them take it seriously and feel like it was so “official.”
We opened up the gate to the largest crowd we’ve ever had for Christmas!
The kids did a great job, reading and following along, making the parents laugh and keeping their attention. Stephen led us in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing while the angels were visiting the shepherds, and then we all sang Joy to the World at the end. The whole skit was probably my favorite part of Christmas this year.
We followed this with a few words of why we celebrate Christmas, why we live here, and how much we love Jesus and all of them. It was getting quite dark by this point, though!
And then we went for the meal. It’s always crazy, and this year didn’t disappoint. There was even a brawl between a few intoxicated men, so it’s never dull. Thankfully, we saved the kids from the stampede, and we had more than enough food for everyone. So I guess we’ll call that a win?
The whole community helped to clean up everything and left the house swept and mopped, which is so kind. It was a pretty amazing group effort, but I’m pretty sure we still fell asleep by 9:30pm!
We can’t really find a way to make our neighborhood Christmas less epic. There is just something about it being three or four hundred people that just inevitably makes it an epic undertaking!
This year was great, though–it felt even more like a group effort; like we were throwing a party together rather than two of us hosting three hundred people.
We kicked off Christmas week with a Bingo night, which was a huge hit. I’m telling you, crowds will come for miles to play Bingo–and they did! I ended up calling from the table, and Stephen & I had to take turns because we kept losing our voices shouting the numbers!
On Thursday, we started at the market at 7am. Thida & I went after food for 300 people. For just $225, we managed to provide for 400 people in the end! We bought 40 kilos of noodles–40 kilos of dry noodles.
Which, once you start to boil them, turns into a whole, whole lot of noodles.
They then added in a whole host of chopped veggies and chicken.
I was so proud that Thida bought so many veggies to mix in! This is probably the most well-balanced meal we’ve ever served, as well as fulfilling for everyone. And it served 400 people!
They then boiled over 300 eggs for extra protein.
While all this was being chopped, boiled, and stir-fried outside, we had more going on inside.
First, we had the Flour & Flower ladies making cookies as thank you gifts for our customers. We made four batches of snickerdoodles and four batches of gingerbread cut-outs.
These all were packaged up for the next day, when we’d include them with bread & flower deliveries.
We also had San Aye sewing, because it was a Thursday.
And we had hosts of kids playing outside. And posing for jumping photos!
Then we had some kids inside, playing with their youngest siblings and the Flour & Flower babies. Here each eleven-year-old had their own babe that they were rocking and singing to sleep! 😍
Then the food prep moved it’s way inside, where the noodles were packaged into individual containers and put into bags. In addition to noodles, each person received a hard-boiled egg, a few pieces of fruit, and a small bag of cookies. We had all these packaged and in piles around the house, so that they could be handed out that evening.
Around 3pm, Stephen and I slipped away to have lunch before the chaos truly started. Sometimes we go through life looking as though we have a newborn. Really, we just have a big community!
{Part 2 of our epic Christmas in this lovely community to come.}
Christmas preparations are underway, even if in our own better-late-than-never pace. We put up our tree, which is just beautiful in the window.
It welcomes kids waiting for the bus to hang on the window bars and peer in at the ornaments. Inside, they aren’t permitted to touch it, but they will spend long, long pauses sitting and staring–adults and kids alike.
A few weeks ago we learned that Lay Tah Oo’s family was moving to a new house again, a little further from us. The day before the move, he came up to me and whispered, “Do you still get Christmas presents if you live far away?”
Melted. I assured him that he just needed to make sure we knew where the house was and we’d be sure to deliver!
Last week at church, I asked the kids what they were hoping to get from their Christmas gift exchange at school. On different days each grade will have an exchange–not all on the same day, or it’s too much for parents’ budgets–and each child brings a gift worth about 50 cents or a dollar. To avoid spending some of that money on wrapping, they come to our house early in the morning and ask for my pro-wrapping skills of their presents. I’m locally famous for this. (And shuffling Uno cards using a “bridge.” It’s the little things that will take you to fame.)
When I asked the kids, they all hoped for a stuffed animal. All of them: a group of seven or so! The twelve-year-old girl, the seven-year-old boy. I looked up stuffed animals in Google images and we scrolled through: the teddy bears with the most popular, with dogs and cats in a close second.
