Today my language lesson was spent over a few bowls of deliciousness. I went out to my teacher’s house where they have a home of students they look after to teach them to make sugar cookies, a double-layer cake, and cream cheese frosting. I attempted to do this in Karen, which was hit or miss. The same could be said of my baking skills, but we certainly had fun!
As my teacher was frosting the cake, she asked, “So, would you eat this for lunch?”
There is a new farm | bar in town. Yes, that is a farm and bar, all wrapped up into one and called FarmBiac.
You’re guess on what that means is as good as mine.
In short, it’s an outdoor bar with a live music stage and a small sheep farm. Sheep are kind of a thing here, and I’m not really sure why. My best guess is that it is similar to our visiting elephants or tigers: we don’t have them where we come from. Sheep aren’t native here, so maybe they are really amazing to see? I’m kind of thinking they are dreadfully hot, too.
And I’m thinking that they smell. Is it enjoyable to drink beer with an animal farm stench? It isn’t enjoyable to drive by momentarily on my motorbike, so it’s hard to imagine an inclination to stop and stay awhile.
Unfortunately the latest ad I saw for FarmBiac didn’t answer my many, many questions.
See, friends? It’s clearly the place for your lady and your kids and your beer. And “winter is in the farm”–which explains nothing.
We had to make a quick visa run this week, but since we live a few kilometers from Burma, that is not a problem at all! We headed out early and meandered through the markets before stopping at a tea shop deep into the market. We sat down to chat–and to dream, really. We talked about who we are and what we are doing in Mae Sot, why God has us there now and where he might put us in the future, how we want to live wherever we are.
We have been working recently on defining ourselves: what are we are here doing in this little community? What are our goals? What do we value?
Some of this have stemmed from a recent prayer: we are praying for people to join us here. We have been praying for God to provide friends and partners to work with us, challenge us, pray with us, and grow with us. There are so many weeks that there is more to be done than we can do. There are so many days that we have questions so different from what we have ever experienced, and we are finding that while there is so much wisdom around us and being poured into us–we are walking a different road from most of our friends and family in America and Mae Sot. We would love to have someone walking with us and loving this community alongside us.
But in order to invite someone to walk with you, you kind of have to know who you are and where you are going.
So we are praying through those things and talking through them. And, in the middle of some really difficult situations in the community, this was the highlight of my week: my favorite person in the world, an overly-sweetened glass of Burmese tea, an unknown kitten purring against my leg, the sounds of the market surrounding us, and dreams of all of this being worth it.
We are dreamers, even if we’re the only ones 🙂
Yedi, a little girl about nine, was looking over my shoulder at my phone the other day, so I let her flip through my Instagram feed.
It was so interesting seeing what caught her attention, and just so odd to see the life I know–friends in America, Thailand, Burma–from her perspective.
She loved the little white kids and babies. She loved it when the pictures suddenly became videos, never understanding which ones were which. After she caught one video, she’d wait on each one or ask me to make it start moving!
She liked a whole lot of things. At first it was an accident, but once she saw the heart flash on the picture, she was just liking every single one!
She was shocked at someone’s post where you could see a computer, three phones, and a couple iPads in the same shot. They were posting on needing to consolidate devices, and she wholeheartedly agreed! She was absolutely shocked.
She asked if every guy with a beard was Stephen.
She loved the picture of the pizza and the African Americans.
One friend is on vacation at Disney World, and she was absolutely lost at the castle pictures. Maybe she couldn’t figure out if people actually lived in castles, and if this is what America is really like? I tried to explain that it was Cinderella’s house, but I might have confused them all the more. There is a chance they all think Cinderella is real and lives in America now! Whoops.
That is the only way I know to describe our lives right now: all the crazies. So when I finally sit down to try to get a few thoughts out, that is what comes out–crazy stories of crazy people trying to do life together.
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This kid is one of the bigger crazies! And we love him.
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A friend came to visit us this past week, so we tried to warn her of how crazy our weekends are. On Sunday we were up for our weekly tea shop visit at 8am and we didn’t say goodbye to the community until after 10pm that night! However, there was so much to celebrate in just one Sunday of activity.
