housewares – Page 8

the flood of 2015, because apparently this is annual.

September 21, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli Leave a Comment

It’s never good to find your phone a buzz with multiple calls from the same neighborhood. As I glanced down after breakfast last Friday, I saw five missed calls from Nyein Nyein, three from San Aye; and then Stephen’s phone began to ring with Pa Chit calling right that moment.

We had thought by traveling in September we’d be in the clear, but the monsoon rains came late this year. The water has finally become too much that the city decided to release the dam–yet again, our yearly flood anniversary! The waters were rising around our house and filling our neighbor’s houses, and they were calling to ask for help.

I called our friend, Alisha, who is helping with bread & flower deliveries while were away and was scheduled to be there to deliver already-baked bread and already-arranged flowers in just an hour. I told her it was flooding, and I didn’t really know what that meant. I didn’t know if they’d still deliver, or if she’d even be able to get to their houses. I didn’t know if things would be piled up at our house or perhaps people might need a place to stay dry? I had no idea really, but I wanted to give her a heads up.

The next hour we took calls from a variety of neighbors, including one who had walked a kilometer to my Karen teacher’s house and asked her to call me.

Then I got a call from Alisha, laughing, as she told me she had parked a few blocks away and was walking because it was too high to drive through. It was now up to her waist as she neared our house, and everyone was out and about trying to get things to dry places.

This is our corner, with houses to the left and a plot of land (where houses used to be) to the right.

These were the neighbors houses. So sad.

And this is in front of our house…

…and our yard. But don’t worry, a safe place was found for the pigs & chickens!

It got nearer to our house than it has any other year. We were nervous for so many homes–the water was even into the concrete homes and flooding out the huts; we asked about Aung Moo, the blind man, to make sure someone would ensure he was okay. We called another family down the road that has had a lake of standing water under their home since June, and asked if it was okay. I told her in Burmese I had heard the water was coming up a lot, was her family okay? She replied in broken English, “This morning the water more and more into my house. Now it goes down little, little, little.”

Stephen & I weren’t really sure what to do. It was a pretty stressful morning of trying to decide if we get in the car and go to help, but hoping with all that we are that the water would be gone down by the time we could trek across the country and arrive at dinnertime. We asked a whole lot of questions, played out a whole lot of scenarios, and said we were sorry to a whole lot of friends over the phone.

We watched as our friends receiving flowers & bread graciously took them late and sent their love to the community. We heard as Alisha checked on everyone and made sure there were dry places to cook and sleep. And by late afternoon, we were seeing photos of the kids playing with Alisha’s kids swimming in the road.

Yet again, all the feelings. And yet again, so thankful for friendships and seeing these friendships collide.

all the feelings.

September 13, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli Leave a Comment

I think this might be the best way to sum up the season we are in: all the feelings. I have been speechless for weeks, attempting to put into words all that is happening and all that we are experiencing, and it wasn’t until we saw Inside Out this week that I realized it has just been so many emotions, so many feelings, and I am just swamped by them. All the feelings.

Last week we packed up our sometimes-working car and headed off to Chiang Mai for a whopping three weeks. Our lives have changed so much since really digging into our neighborhood, and we are there so much. We have traveled away for a weekend or left for a day or two to escape the knocks on the door, but we are really constantly around our home. This is the longest we’ve been away outside of trips to America, and we’ll be in Chiang Mai for nearly half of our trip to the States earlier this year!

So that means a lot of things. A lot of feelings, if you will. In some ways, we were ready to take a break. Our lives are not light by any means, so time away seemed promising. But what brings us here? Not a break of any sorts: we are taking an intensive Burmese course, with about two hours of class every day and–so far–about seven or eight hours of studying outside of that. Rest probably isn’t the right word; just different energies.

It has been so nice to be staying a friends’ house who so graciously opened up a place for us to live and study, where we can also cook, bring lunches with us to class, and do laundry. This is more helpful than I could ever say, and we’re really, really thankful. So many feelings of gratitude for her.

But now that our lives are even more engrossed in our little community than before, it’s not easy to leave. It means stocking up two families on rice and organizing food and clean water to purchased for Aung Moo, the blind man in the neighborhood. It means running around ensuring the pregnant women have a way to get to their appointments and the followup tetanus shots are arranged. It means sitting down with a few precious kids in more unstable homes, reassuring them that we’ll be back and when.