The next week I asked what they thought their parents might like. I’ve shamelessly decided if we’re going to be getting this epic number of gifts to wrap and distribute, we might as well be getting what people need and want! Most of the kids were unsure, but thought a sarong or longyi would be wanted. Zwe Ne Na said he had no idea what his parents would want, but he wants a BALL! We’ll see what we can do about that 😉
And here it comes! The lists are being gathered this week, determining how many hundreds of gifts are to be organized. We’re borrowing a spare room at a friends house to store and wrap these hundreds of gifts–between the bread & flower business, the sewing project twice a week, and four afternoons filled with kiddos, we’re just plumb out of space!
Let the festivities begin!
I’ve been running out of words recently. Even now, I’m not sure how to describe why I’ve been so out of words.
But yesterday–yesterday was a good day. And in so many more words than necessary, I’m going to attempt to capture the richness of it.
It was a Sunday. Stephen & I started the day out at the market, buying some special things for a family. It’s one our favorite families, really: a mom & dad, a girl of 11, a little boy of 7, and a new little son at 6 months.
We’ve known them since we moved here, when the little girl was six and the little boy was in her care, learning to walk. I can’t count the pictures we have with them or the stories: when we broke her finger, when we accidentally dumped oil on her head in the kitchen, the hours of Memory on the floor.
Gosh, I love those kids.
Recently, it’s been a rough season for the family. We hear rumors and stories, but ultimately, we know that they have moved into a rougher house: less of hut, if that’s a term? I also know the kids have been hungry, asking for food more than usual; following me into the kitchen. Out of the norm, we’ve been having snacks during Open House in an attempt to sneak them some additional food. Sometimes it’s worth feeding twenty so you can really feed two.
So, yesterday, we went out on a shopping trip for them. We bought them some new clothes–new pants to replace the young girl’s threadbare leggings; new t-shirts and shorts; warm jackets and hats for each family member. We bought two blankets for the cold nights, and a 40-kilo bag of rice.
We also managed to find some soccer jerseys in the market for $1 each, so we bought a huge bag for some Christmas presents.
We came back home to Skype my family in the States, where they’re all standing on the same ground this holiday season.
The kids from this family we outside just as we finished, so we told them we had some deliveries for their family. We explained that we worried about them being too cold in their new house, so “the Church” bought them some things. “The church?” the little boy asked. “Wow!”
So to many of you–thanks for being The Church. Wow!
We drove through newly-harvested rice paddies to deliver it all to their new place, tucked back in the field. We bounced over the bumps while they sat on the rice bag and giggled, resisting the urge to open their bags.
On our way back, we passed a little girl walking in the street by herself. She was three at best, and walking to…nowhere in particular. I jumped out of the car and asked where she was going. She said it was to her mom, so I grabbed her hand and started walking with her in the direction she pointed. By the time we got there, she realized she wasn’t sure where she was or where she was going. Where is your mom? Over there. Where is your dad? Over there. On his bicycle. My brother is at school. In the end, we were coming up with a plan as her dad bicycled back with her brother and a chicken. He scooped her up and took her home, not without some impressive skill of managing two children and a live chicken on a child-sized bicycle.
Oh, and a number of CDs on the wheels!
We then worked around the house a bit, visiting a pregnant women, chatting with San Aye about the new sewing project starting tomorrow, and delivering medicine to a boy who’d been in a motorcycle accident. We played with Zen Yaw: I played a fishing game we made up a few days ago and Stephen threw him in the air while he giggled with glee.
The church car came to pick up kids for Sunday school. Yaminoo came out in her newly purchased clothes, which fit her perfectly. One of the girls told her how pretty she looked as she climbed in the truck; her face glowed.
We managed to squeeze in thirteen kids from our community with thirteen other friends, twenty six of us in a pickup truck. Zen Yaw came along without his grandmother, which hasn’t happened since Musana, his primary caregiver left for Bangkok two months ago. He trusts us again, and that is more epic than I have words for.
In children’s church, we memorized a verse in Luke and sang a song about Christmas being all for Jesus. Zen Yaw fell asleep on me, and Stephen came to pick us all up–13 kids & two adults in our amazing new car.
Stephen & I went to swim laps in the freezing water, then put on our best Burmese clothes for church–I wore a red sarong and he wore our “church polo,” that is just more Burmese than I could ever describe to you.
We took seven teenagers with us to church, plus Zen Yaw, who wanted to come again. He came without his grandmother again, and she got a few more hours to rest from her exhausting life. He agreed not to cry, and did spectacularly. He munched on his chips, smiled when I sang Hallelujah in his ear, and loved getting cuddles for a couple hours from Stephen & I. The kids sat beautifully in church, working together to find the passages in Matthew & Luke. Oh, and memorizing the maps in the back of the Bibles.
