house church – Page 5

all things in common.

July 3, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, housewares, kelli, stephen 1 Comment

Thida and her family are such dear friends of ours. She reminds me regularly that I need to open a restaurant to sell bread, cakes, and all the meals they’ve ever tasted. She says she’ll be the kitchen manager and it will be so successful. She even tells me often that they’ll move their whole family to Burma with us if we’d prefer to open a business there!

Her husband built them a beautiful new house about three months–it sits back across a river, so you cross a handmade bamboo bridge to get into a shaded piece of ground, surrounded by trees. The house is beautiful, with three small rooms, a living area, and a kitchen. It’s the most elaborate shack I’ve encountered, with a collection of materials pieced creatively together. After building, they didn’t have electricity at their house, but would have to pay to have the government wire it out to them, particularly being Burmese. So they waited a few months without electricity, coming to our house each afternoon with a selection of flashlights and phones to recharge for their family of 12.

And just weeks ago, they got electricity to their new place. They they bought a refrigerator.

This is where she came to me: they had bought a large fridge for about $75, used from somewhere. She said her husband had told her last night: Stephen & Kelli use their fridge much more, making bread & cakes and such; and they have a smaller fridge. Why don’t we just trade? They could use the big fridge and we would be fine with the small one.

This pretty much melted my heart. For her family of twelve, she wants to trade me for my 4 foot fridge, so that we can have a larger one for all our baking? The sweetest.

At this point, we’ve declined–I feel like I could just go buy one out of savings, but we’re making do! It doesn’t feel like a necessity yet. And she does have a family of 12!

And more than anything, I’m just honored that we do life together, with a willingness to swap appliances. She has been such a picture of Christ to me, even as I don’t know exactly where she’d say she is on her faith journey. We’re just having lots of conversations, and ultimately, I think she grasps the idea the church and the love of Jesus more than many of us.

“And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
Acts 2:44-45

the best gift.

June 30, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli, photos 4 Comments

I’ve recently gotten caught up in Matthew 7:7-11. I’ve been stumbling over it, again and again, just not sure how to swallow it down.

There have been some times I’ve felt like I was holding bread–a great, good gift we were celebrating–and it turned out to feel much more like a stone.

And sometimes I had to drag it along for a long way, feeling the weight of it rather than tasting it on my tongue.

But He does know his children, right? So what I think is a good gift may not be; and he knows what it truly good for me…I’ve heard it. I’ve thought it, and I’ve wrestled with that, too.

I keep coming back to the question: if the receiver doesn’t feel like it’s a good gift, is it a good gift? “Good” becomes a painful word in that scenario. And I’ve even sat crying out that while I’m sure this is good, I still don’t know how to swallow it. If it looks like a stone, feels like a stone, sounds like a stone, just saying it’s innately bread is just maddening.

I digress.

I’m obviously still stumbling over it.

Recently, we learned some difficult news about our adoption process here in Thailand. I’m not sure I even know what to say, except that our whole lives here require miracle after miracle, and this is no different. If we see this come to fruition, we’ll just know without a doubt that it was Lord and absolutely nothing less.

And if we find ourselves waiting or find questions unanswered; if we find it just isn’t what God has for us–well, we’ll have to find a way to swallow that down, too.

__________________

Fast forward to last Saturday, I sat snapping photos while Stephen played guitar, our little church group sang, and Yaminoo was baptized.

As I watched her say that yes, she believes in the Trinity; and yes, she believes Jesus died for her: I realized something. This is a good gift.

I have loved Yaminoo since we moved here. We met her within weeks of moving into the house, when she and her little friend group was just six years old.

And Yaminoo, she just captured our hearts. She often was watching her little brother, who we also came to love. She now watches her newest little brother, and we love him too. She spent countless hours in our home–in the mornings, during the day, and late into the evenings. She would often stay until 9 or 10pm, doing puzzles or playing games on a phone or looking over our shoulders at whatever we were working on. We knew her family life was rough at the time, and we just gave her a safe place to wait it out.

She was the first one to start cooking with me, and I loved it. She was always willing to help and just always wanted to spend time together. She was the first one we helped with a medical situation, taking her to the hospital when she broke her finger. She was the one that Stephen spilled an entire pan of (thankfully cooled) cooking oil on; right on her head and all over her.