It means organizing a friend to oh-so-bravely commit to three long Thursdays of baking bread and three long Fridays of flower & bread deliveries all across town. It means taking orders ahead of time and writing out the lists in English & Burmese. It means sorting out money and ingredients. It means teaching Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein how to clean up after bread–washing dishtowels and taking out trash. {Side note: They know me well. As I told them about washing the counters, they said, Yes, because you don’t like ants. And when I mentioned washing all the dishes, they said, Yes, because you don’t like ants. And when I mentioned taking out the trash, they said, Yes, because you don’t like ants…} It means trusting our home to them–the mess, the treasures inside, the space.

It means all the feelings: the trust, the joy, the sadness, the hope.

And then we arrived to Chiang Mai, and dropped our car off at a repair shop. We had been putting off a few things they told us they couldn’t do in Mae Sot, namely a new alternator we were hoping would make it all the way to the city. We also had a few odds and ends: can you add a new wiper arm? Could we repair the windshield that’s been broken for over a year? Can we find out what that cold water that drips on our feet is?

We got the dreaded call that it was a little more than we thought: in checking it over, they found four holes in the gas tank and a leak in our LPG tank; so in a vehicle with two forms of fuel, we were leaking in five places. All the feelings–thankfulness we survived without blowing up!? Thankful for an opportunity to repair it, and really still thankful for the car. There was plenty of anger and disgust and confusion mixed in there, too.

And with such a bill, the effects of the soccer ball to the windshield is just going to have to remain a bit longer.

Oh, and then one of the new belts needs some adjustments, so it’s squealing through the weekend, and we’re getting {a whole lot of} stares.

And with all the questions about if it was a good purchase, all the thankfulness for the relationships its built in the community, all the hot days spent on the side of the road, all the realizations that we do have a car and we are the richest folks on our street…All the feelings.

Meanwhile, another friend in Chiang Mai was traveling this week and oh-so-graciously let us borrow her car while ours was in the shop. This has been such a blessing, continuing to make this trip possible.

So as we struggle through messy lives, study hours a day, try to help a few families get a few more dollars a day, make sure that little guy has food, and hope that we can eat after we fix our car…God is good. We have friends looking after us in every direction, loaning us cars and rooms, and stepping into our chaos. The friend helping us with Housewares? We texted back and forth all day on Thursday, as she had a surprise guest show up to bake with them, had a vaccine clinic from the local hospital set up in our driveway (not unlike this one a few years ago) while they baked, had her two kids homeschooling at our house, miscommunicated about lunch, and then she locked up our house at 7:30pm that night. It was not a day for the faint of heart.

We’re studying today, and we’ll be off to the car repair shop again tomorrow. We’re catching up with old friends in the city, fitting in a few long-delayed doctor visits and necessary trips to the US Consulate, while we study our lives away for this community we love and continue to ask questions of what God is up to and what the future holds, while we celebrate our new website and seeing some dreams coming true. All the feelings, folks. All the feelings.

bread & birthday cakes.

August 8, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos Leave a Comment

Our bread sales are going well; almost too well. It has been a challenge to determine how to expand this great opportunity for them and yet still keep us afloat, as it all takes place in our kitchen, our oven, and our lives.

Thursdays just keep getting fuller. I go to Burmese class from 8:30 to 10am. Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein come at 10am and we begin baking immediately. Stephen goes off to Burmese from 10:30 to 12, while we make a few batches, let them begin to rise, and then begin second rises, begin baking, and transfer pans. We play a few games on the floor & occasionally run an errand or two. The goal of the afternoon is to not forget to purchase snacks for house church and eat lunch; oh, and also not to burn any bread! By 4:30 or 5pm, bread is nearing the end and we start our weekly Bingo games in the community space (enter 20-30 children & adults into the house). At 5:45pm, our translators arrive, and we start house church at 6pm. Snacks are served at 7pm, and we clean up. Dinner is usually scrounged up by 8pm.

And we are tired.

This week, on Wednesday night about 9pm, we were asked to bake cakes on Thursday, too. There were two birthdays on Thursday, and they were hoping we’d help bake some cakes for the little celebrations.

Of course! My oven is already on from 12pm to 5pm; what’s another hour right?!

So in between batches this week, I taught them how to make chocolate cake & icing. I showed them a few scattered decorating tips that nearly caused us a burn a batch of bread. Multi-tasking is not my specialty.

Do I look like I’ve been a hot kitchen all day? Why I certainly have!

Thankfully we had some little helpers, including newly-turned-four Pyi Soe, who was sent to the store for eggs!