First, our tea shop visit is changing–for some good reasons and some very heart-breaking, we-are-trying-to-decide-what-to-do reasons–but we had four friends from the neighborhood join us this week! We had quite a lot of fun and laughter, and we do love this time of chatting, learning, and exploring the market together.
Second, we had seven friends from the community join us for Burmese church! I will grant you the information that only two of them were old enough to understand the sermon and participate, but we’re so excited at their joy and interest in coming with us. We love the time together, eating lunch together, and simply the encouragement of connections to the Burmese Christian community. This is a huge joy to us!
Third, we met a new baby! We drove the laboring mother to the hospital one day this week (who knows which one?) at 5:45am, and then met the baby on Sunday! It’s a handsome little boy.
And fourth, we opened our doors to the community for a craft night on Sunday night, and it was such fun. We are putting together some Christmas treasures, so I can’t really post pictures yet. But we had fun, and it’s always good to be together over celebrations!
We did have an unexpected night at the hospital on Sunday night with a neighbor, as well as the weekly childbirth class that one woman is attending. Stephen was busy going back and forth, so I sent him a text to let him know when the craft party was reaching it’s end.
There was a small miscommunication…and a reminder that our lives are weird.
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We came home one day last week (who knows which one?) to find a large puddle of an unknown red substance on our driveway.
I really, really wanted it to be a red drink spilled by a child. Really, really badly.
I pointed out the ants eating it, hopeful that this might mean it was simply a sugary drink, right?
Stephen came inside after me and informed me, “Well, it’s definitely blood.”
“How do you know its blood? Couldn’t it be a drink?”
Then I heard him turn on the water at the kitchen sink and start washing his hands.
“Wait, did you put your finger in it?”
“Well, yeah… I just wanted to know if it was blood. Is that bad?”
I then gave a small explosive list of blood-related diseases as we went over the community to see if everyone was okay.
There was a little gathering of women, so we went to ask if anyone had been hurt. After a small miscommunication & more significant panic attack thinking it was a child’s large puddle of blood, we determined it was a street dog. There has been extra fighting this week as a new, large dog moved onto our street.
Either way, we have now determined we need a new way to identify unknown, potentially bodily substances.
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Community happens, and sometimes you need a new windshield because of it.
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English classes are always a little crazy, but my Wednesday class of 3-5 year olds takes the cake. It is just absolute chaos as we try to learn letters, colors, numbers, and a few basic words!
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We are still trying to finish up the Christmas gifts, so we’ve had a few more craft nights. They have also included putting boxes together with hot glue, which was a fun little experiment. Everyone was so interested, most likely because it looks like a very intriguing toy gun. Despite my many attempts to explain that it was hot, we still had many moments of discovering this and explaining to everyone just how hot a hot glue gun is!
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We went on a date Monday night, out to burgers and ice cream. And guys, this is big news for our little world: Mae Sot has mint chocolate chip ice cream for the first time! It’s a limited time offer until Christmas, and I’m pretty sure we’ll be frequent customers for now! This is Stephen’s absolute favorite and oh-so-difficult to find anywhere in Thailand. And for a limited time, it’s in our little border town!
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And today (I know which day it was because it just happened!) I was able to get my motorbike license renewed! That sounds much less amazing that it is, but that is something we’ve been working on since June. Since Stephen is the one on a work permit, it’s pretty difficult for me to be able to do much–including simply renew a license I already have! In the midst of a changing government system and changing our organization, it has been a mess. I spent an entire week visiting Immigration with no luck in June, but…after a few more visits to Immigration, a visit to the doctor to see if I was breathing, copies and copies and copies of documents, and a few more visits to the Department of Transportation, they took my photo!
It’s the little things that can make you feel like your whole day was a success.
It’s also the little things that make your days crazy!
I realized about 10:30am today that I hadn’t brushed my teeth.
A neighbor was shouting outside our window about 5:30am this morning, letting us know that a woman was in labor. She actually isn’t in our community per se–she lives about a kilometer down the road. But I rolled out of bed, threw on a tshirt and jeans, and used some mouthwash while I went to the bathroom (brushing my teeth while on the squatty seemed too risky). And then I left to pick up a woman and head to the Burmese clinic.