I simply searched her name to find these stories I could link to, and the posts about her are uncountable. I’ve written for years about our prayers for her, our love for her, and the laughter we’ve shared together. In so many ways, she’s been a best friend for the past seven years.

And this week, she was baptized. This isn’t just a good gift really–this is the best gift I could have asked for. I can’t think of anyone I’ve prayed more for in the last seven years–I truly think I’ve prayed more for her than my own husband.

We have hurt for her and broken for her and celebrated with her and loved her so, so very much.

I might even say that her baptism is a better gift than getting a call that there’s a baby waiting to call us mom & dad.

And God knew that.

He knew I never would have guessed it. God knew I’d be sitting beside a beautiful lake, attempting to swallow losses in my own life while I watched her embrace her earthly father and her heavenly Father, and trying to reconcile the good gifts, the giving and taking, the mourning & rejoicing. He knew I’d be celebrating the greatest win in the community alongside one of our greater heartaches as a couple.

__________________

We’re in a pretty beautiful season in the community.

While we’re still dealing with all the same–poverty, fighting, hunger, sickness, drunkenness, crime, unemployment–we’re also seeing God bless things indescribably.

We celebrated nine baptisms last week. Mwei Mwei is back from Bangkok; God arranged a free sewing training for her and provided a machine for her to sew at our house. San Aye is thriving–she has a new tooth, her children are healthy, her marriage is improving, she is learning new skills and she has a steady job. Flour & Flowers is successful, making ends meet and successfully providing part-time jobs for four women. A young couple paid off their loan after two years and started a savings account. The Breakfast Club is funded and we are the process of measuring kids and creating a system. Children and parents are filling our home four afternoons a week to play and learn.

So many good things. And watching Yaminoo’s baptism simply illuminated them all for me.

And I thought of John the Baptist. In both Matthew 11 & Luke 7, the Gospels tell the story of John the Baptist in prison. He writes to Jesus–whom he baptized, whom he declared “The Son of God who takes away the sins of the world”–asking if he is “the one to come” or if they should wait for someone else.

After declaring him the Messiah, he asks from prison if He is the Messiah.

And Jesus replies, “Go and tell John what you hear and see: the blind receive their sight and the lame walk, lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, and the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them. And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.” (Matthew 11:4-6)

For some, the Messiah looks like healing, cleansing, hearing, hope; and for others, it looks like prison. It looks like a life in the wilderness that ends in a beheading.

But “blessed is the one who is not offended.”

Blessed is John, if he is not offended that the Messiah to him looks like beheading. Erwin McManus paraphrases, “The blind see, the lame walk, the dead are being raised, but you, John, you are going to die.”

What if that is not so different for us?

People are baptized, women are able to work with their children, women are protected from abuse, children are able to stay with their families, hungry children are fed, second chances are being given, sickness is being healed, truth is being spoken…but you–you might not get what you want. You might study language forever. You might be tired at the end of every single day. You might not be able to adopt a baby. You might not have a family of your own.

But God is still good. And blessed are those that not offended by Him.

I don’t know if that is was God truly has for us; of course I don’t know–but I do feel like that is what he asking me to embrace right now. I feel like He is asking me to embrace the unbelievably good gifts and unbelievable miracles that He is handing us, day after day, in the community, and hold those in the same hands that are mourning the questions, the unknowns, and the fears in our personal lives.

baptisms!

June 28, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli, photos 1 Comment

We were able to celebrate nine baptisms this past Saturday! This did change from the number I last said, because, well, I’m not really sure. Whoops! Nine people total were baptized–five from our community and four are other connections from the church. Of those from our community, three we know very well and have for years; two we have met more recently.

We all met at our house first, at 9am on Saturday. Of course the neighbors came at 8:30am, so we took a photo of just our community group, played songs and chatted for a bit while we waited.

I’ll just tell you now that smiling in photo is very unpopular. We’re working on getting the kids to smile, against all cultural norms, and look! It worked on the two we spend every day with 😁 So despite the many frowns you will see in the following photos, it was a joyous day!

And then the group from church arrived.