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Per usual, we chatted throughout the day.

At one point, we talked about the floods in Burma currently. Both Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo’s families homes are flooded, so they are currently living in monasteries near their homes, which are built on higher ground. There are also some flood victims that have crossed over into Mae Sot and are living just down the street from us. Pyo Pyo told me that she had given them some clothing. She explained that I had given her a bunch, so she passed it on to them.

She lives in a hut that is also flooded from all the rain here.

In between baking times, we sat down to a game or two of Uno. Sitting on the kitchen floor (again, to prevent burnt bread!), they were asking about the oven. They asked if it was gas or electric, presumably since I have written down a fee for electricity-per-batch, but there is a gas tank sitting next to it. I explained that the oven is electric but the stovetop is gas.

Here, Pyo Pyo proceeded to tell me that I was very lucky to have a large gas tank.

It’s standard size for any foreign home. It was given to us with the oven, because it isn’t of such value to be sold separately, but simply comes with any stovetop in town.

And yet in their home, they have a smaller one. They have to refill it about once a month, she said; I have to refill mine once a year.

So I’m “lucky.” Never mind that an oven worth nearly $1000 here was just given to me by a friend! Never mind that we live in a home that stays dry and even keeps us “cool” (or cooler than them!) with fans and an aircon. Never mind the countless things that count us blessed.

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After the bingo & house church chaos, we attended two birthday parties.

The first was for Jor Lay, who turned 3. He is the one who was dropped into our arms about three years ago, when he was just days old and the community flooded.

The second was for Pyi Soe, Pyo Pyo’s little four year old. We took turns eating cake because there were only two spoons. We shared three cups among the five of us.

And we came home and cried.

Because we love this community. We love these families. We love the birthday parties and the cakes and the bread businesses.

But we love them enough that we want so many things for them. We want them to have enough spoons! We want them to have nice clothing and big gas tanks. We want them to know Jesus.

So we deliver beautiful flowers and bake bread; we study language again. We say another prayer for God to be here and be with us and in us and moving. We pray for God to expand the blessing beyond our home and into our community.

And then we take a date night away to breathe. We take another picture that, in some ways, is a pretense–we are simply pretending that our lives are picturesque, when they simply aren’t. And while not picturesque, our lives our blessed; so we can at least capture that.

on having children.

August 8, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli 3 Comments

While we wait for the bread to bake on Thursdays, we often sit around and chat. We are usually somewhere near the oven, because I’m still not spectacular at remembering to set timers. We play games, like a little rock game the kids have taught me; we literally sit and play with rocks on the floor, as three adults. Last week I introduced them to Uno (or the Burmese version, “One card I have!”), which they loved.

Last week there were three of us: Pyo Pyo, who is 23 with a four-year-old son; Nyein Nyein is 20 with a baby on the way; and Chit Ne Oo is a 15-year-old high school student who was off school for the day. They were looking at some family photos and asking who everyone is. I tried to explain who each sister was, who she was married to, and how many kids she had for both Stephen & I. I explained that Hope is “adopted” into our family, because they are often confused in our family pictures! It didn’t take long for them to see the trends of most of our sisters having children, so they asked about us not having children.

They’ve asked many times before, since it’s common for 19 or 20 year olds to have their first child. At 27, I’m behind schedule for here. But I guess they thought maybe it was an American thing?

But then they saw our families…was it just us?

That’s mostly what they were asking: it’s odd here, but it’s odd there, too?

I wasn’t sure what to say.

I’m not sure what to say to you either, and that’s why I mostly don’t here! But I tried, in broken Burmese and broken English…I told them that we have always wanted to adopt. I told them it was complicated, though, because we live here, where there are lots of children to adopt, but they don’t have papers. It gets messy.

Or at least that’s what I think I said. Those are a lot of vocabulary words I don’t know.

Mostly I said I just didn’t know; we were praying about it and waiting on God.

Nyein Nyein smiled. She said we had so many children—she started naming off the children playing at our house, and pointed to each of them—three adults or nearly adults!—and said they were all our children. She said we didn’t need children, we had so many!

There are so many things I don’t have answers to in the world and in our own lives, and this is one of them. I don’t know how the things will come to fruition. I don’t know if we’ll have children or adopt them or just love on children & adults with families our whole lives! I don’t know if we’ll have a namesake.

But I know that God sends little messages through these friends, and it was a beautiful little moment. They don’t have to understand the story or the prayers or the questions or even the culture.