I dropped them off and returned home by 6:10am, just in time for my alarm to go off.
We read our Bibles, prayed, and had some breakfast before I left for another hospital visit.
In the midst of our community moving into more stable housing this past June, we have gotten to know more communities of Burmese around us. A man came to us with his eye significantly swollen–apparently for nearly a month?–and asked if we had medicine. I told him I didn’t know what to do, but I’d be happy to take him to the clinic.
As we headed out today, he showed me his ID card and asked if we could go to the public Thai hospital. Not only does this ID card allow you to legally live and work here, it also gives you access to the 30 baht healthcare program in Thailand–it’s healthcare for everyone, just $1 per visit, no matter what procedure you have done, medicine you receive, or doctor you see.
I agreed. I was a little hesitant, honestly–the Burmese clinic has a great eye department and we are friends with one of the volunteer surgeons. But since he had the card and requested it, I agreed. And since the Thai hospital is quite slow, I planned to just drop him off.
But by the time we got there, I could tell he wasn’t planning on me dropping him off. I went in with him to get him started, and then ended up sitting there for the next three and half hours.
Honestly, it was a hit to my day. We are in a busy season, and I just can’t keep my head above water these days. My to-do list didn’t have a three hour hospital visit on it, I’m afraid.
As I sat there with building frustration, I asked myself: how do I love the person right in front of me? I’m already here, and if Jesus were here, waiting indefinitely for a doctor, how would he love this guy? How would he treat him?
And while this sounds lovely, that’s when I lost it. Because in that moment, I had no idea how to make the moment count.
After studying Karen language for over four years and finally, finally being able to carry conversations and make sense of it, I’m sitting in Thai hospital with a Burmese man. And while I do know a few things in those languages, conversations about numbers, prices, & asking if you have eaten yet can only go so far.
And I just started to ask myself: why me? Why am I here with this man in this hospital? Was I wrong to come with him? I was only trying to help, and now I’m sitting here questioning my entire life and ministry in this little border town that no one has ever heard of.
We sat at the hospital until 11:45am, when we were told it was lunch and we should come back at 1pm.
I dropped him off at his house for lunch, promising to be back in an hour, and I was in shaking tears before I made it through the door.
I had Isaiah 6:8 running through my mind, just slightly reworded: “Here am I! Why did you send me, Lord?!”
After hours and days and years of studying language, I can carry myself in one. And now that I am no longer primarily working with that people group, it isn’t getting me too far. I need to learn another one, and kind of keep learning that one. And if we stay in Thailand too much longer, I will need a better excuse for how little Thai I know. Why didn’t He send someone who is good at language?
I thought of the needs around me: the medical needs, the financial needs, the emotional needs. Why didn’t He send a doctor? Why didn’t He send a businessman or just a benevolent rich man? Why didn’t He send a counselor? Why didn’t He send a teacher?
Sometimes it feels like my days are filled with one thing after another that I’m not good at–driving in a foreign country (driving at all!), learning language, teaching English, awkward situations, eating spicy food, eating questionable meat, wiping up blood and bandaging up wounds. While I’m open to learning new things, its exhausting. Why not just send someone who is good at these things?
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I picked him back up at 12:45pm to head to the hospital, this time with the intent to drop him off and have him call me when he was done. I had at least a few things I needed to squeeze into today.
But when I picked him up, he was obviously in more pain. His head was hurting. I just hurt for him, seeing his pain and seeing that he, too, was exhausted of the hospital.
So I parked the car and we walked in together, simply because I felt it was the right thing to do for some reason.
And honestly, it didn’t look much different. I sat there, he saw the doctor, and we were off to get medicine. Oddly, he had a follow up appointment for the next day for additional tests.
As he went to pay his $1 for treatment before receiving his medicine, a Burmese man next to me started talking to me in English. He asked if I was his friend, and told me he overheard the doctor talking to him. Apparently, the results aren’t good, and it looks like he may have cancer. He goes back tomorrow for more testing, and they were only giving him medicine to help his severe pain. The stranger encouraged me to go with him tomorrow and see the doctor to make sure we understood the diagnosis and options.