Our pastor prayed, shared about baptism, and we had a cake that I had made. Cake is very, very popular in both the community and the church, so I try to find celebratory excuses to treat them!

We also gave new towels as gifts to the nine being baptized.

We then piled into two cars and headed out to the nearby reservoir. It’s just a few kilometers from our house, but right when it came into view our neighbors were ooh-ing and ahh-ing about how beautiful it was. I often forget how little they leave our neighborhood.

It was really stunning, and one of the most picturesque baptisms I could imagine.

I won’t show you photos of each baptism–but they are beautiful, and will be printed for each person to hang in their homes!–but I will include Yaminoo.

There is another post coming about what it means to see her be baptized, but for now, this is beautiful enough.

😍😍😍😍😍

So much to celebrate, despite the photos capturing less-than-thrilled faces ☺️

rejoice with me!

June 18, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, housewares, kelli, on the house 3 Comments

Since we returned to Mae Sot, it’s been a dark season. I’m not sure I can even put my finger on it, or words to it, except to say that I’ve wanted to move back more than ever before. I’ve questioned if anything is coming of this; if it is worth the heartache and challenges. If it is worth the mountain that constantly seems to lie in front of us.

While we were stateside, one of the ideas gnawing on me was this: I don’t just want to do good here. Good is, well, it’s innately good; but it’s so temporary. Take Flour & Flowers: I love it. It kills me every week, but I love it. I love that I can see the women learning new skills, building their confidence, and seeing their families better off. There are clear successes and clear results, which is unique in this work, and rewarding.

However, if we’re honest, it’s so minimal. They are still paperless; they are still poor. They are only slightly more comfortable and stable; and what happens when we go? Or people stop buying bread & flowers? It feels like you are working so hard for, well, a Band-Aid. A temporary relief of pain, while we’re all still stirring around in the same pot of brokenness.

{I told you this was a dark season, and I am wrestling with my own dark season. But I promise this post ends in great rejoicing. Get excited, and don’t give up on me!}

So I’ve been praying through this: how do we communicate hope in Christ? And how do we even continue to walk in it, broken situation after broken situation?

I’ve been praying through many prayers, wrestling through many questions, and crying many tears. Because I just feel like God hasn’t said to leave yet, but sometimes I’m not sure why we stay.

But this past week we have had some beautiful news.

And I’m simply going to report it in the order it came in, because really, where do you start? Apparently beginnings & conclusions aren’t my speciality. I’m just in for the long, long road in the middle.

First, two years ago in July 2015, we loaned a young couple a large sum of money. It was around $700, to help them pay off a loan they had taken with a loan shark & had a horrible interest rate–30% monthly if I recall correctly. Their plan to pay it off was to split up, with her moving to Burma pregnant & him staying behind to work it off. We offered a plan for them to pay it off in four months to us interest-free.

Two years later, it’s quite clear four months didn’t happen! After the first few $60 payments, they bailed for awhile. We then asked them to give her Flour & Flowers salary each week, about $9. And in $9 increments, for well over a year, they paid off the entire loan last week.

{Insert all the shock and awe and pride you can imagine.}

And then it gets even better: she told us last week that they now want to save with us! She’s going to continue giving us the $9 per week to save for their family!

{Internet writing is not equipped to express the emotions needed for this post, and even more is yet to come!}

And in another success story: Mwei Mwei is attending a sewing training here in town at a Christian organization, and she is loving it. We’ve “hired” her to do this training, and in just a couple weeks she’ll be sewing at our house five days a week. This will keep her with her family, out of a Bangkok job, and she’ll be able to study one hour a day.

She’s confident & smiling now; she’s excelling as a seamstress. Her mom tells me every week that she is so happy, and we couldn’t be happier.

I read a [horribly depressing] article this week on Al Jazeera about the loan business and prostitution that is all over Burma now. It talked about those at risk–taking loans, often from neighbors and friends, at ridiculous interest rates and ending up in endless debt. It talked about how many people are turning to prostitution to pay debts and survive. It talked about the young girls, dropping out of school at 13, and taking jobs for the family–sometimes in factories and sometimes in prostitution, but either way leaving them vulnerable for such situations in the future.

But while I read this, these weren’t vague stories: these were my best friends.