A few years ago, I wrote about a little girl coming to our door, and the idea that in me giving her water, I could be Christ to her; but that she could be Christ to me, too. I am still mulling on this, as I spend more and more time in the community. Over the years, this community has taught me so much of Christ. There are so many days that they have been Christ to me, even not following Christ.

That day, I had spent all day baking bread with two women and play Uno on the floor, trying to show them the love of Christ. And yet, they gave me Christ that day: he hears our prayers and questions. And he sends them to tell us that for now, for today, he has given us an abundance of children!

the good, the bad, & the ugly.

August 3, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, house church, housewares, kelli, onehouse, photos Leave a Comment

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

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

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

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

So maybe I could call this living the dream.

But the dream is so messy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

So he & his wife called us.

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

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

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

This moment, I was not living the dream.

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

I said that was fine and pulled off her bandage.

She had been stabbed in the back by her husband.

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

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

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

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

They said that a little bit was okay.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

the start of a bread business.

July 18, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos Leave a Comment

About a year ago, we started a flower delivery service. A sweet family in the neighborhood had been forced into much nicer housing, it was difficult to make ends meet within their flower business; we knew plenty of foreigners who would likely love having fresh flowers at home regularly, but didn’t want to make the trip to the market. To explain our different situation: instead of having flowers for sale in large supermarkets as in America, the large supermarkets don’t carry them here. Instead, they are only available in the crowded, outdoor, very local market in town. I have to say this is my favorite place in town, but it does take some getting used to with the crowds, stares, comments, animal blood, fish smells, live animals, and urinating. If you buy your groceries in the larger stores in town, making an extra trip to the market for flowers is a significant hassle. But they are only a couple dollars! And beautiful! And thus, it was a pretty simple model: our neighbor had the business established, and our responsibility was to create list of interested customers and keep in touch with them week-to-week.

We spend an hour or two each Friday making the deliveries, which has turned out to be such fun. Two hours in the car gives you time to talk about things, even with a language barrier. She teaches me new words and we learn to communicate and discuss her family, her business, and her plans for the future. We were even able to provide a micro loan to help her send her two boys to school this year, which she then paid back in small increments each week after flowers, when she had a small surplus from the increased business. The flower delivery has been rewarding!

It wasn’t long after this delivery service was successful that we wondered what else we might sell. We were already making the rounds around town, and we have a crowd of people looking for extra income. Western food seemed the obvious choice, particularly bread, which we Westerners would all love to be eating regularly but struggle to find around town or, even harder, find time & an oven to make. I love to cook and bake, and it seemed a skill we could share with our neighbors.

But it also seemed a much bigger commitment that was much more dependent on us. Where before we had a person with a business and with a system, we now had to choose the individual, teach the skill, provide the location and set up weekly, determine the costs and prices, and then explain the ins-and-outs of a small business. Oh, and in another language.

For some reason that seemed daunting.

So we kept it on the back burner and kept praying and discussing it. For any of you who don’t know Stephen & I’s decision-making-method, it is over-think, over-talk, and over-analyze it to the death.

A few months ago, we identified our people. After visiting the tea shop each week with the same small group, we found two women that seemed a great fit for it. Phyo Phyo & Nyein Nyein are sister-in-laws. They get along well and both have been looking for work. Phyo Phyo worked at a restaurant briefly earlier this year and told us how much she liked it; she loves to cook and brings us samples a few times each week. She has a three-year-old son that attends school, but as a mother, previous jobs she’s had have been too schedule-intensive to maintain her life and family. Nyein Nyein is twenty and pregnant with her first child due in early December. We know she & her husband well (Phyo Phyo’s younger brother) and it seemed a great fit that she could be a mother but also work a little on the side.

Choosing the people was one of the larger challenges, so I began to make a plan. I had them help me with a large cookie-baking day last month, and it went great. We started considering September for a start date, which gave us time to figure costs and ensure there was a market. I started measuring out my recipes more specifically and deciding what costs would be. And just last week I went to the shop to purchase bread pans so I could begin making regulated practice batches.

That was the Sunday Nyein Nyein told us she’d gotten a job. She’d be working at a clothing factory just near our house, working three four-hour shifts during the day–a twelve-hour day, seven days a week, for around $6 per day.

Read: Plan A, out the window.

We weren’t sure who to have join Phyo Phyo, but felt we needed two people. And while it would make Nyein Nyein much better money per hour, it just couldn’t compare over the week or month.