And so we waited for medicine today, and he was delivered home this afternoon. And either Stephen or I one will be with him tomorrow morning for a similar long day at the hospital.
I don’t know how this will end. I don’t know if I will get our finances sorted out and our Christmas cards ready to send this week. I don’t know why I was sent here. I don’t know how God will use my Karen language skills in the future, and I don’t know if I will ever be able to communicate in Burmese.
I’m not sure I ever cried “Here am I! Send me!”–but I do know I was sent. I do know that–today, at least, we are supposed to be here. I know that I’m thankful for the people that give to us month after month and believe that God is working in our lives here. I know that I am thankful for those praying for us and lifting us up, because this is way beyond me and way beyond us.
Here am I; {please make me thankful you sent me!}
Just a Sunday evening from another slower-paced decade, when you sit on the street to play a game of Memory, watch a pickup football match, and have your hair done.
I’ve been trying to write a few posts all week, and it just isn’t coming.
It would be lovely to say we took a beautiful vacation, we rested; we returned and hit the ground running.
But sometimes, you just hit the ground, with all the grace and pain and groans that come with that.
We returned about 8pm Sunday night and I was pulled into a neighbors’ house before I made it into my own. Her father had come from Burma to get medical treatment, and basically, he is old. He is dying. They showed me the medicine they had been given at the hospital, and I assured them we’d visit and try to help anyway we could.
As I headed back to our house, a drunken brawl broke out just outside the door, and I was pulled back into wait it out.
We crashed into bed after getting one load of laundry started and scrounging up a dinner of random foods I had previously frozen.
And then we were woken the next to day from the window. A little boy had died late the previous evening, and we needed to go to the funeral meal. Now.
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There were some joys, too.
The woman who’s father was quite sick spent a few days admitted to the intensive care unit at the hospital, and then was discharged, mostly because there was little they could do. And while this was sad, the daughter came over that night and asked if we’d help them call her sister in America.
After half an hour of miscommunications in three languages over two continents, we found them on Oovoo!
The father has ten children–eight live in Burma, one in Mae Sot, and one in America. They haven’t seen her–in any capacity–in five years, and just have phone calls between them. They were absolutely overjoyed at actually seeing one another and showing off their children.
We listened to them chat and giggle for nearly two hours.
The kids made a game of pulling each other around on an old mat, creating their own little Mae Sot street version of a magic carpet ride. Lay Tah Oo learned how to say recycling, and it’s one of the most adorable things yet. We have kids running in and out of our home and making us laugh constantly.
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The paradox just amazes me. It overwhelms me at times.
I don’t have much life experience at all, but we are walking down one of the ugliest, messiest roads I ever imagined. I just didn’t think I’d see these things and witness them. I didn’t think we’d have to make the decisions we have to make daily.
I didn’t think the world was this ugly.
I didn’t think I’d love strangers this much.
I didn’t think I’d ever pray for kids I know and love to not enter into prostitution. I didn’t think I’d ever pray for kids I know and love to be safe in their homes–safe from abuse, safe from police, safe from hunger.
I didn’t think I’d ever see the stories of the gospels so tangibly.
I didn’t think I’d understand Paul’s writings so deeply.
I didn’t think I’d need the Holy Spirit so desperately.
I didn’t think I’d ache for eternity so urgently.
And this week, as we hit the ground, I was abruptly reminded of the horrors and beauty that surround us and invade us.
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Today at our home church Stephen led us in Nothing But the Blood.
I’ve always thought of that song in light of my own sin: nothing but the blood has washed me clean. His blood has been my atonement and made me white as snow.
But today, I saw it a little differently: all the sickness, all the sadness, all the hurt–nothing but the blood can wash that away from this earth. The income inequality, racism, war, disease: it came into the world through sin, and it requires the same atonement as I do.
I imagined blood just running through our streets, over our homes, over our lives: because nothing but the blood of the cross can make this whole.