While we waited for dinner to be served, the kids climbed on the couch and giggled together. Three girls came over to get hugs; they are all so hungry for affection. They come right up, lift my arm on their shoulders, and give the tightest hugs you can imagine.
They all ate their weight in rice and pork and potatoes, including Zen Yaw. We chatted with the pastors and made a plan for them to help with our community Christmas in a couple weeks. We also made plans for a worship & prayer night that is apparently at our house this Thursday: but that’s another story for another day.
The kids piled back in the car and giggled all the way home. They roll the windows down and sing songs. We took them each to their homes, passing Yaminoo’s family on the way. We helped them all pile into the car with their rice bag full of fish and some other fragrant packages. We left the windows down as we drove back through the rice paddies to drop them all off at home, with the kids in all their new clothes.
And in so many words, it was a good day.
So we try to take a Sabbath every Monday.
We do our best to say no to all requests in the community, particularly if they are not urgent. However, there are always things that come up. Last week, there was Chit Oo, who really needed to be admitted to the hospital as soon as possible, as he was at risk of dying. His phone had been disconnected and I could not find him for every effort over the weekend. Of course he showed up on our doorstep on Monday morning.
This week I need to take San Aye to the first training for her new job. And since we’ve been working with her to get this job for weeks and its such an answer to prayer, I’ll be taking her tomorrow morning, despite it being a Monday.
As Stephen and I talked about it this morning, we talked about the Pharisees challenging Jesus healing on the Sabbath, and how he argues for your son or ox falling in a well: would you not rescue them? We talked about how it was probably best to help San Aye with this with all that’s gone on in her life recently.
But then Stephen noted, “What I don’t know is what we do if we live by all the wells and all the oxen. There is always something falling into the well on Sabbath!”
It is really difficult to capture what we do and why we live here. Sometimes I’m not sure I know the answers to those questions, which just complicates putting them into words for others, or perhaps into words in other languages.
Recently, following a heartbreaking domestic abuse situation, one of our close friends was left with a swollen face, a newborn baby girl, and without a front tooth. She was discouraged for so many reasons, not withstanding the affair that led to this; that her husband refused to hold her new baby girl, he was refusing to feed her and the two kids, and she was feeling like she couldn’t get a job without a tooth and being illiterate.
So we have visited her and sat with her often over the past few weeks, attempting to both mourn with her and ensure her physical needs were met by sneaking her money for food.
Somewhere along the way, Stephen and I started talking about getting her tooth replaced: what the expenses would be, as well as the aftermath–how many people would know how much we spent on it? How it would affect community hierarchies and friendships? When do we say yes and when do we say no?
In the end, we decided to say yes to this one. It required two trips to a dentist that lived out in the middle of nowhere but did speak Burmese. It required me to be the dental assistant for the first trip, a three-hour visit of grinding down teeth that wasn’t my favorite. It felt a little outside of the norm for us–not an obvious need, but a felt need all the same.
As we left the second visit, she seemed unsure. It looked far better than I could have ever imagined, but even as I gushed over how beautiful she looked, she seemed skeptical.
I started to wonder if it was worth it–the money, the time, the effects in the community; even the discomfort of having water (and who knows what else) sprayed all over me from the dentist’s chair!
But the next day, I saw her standing outside in the road–she was holding her baby, dressed in all yellow. She looked gorgeous, laughing with her friends and chatting. When I approached, she smiled broader than I have seen since…well, since her world fell apart. She was the San Aye I remember–so confident and friendly.
Her two friends were complimenting how beautiful she looked, and I have heard that many times this week. Not one person has asked us how much it cost or why we helped her. She has been around nearly every day–outside and chatting with friends, where I’ve previously only found her at home, hiding inside.
I really couldn’t be happier. I’m not sure we could have spent that money better. I feel like she got a glimpse of love–that she is seen and known and loved, even when it feels like everything is falling apart. Someone is putting the pieces back together.
We’ve told her that our church and friends from church give us the money to do things like this. When she tells me she is ashamed for us to help because its so expensive, I tell her not to be ashamed to us–it’s a gift from my friends! It’s a gift from the church!
It’s because Jesus sees you and loves you.
I asked her later if Stephen could take a photo of her so we could show the “friends who bought her tooth” how beautiful she looked. That’s mostly all of you, collectively, making our lives here possible, the purchase of this tooth possible, and even her food over these challenging weeks.
And at this photo, I think it’s captured. In some ways it is just some money for rice and a new tooth. But in other ways, this is so much of what we hope for–everything that her smile says.
We also caught a photo at the end of our sewing training, just a week later. She is the one with the biggest smile! There is so much for her to be proud of.