Then I came home a few days later, and Nyein Nyein was on our front porch with Phyo Phyo and the rest of the community. I asked why she was there, as this hour was, of course, within her 12-hour shift. She said they found out she was pregnant and wouldn’t hire or train her; it seems it wasn’t worth the investment to them.

And so, it seemed it was time to start. Nyein Nyein needed the work and would probably look for something else; maybe this would provide a healthier way for her to work while pregnant and even after the baby. It felt like all of our thinking and planning for a few months from now should just be put into place and happen.

So it did. I talked to Phyo Phyo & Nyein Nyein that evening, and they were excited at the idea. I talked to Daw Ma Oo to ask how she felt about bread deliveries happening alongside flower deliveries, and she seemed hopeful. I wrote our flower delivery customers on Facebook and told them about our new little venture, and we had some positive responses.

So this week, I spent my language lessons learning about “kitchen words”–ingredient names, how to say fractions, how to talk about bread rising, and more. I wrote out the recipe in Burmese and labeled necessary ingredients with Burmese tags.

And then on Thursday, I spent the day teaching two women how to make Western-style bread!

We are making French loaves and wheat loaves to start. We talked about yeast and how to know if it’s proofed. (Did I use the right word for “proof”? Probably not even close. But we made bread!)

We made four batches to practice, making some small samples for prospective customers plus loaves to sell if we could. I talked to them about the cost involved in each batch for ingredients and electricity, and we made a plan for them to collect all the money from sales and then pay us back costs for the number of batches they made. They will then split the profits on a weekly basis.

And Friday, we made our first deliveries as a group of four! We trekked around town offering bread & flowers out of the back of our little Zuk. For all it’s quirks, our car allows for so many opportunities in the community.

We sold all of the loaves we had with us Friday, which gave each of them about $5 in profits. This is about a day’s wage here for an undocumented worker, so considering their hours invested, this is not a bad rate. We do still hope it will increase as sales increase in the future.

So here’s to a new bread business on the side!

as of late: highs & lows.

April 16, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

The world of social media overwhelms me. I have been reminded recently that I can put out there what I choose, and that is all you see.

I want to be honest; I want it to be a true picture of me and of our lives here.
But I also want you to still believe in us, to still hope with us.

So the days when I don’t believe in myself or when I feel hope wearing thin, I don’t know how to present an honest picture. How do I really paint a picture of our day to day?

Well, I don’t. I remain silent while I determine how to hope again, how to be honest, and how to put our lives into words.

So here are some highs and lows—mostly highs I want to remember!—as we try to get ourselves back into sync with chaos. It isn’t the whole picture, but it is a glimpse into the community around us.

_________________

High: This little buddy comes every day to get our recycling and will stay to color, do a puzzle, or play a game if there’s time. He has also picked up some of my habits, and now blows me a kiss and yells, “Bye, buddy!” to me as he leaves. It can pretty much melt my heart any day.

High: It is always fun to have kids come to your door to sell you unidentifiable food items from the ground right in front of your door. Thankfully, there are also kids inside of the house, so I can purchase 80 cents worth of “sausages” and then serve them to the guests!

Low: Our little bunny Kayak went to a new owner. He wasn’t doing too well, and it was kind of a sad day.

High: While delivering flowers last week, I asked Daw Ma Oo where she has the best business: in the Burmese day market, the Friday|Saturday night market, or the Sunday night market? She said it was in our car—that is her best business! It was fun to hear that little things can make a difference in someone’s life.

High: After flower deliveries, I went to the tea shop with Daw Ma Oo and her nine-year-old son, David. First, he chastised me for ordering hot tea while it was hot outside and forced me to drink a little of his cold green Fanta. He then told me that my skin was “white, white,” his was “black, black” and his mom’s was “light black.” As I was repeating it to show my understanding, he then decided to let me know he wasn’t really black, and taught me that the speaker next to us was actually black…It was pretty hilarious.

Low: We lost one of the women at the market on Sunday.

High: I did find her eventually. She had a cart hired to take her home (since she couldn’t find us either!), so instead we took the cart to get both of us and all of her purchases— kilos upon kilos of {smelly} fish and {smelly} fish products—back to the car. This cart ride was amazing! It was my favorite market experience yet. You are on the front of a cart attached to a motorbike; the drivers zooms in and out around the market, honking at everyone. It was a great perspective of one of my favorite places in town.

High: We got to attend a birthday party for this beautiful little girl. Both of her parents are in Burma, but the family she lives with threw her a birthday party, and she was pretty excited to have us there. It was sweet.