While I didn’t love the messy conversations about money or the ridiculousness of keeping track of $9 per week; while I don’t love hiring a 15-year-old and it isn’t easy to line up tutoring for her every day–it’s all worth it.

Because it’s keeping them from much worse, and it’s investing in dear, dear friends.

And now, the true jaw-dropper, friends.

For a long time, we’ve been attending church every week with one family–a couple with three boys–and then a whole lot of kids. We recently added a grandmother and a young girl with mental disabilities. And we always, always have lots of kids.

We’ve been inviting friends and telling them about our faith for years in the best language we can muster, and really, it’s been evident evangelism isn’t our gifting. We’re planters and waterers in this community. But this family going with us: they are evangelizers. And so are our pastor & his wife.

And as of this week, six people from around our community are in a baptism class, and they’ll be baptized this Saturday at the local reservoir!

I don’t even begin to have the words or descriptions for this. One of them is our sweet little Yaminoo, who we’ve loved for so many years and prayed so many prayers for. And her dad–I don’t have the words.

All I know is that faith, hope, and love remain. All I know is that even if they are stirred in the pot of brokenness forever on this earth, faith, hope, and love will set their lives apart. All I know is that “he calls together his friends and neighbors, saying to them, ‘Rejoice with me!'” (Luke 15:6,9)

Rejoice with us, friends. Because this is all worth something.

So if our adoption falls to pieces, or our social skills, or even our sanity: if we have jumped in this pot of brokenness with them and can only come home with more disorders and messes than we can ever deal with, it was all worth it. Because faith, hope, and love will remain.

Rejoice with us!

what an exit.

January 23, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli Leave a Comment

This was our last week to be at church for the next three months or so. We brought eighteen kids and three adults with the two of us–just to make sure they really feel the community presence 🙂

We managed to stay generally focused through the service, with less mom-glares than usual. I did have one girl hanging on each arm, one who fell asleep. We also had to get up in the middle to find food for one of the girls. She told me her stomach hurt, and when I asked when she’d eaten that day, she said she hadn’t yet. It was 7:30pm.

The neighbors certainly ate their weight in rice and chicken before we sent the first car load back with Stephen. I had stayed back with about ten kids. Jor Gee, an eight-year-old, was playing with the kids when he held up a bloody finger. He had cut himself with a knife earlier in the day and somehow re-opened it. I asked the staff for a plaster and we washed it off. I told him to hold it tight for a few minutes so the bleeding would stop.

He didn’t respond or obey, which is odd for him. I repeated myself, tell him it was important to hold it tight for just a few minutes so it would stop bleeding. He looked at me but said nothing, and I could see eyes glazing over.

I grabbed him under his arms and started to pull him–we made it about 2 steps before he collapsed into dead weight in my arms. I was telling the other kids not to laugh, but to help now as I pulled him into the church. I was pretty proud I managed to see it coming and catch him!

I sat on the floor behind him just as he vomited all over the floor. I was now a little less proud of myself for dragging him inside the church.

Of course the church was wonderfully kind as they helped us clean up. We managed to get him into the car and home without much more chaos. I walked inside with he and his sister to let their mom know what had happened, and that he probably should get some extra rest and make sure he’s feeling better before school the next day.

As I told her, she replied, “He did that earlier today! He cut his finger, and as I went over to look, he just fell on the floor! I was thinking, What is he doing?”

Hmm. That would have been helpful information.

At least we know how to make quite the exit when we leave for a few months. We need to make sure they’ll miss us!

full.

January 20, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, house church, housewares, kelli, playhouse Leave a Comment

I’m just going to cut to the chase: we’re coming to America for a visit, and soon!

We had different plans, all based around a required course we need to take for the adoption; and the agency changed it on us. Because of the ins and outs of what’s ahead in the coming years, we had a choice:

Option 1: Go to America before the course and before placement, which is NOW.

Option 2: Go to America after the course, while you are being placed, and potentially miss an opportunity for a child.

Option 3: Don’t go to America at all for 2-3 more years, not seeing family or friends at all. This also includes the significant practical challenge of getting a number of visas from other nearby countries for the next 2-3 years.