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I had a dream|nightmare a couple nights ago. I was delivering flowers with San Aye, our usual Friday deliveries, but there was blood everywhere. She would get out, and there would be blood in the car. I would look down at my shirt and there was blood on my shirt, on my arm; it was everywhere.
I woke up many times, asking Stephen to turn on the light. There was just so much blood in my dream, and in our lives, blood comes to our door in drunken brawls and kids running on broken glass and domestic disputes. Blood comes with pain.
But blood also comes with healing. Blood is really our only hope.
And isn’t that the story of redemption? The story of the Scriptures?
Revelation 21:5
And he who was seated on the throne said,
“Behold, I am making all things new.”
Also he said, “Write this down, for these words are trustworthy and true.”
Our favorite day we rented a motorbike and drove about twenty kilometers through the mountains to another beach, Nai Harn. A friend of ours in Mae Sot is from this area of Phuket and her sister has a coffee shop here. She had said it was one of the nicer beaches, and we also wanted to stop in and meet her sister.
The coffee shop was lovely, and the beach was so idyllic I can’t even describe it. It was so absolutely blue, and the water was unbelievably clear. And the waves were incredible! We spent hours in the ocean and playing in the waves.
And of course, took a break for some ice cream before watching the prettiest sunset we saw while were there.
This week, we vacated! We left to celebrate our five year anniversary on the beaches in south Thailand, just before high season begins next week.
But first, we took a flight on a little Asian airline with the tiniest amount of legroom you can imagine.
We then arrived to find our hotel absolutely amazing. In Thailand, hotels are always hit or miss. You get onto a website—Agoda, TripAdvisor, what have you—and search and search. You flip through the photos knowing full well that you are bargaining at least 50% less than what is pictured. You read review after review, attempting to weed out those that just wanted a Western experience and were taken by surprise at the “Thai-ness” of it—complaints about a hard bed are disregarded, as all the beds we’ve encountered are in fact hard. Complaints about ants are thrown out, as we have a billion in our own home.
And after you’ve read review after review, you know it’s just hit or miss. And you go for it.
We did just that—we bargained on a new hotel near the beach, that had very few reviews and all very recently, but they were positive.
It was a stunning hit. It was a very new hotel, just five minutes from two lovely beaches—one in each direction. It was within walking distance of a huge variety of restaurants and had a lovely huge pool that was perfect for laps. It was stylish—classy, clean; the nicest place we have stayed in Thailand by far, for under $30 a night!
I know I am probably writing too much on a hotel experience, but until you’ve had some of the experiences we’ve had, you probably won’t realize what a gift that is. I won’t even describe our worst experiences, because you just won’t even come visit!
I’ll just say that this one was absolutely amazing.
And we had a surf board on our wall, which was oddly great.
Oh, and they also included the minibar for free everyday. Very weird, but we did love the free snacks every day!
I won’t hide the fact that we were still in Thailand, so our little path to cut through to one of the beaches did look like this:
And it smelled exactly as the photo implies.
But the beaches were absolutely lovely!
We spent time on both, mostly finding shade under palm trees and playing in the waves.
I might bore you with the sunset pictures, but it was just too stunning. Stephen is such a great photographer and captured them better than I could have imagined.
We also really enjoyed the food while we were there. Mae Sot has some true gems, but it was so fun to have Western food—not Thai or Burmese—every night, without making it myself! 
We enjoyed some amazing Indian, including Indian tea.
An Italian restaurant provided your very own Kraft parmesan cheese shaker to the table, which is a real treasure here. Such a treasure that I usually bring one over each time we come, as a little container like this will cost $5-$6. I probably used about half 🙂
And of course, we found ice cream. Homemade banoffee ice cream!
On our last night we went out for a nice dinner. We walked the beach on the way to the restaurant to catch the sunset and just enjoyed the waves and sand on the way back.
While the food was stunning, we quite obviously didn’t fit the mold of their usual clientele. We’re not very good fakers, I’m afraid.
That’s about the summary: we spent our days reading in the sand and playing in the waves, playing games and watching movies. We had wonderful meals out, including the breakfast spot we went to all but one day that made wonderful homemade bread and quiche. And we rested.