High: At the market on Sunday, some of the girls bought Stephen and I visors. We came across a man selling visors for just 30 cents, and they were excited. It looks like they are actually from a hat factory around here that made some mistakes…so a worker saw an episode of Saved By The Bell and realized they just cut them off and made them into visors!? Mine has an off-center “K” on it.

High: It was Songkran this week—Thailand’s country-wide water fight! We had a great time on Monday morning out with the kids and community; throwing water and laughing in our newly acquired visors.

Low: While attempting to get a teenager soaked, said teenager ducked and Stephen smacked an elderly woman in the face with water. Whoops! This is actually even more rude in the culture here, but would probably be rude anywhere. He felt horrible…

Low: After just Monday morning of playing in the water, I was down for the count and spent the rest of Songkran sick in bed.

High: I got to listen to Stephen shouting with the kids from my bedroom. So cute.

So now we’re here: I’m on the up and up, and we’ve survived another Songkran.
I can’t always determine how to present the whole picture, but I can show you the things that keep us going while we pray for more joys, more hope, and more stories of His goodness!

small things, great love.

January 2, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, housewares, kelli, playhouse 2 Comments

Today, like every other Friday, I woke up and went to deliver flowers with a friend. Instead of it being with San Aye, who has been delivering flowers for the past six months, it was with her mother-in-law, Daw Ma Oo.

Because in short, life is messy. San Aye had been helping Daw Ma Oo with her flower business; Daw Ma Oo went to the market each day and San Aye sold locally and made deliveries on Fridays. But as family dynamics shifted and life stories unfolded, we learned this wasn’t the best for everyone.

San Aye now has a little restaurant stand outside of her house. She sells a variety of pork and tofu items, and we can always swing by for a little snack and chatting with friends.

Daw Ma Oo now sells flowers each week. We load up flowers into Zuk and drive off to a number of houses around Mae Sot, allowing her to sell nearly double her regular sales in just a couple hours.

On the way to our first flower delivery, we stopped at the hospital. Because like so many other days, someone is sick and needs to see a doctor and get some medicine.

And then today, five girls sat outside of our door playing Memory and four toddlers ran in and out of the house. I gave one of the little guys a hug, because he just always wants one.

He was actually offered to us last week to adopt, by his grandmother who he lives with, because life is complicated, and families are complicated. For now, he’s not really adoptable, and it really isn’t a healthy solution. But we can encourage them, help them, give him hugs and tell him he’s special whenever we get the chance.

One of the more well-known quotes of Mother Teresa is, “Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love…The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.”

This is what I was thinking about as I drove this morning. I know delivering flowers is a small thing, as well as a ride to the hospital and $3 Christmas present.

How do I love well in these moments? It usually involves a smile. It usually involves a hug or a high five or a touch on the arm. It usually involves just seeing the person in front of me as a story: a family, a home, laughter and tears, with a past and a future.

You see, we are doing a lot of very little things.

We are working in a very small community in a big border town. We are working on just a few streets with some families. We are impacting these homes in very little ways.

They are still in poverty, they are still paperless, they still have big questions. There are still systemic problems that place them into widespread statistics.

Some days I’m sure this is where we are supposed to be. I can’t imagine anything different, really. I see change coming. I am hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we are planting seeds and watering them. I am hopeful that maybe, just maybe, God is making them grow.

Other times, I wonder if what I do truly means anything. Does it matter if we deliver flowers again? Am I helping by simply driving someone to the hospital? Does it matter that we celebrate Christmas and wrap a bajillion Christmas gifts and share the Christmas story, and then someone invites us to the temple the next day?

And as we look ahead to a very near trip back to the States, I wonder if I should keep flying back and forth. Should churches and individuals keep sacrificing and giving to us, month after month and year after year, to make this possible?

It is so many little things: a ride to the hospital, an English class, a piece of candy, a smile and greeting. Or perhaps answering the door for the umpteenth time for a little girl to give me a flower.
And then come back for a high five.
And then decide she would like a glass of water.
{This was my last thirty minutes.}

Are these little things worth it?

I’m not sure it’s mine to say. I think it is mine to do small things in great love, to plant the tiniest little mustard seeds and water them. I think it is mine to pray for big things, to pray without ceasing, to wait faithfully for when the Son of Man comes. I think it is mine to hope, hope, hope.

Sin & err
Fear & hurt
Tears, questions
Nothing left
But a kiss on the forehead
Hope for tomorrow
Peace for today
Love for the moment