So we chose #1, and bought tickets three weeks out from leaving. This has also left us scrambling for what exactly we are going to do with the community while we are away.

I distinctly remember the afternoon we sat down with sticky notes all over our table, with the categories of things that needed to be done or continue while we were away–Flour & Flowers, worship nights, the neighbors going to church, medical needs, Playhouse after school, the sewing project, paying our bills…and then each sticky note had names on it, of who we’d ask first and in what order.

It’s a list of how many ridiculous favors you can ask of your friends in the shortest window of time and hope they’ll still be your friends at the end of doing said favor for you for three months.

____________

Yesterday we had meetings in the community for three hours. The kids came to play from 4-6, and then we had a community meeting–with a translator, just to be sure everything was clear! We met with everyone together over cookies, telling them about adoption and our trip back to States. We turned down the babies we were offered, again, and tried to explain about papers and processes. We tried to assuage their disappointments that we won’t be having a snow-white baby that they all wish to hold and dote on.

We have arranged for a friend to come once a week to give rides to the clinic; the church will come each week to pick up everyone to go.

We met with Thida, and sorted out how she’ll continue with Playhouse while we’re away, so the kids can use the computers and have a safe place to play. We met with San Aye to talk about how she’ll continue sewing and how we’ll get her salary to her.

We met with the Flour & Flower ladies, to talk about how we’ll do deliveries one more week and then they’ll be setting up shop in our house each week for people to come get their orders. We reviewed hand-washing and cleaning up to prevent ants. We sorted out how I’ll get the order forms to them from around the world and who in the community has Facebook so they can write us messages in Burmese.

Somewhere in the middle of these meetings our translator turned to us and asked, “So does everyone have a key to your house?”

{Sort of, well–yes.}

Our house will be opened to the community for someone to work or play six of seven days a week the entire time we’re gone. So I’m not really sure it’s a house anymore. Welcome to The House Collective!

____________

And that brings us to another big change this month! Our neighbors, Kelvin & Laura, have decided to move out into a different house in Mae Sot and focus on their ministry in a local children’s home. We have decided to start renting their house, which connects to ours as a duplex. Our hope is to put a door in the wall between the two when we return, at which point we’ll start living on one side and devote this entire side to the community.

This is incredible in so many ways!

First–we have felt a bit over-crowded as of late. Our house being open six of seven days a week has been happening while we’re here, too, and it’s just getting full. Bread continues to grow; sewing has taken off; the kids are loving the playtime. But it’s full!

Particularly with a baby on the way and the Thai government looking into our home on a regular basis, we feel like it will really help to have a “family” side and a “community” side. It will allow us to have a baby room.

Really, we have so many details to sort, and this wouldn’t be the ideal time we’d choose. But we are so thankful for the room to expand. The landlords have also been so, so gracious. They love us and love that we have stayed so long, so they’ve agreed to rent us both houses with a $45 per month discount. At the current exchange rate, our rent is $140 per month, and we’ll be able to get both houses for $240.

We have dreams of a sewing room; of space for bread! We have ideas of a computer corner for the older kids and a table for homework help.

Since we arrived, it has felt like God has asked how much we’re willing to share and trust him with. First it was just our yard and porch. Then the kids starting moving inside, and we gave up an area at the front. Then we felt like God was asking us to share the kitchen for bread (this was a tough one for me!); and then the space in between. Then sewing joined a few months ago…

Each time, we felt like it was right. We felt like God was asking us to share and to really open our lives to trust our neighbors as friends. It’s opened doors for conversations about respecting our space and things, but also about trusting each other and sharing openly what God’s given us.

And after six years of always moving in the direction of sharing more, we feel like God has provided a space of our own. It’s making it easier to leave our house for 3 months of being community-run. It’s making it easier to think of finding space for a baby bed!

There are so many decisions to be made, and we just aren’t really sure how it will all play out yet. But we do know that we are so thankful that God has opened the doors for this, and America, too–even if its creating a very full month and a few full months ahead!

Full of good things, good people, and–we hope–good rest.

another epic christmas: part 4.

January 3, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli, photos, stephen 1 Comment

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 😀

a good day.

December 12, 2016 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

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.

on the sidelines.

November 9, 2016 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, house church, housewares, kelli, photos, playhouse 1 Comment

These are the {many} sidelines and side stories of the past few weeks.

It is still one of my favorite things to see the kids pour over books in our house.

Castles have taken on popularity: in drawing, in building, in discussion. I also love how freshly showered and tanaka-ed kids look a bit scary!

Go Fish is still extremely popular. Since they can’t read or pronounce the fish names in English–and in Burmese it gets challenging to describe the type of fish–we simply hold out the card we want and say, “{Name}, do you have it?”

This week, 8-year-old Jorgee decided to switch to English, without asking how to say it in English. He now holds up his card, and asks, “ARE YOU OKAY?” If they shake their head no, he shouts, “I DON’T KNOW!”

This is enough to make me shake with laughter while we play.

We have also had more and more women joining for Open House in the afternoons. Sometimes they come to let their young babies play, and sometimes they come to play themselves! We had a group of four moms and grandmothers playing Go Fish on the floor the other day!

We added Minecraft to the computers, and the kids love it! It’s pretty cool to see them learning the mouse and how to get around; and problem-solving themselves since we don’t know much about it.

We also had three broken arms in two weeks!

One was an older woman from a falling coconut; another was this little boy playing at his house. Sadly, yet another was a young girl playing on our playset, when the tire and wood bar fell on her. When I found myself back at the orthopedist for the third time in two weeks, I gave the name and age, and where they live:
“Really? The same? All near you?”

I got to visit these two cuties every morning for two weeks while changing bandages in the family. Noted: when you need to change bandages on gruesome wounds for days on end, make sure there are cute kids to brighten your day following.

We are trekking off to Burmese church each week still, which is in fact an event! We have a family attending regularly and a steady group of teenagers that are interested. And some weeks–like this one–we are nearly half the church. We had thirteen older kids, six adults and two babies! I also had a meeting that evening about an upcoming friends’ wedding I’m helping to coordinate, so Stephen drove and coordinated all 21 attendees himself 😳

They still do such a great job with the kids’ program in the afternoon, and this week was one of my favorites. It was a song about helping each other and giving hugs to each other, and it was adorable.

He was pretty adorable, too.

Flour & Flowers is exploding, and we are finding ourselves looking at how to handle the growth in coming months. For now, we are starting earlier in the days (7am most weeks; 5:30am on cinnamon roll weeks!) and going later into the evenings with deliveries. It is pretty amazing to see, because we certainly can’t take credit for it and just didn’t know it’d grow like this. But God is providing ideas and people and words and capacities, and we are thankful.

And then this week it truly exploded: while we were making cinnamon rolls, the honey on my shelf exploded. ALL OVER. As if our kitchen wasn’t crazy enough!

The rest of house stays pretty crazy, too, while the “older kids”–aged five to eleven–help with the babies. Sometimes it involves putting them in baskets and taking them for rides around the tile floor!

And recently we’re having trouble keeping the new walkers away from the ovens! Two tiny burnt hands that required popsicles to ice them down 😞

We still make plenty of trips to the clinic (Mae Tao, or MT for Stephen & I), & sometimes it goes smoother than others. Here was our text string the other day, admiring timely patients!

And then we found ourselves at a new dentist this week, to take our friend to get a tooth replacement after the recent domestic violence. It was quite an adventure that involved us meeting the dentist on the side of the road to follow him out to his house, which is why Stephen join the two of us women! And thankfully Stephen was there to take the baby, as I was asked to fill in for his dental assistant that was away.

😳😳😳

Our lives are so ridiculous. Sometimes in the middle of a situation I find my mind reeling backward to sort out how exactly I found myself here. {Was it when I agreed to pick up the water-sucker-tool? No, no; you were in long before that…} But, it was a great way to have a hand on her shoulder in the midst of challenging season and uncomfortable morning.

The sidelines are crowded, folks! Too many stories to tell 😀

the girl with the sticker.

October 10, 2016 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli, playhouse Leave a Comment

Returning from our vacation was a difficult decision. Sometimes this place feels so hopeless.

We have come into some really difficult situations. There was the abuse situation, some complex relationships… then on Thursday, one of our best little friends, Musana, left for Bangkok.

I’m not sure I can capture my feelings.

She’s eleven. She’s the one that just moved further away last week and nearly broke my heart then. Now her mom, who has lived in Bangkok at least since we’ve lived here, has called for her to be there.

I have so many questions. I don’t know why a mother that didn’t want to raise her for the past six years now wants her. I don’t know what she wants her for–to truly raise her? For help around the house? For work? And if work, what kind of work?

I’m scared for her, beyond words. I’ll miss her, beyond words.

So will her little three-year-old cousin, Zen Yaw, who lost his first primary caregiver about a year ago, and now this one; after a move two weeks ago. He losing it, and I don’t blame him. All his stability and all his favorites are disappearing in the night, and that’s scary.

I don’t know what we’ll do, because we never do. We are asking questions and trying to make calls and trying to help. It sounds like her mom took another husband or something of the sort, and had a baby about a year ago. She’s now calling for this other daughter to come back and take care of the baby.

She is good at that. She’s great with the littles.

But she’s still just so little herself.

_______________

On Wednesday we were playing at our house per usual. We had just received a package from a church in the States, so I had pulled out a few new toys. She loved the Spirograph, but patience isn’t her specialty. We played together, and she held Zen Yaw while playing math games on the computer.

And then she told me she was going to Bangkok tomorrow. I tried to ask questions, and she started to cry. I was holding her three-year-old cousin, who is apt enough at recognizing stress. He started crying and said he wanted to go home. I asked if she wanted to go home, too; and then we all went together. I put them on the motorbike to take them around the corner to their new house.

I asked the grandmother a few questions and tried to understand. Musana started crying louder and saying she didn’t want to go. I tried to tell her we’d help somehow–was their anything we could do? In the end, I said to call when her mom arrived tomorrow to get her, and we’d come meet her mom and talk a little. Then I started to cry, so I said one last thing to her mom, gave Musana a hug and told her I’d see her tomorrow.

I thought I would. Stephen & I went to her house at 7am to catch her and try to see what the day would look like and how we could help and what we could possibly do. She’d already left. We missed her.

Stephen didn’t get to say goodbye. And I lied. I told her I’d see her tomorrow.

_______________

Just last Sunday I asked her and her friend, Yedi, about singing in church. Stephen and I have been asked multiple times to sing up front, a “special music” of sorts. We decided we’d like to sing Good, Good Father and have the kids help with the chorus, since a few of them have learned it from our OneHouse worship nights. When I asked, they were so excited. Our plan was to do it this week.

But I’m not sure I have it in me to get the other kids together. I’m not sure I can sing about our good, good Father without crying.

_______________

The neighbor kids decided one week on the way to church that it was okay Stephen & I haven’t had kids yet, but we needed to have them by the time I was 30. That seemed fair, I guess; so we went with it. It was just a conversation, right? That was about a month ago, maybe longer.

This past Sunday at church, another mother was holding her baby and I was telling her how cute he was. I was holding Zen Yaw, and she asked if he was mine. I explained his family situation with Musana standing next to me, and Musana piped in, “She doesn’t have any kids yet, but it’s okay. She’s going to have them by the time she’s 30.” I replied, “Whew. Good thing I have two years!”

“Two years!?! You’re only 28? I have to wait 2 years for you to have a baby?”

I was kind of hoping she’d get to spend a lot of time with this conceptual baby. She’s so great with the littles.

_______________

Stephen keeps reminding me that God loves her more than we ever did or will. That He’s protecting her and caring for her.

He’s her good, good Father, too.

And really, we realize this could be good for her: she’s with her mom and her sister. She is great at raising little ones. I’m sad for her education; I’m sad that she’s lost her friends and stability. I’m scared for her more in four years–when she’s a young teenager without an education and a baby that no longer obviously needs her–than I am right now.

And selfishly, I’m sad because it’s a loss to me. There are so many horrible things we see–so many horrible conversations and events and suffering; so many things we go to counseling for, guys. And then there a few things that God seems to put a sticker on–this, this is my good gift to you. There is a big, obvious sticker on Stephen. And there is a sticker on Musana. She & Zen Yaw were little gifts to me–a little piece of sunshine in the middle of the day.

But even our good Father who gives takes away, as well.