The House Collective

rolling out.

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So this week was our first cinnamon roll week with Flour & Flowers! And it was SO much fun.

IMG_3319We are only offering cinnamon rolls on the first Friday of every month for a couple reasons: it’s ambitious, as you will soon read; and we can sell them at a cheaper price when we make them in large amounts rather than divided over every week.

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And our first week we made 102 cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing. That is in addition to baking ten loaves of bread and rolling out 140 tortillas, all before 2pm.

We then trekked around town, selling all of these in addition to ten bouquets of flowers!

Win, win, win.

IMG_3328The women really enjoyed making the cinnamon rolls. I think it felt a little more artistic than the bread; a little more messy and different. They also loved that it was my grandmother’s recipe that I had learned as a child.

Pyo Pyo’s four-year-old son, Pyint Soe, now makes deliveries with us after school and loves to help carry items in to customers and collect money. He happily handed over the cinnamon rolls at each house; he hadn’t even questioned it since he hadn’t tried one and didn’t know what he was giving away so easily! But after about ten of the houses, he broke down in the car. I was trying to understand: did he want water? A snack?

He wanted the cinnamon rolls. (And they did smell good!) We couldn’t give him any of the ones we had in the car, which was quite upsetting to him. But he was promised one when we got home. Everyone got to try one when we got back, which they loved.

And then they got to take home a bonus, about 30% more of their weekly salary; which hopefully we’ll be able to do on the first week of every month.

We’re pretty excited for a success on every front!

the professionals.

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Since we finished House Church in our community recently, we having been praying through what the next step will look like. Two weeks ago, we met with the pastor & his wife from our Burmese church to discuss options and ideas.

We discussed a few ideas, to which they responded: Could we start with an eye clinic?
Yes, yes, and YES.
And then we’d like to just come by to visit; can we build relationships and get to know them?
Yes, yes, and YES.
We’d love to invite them to church later. They are welcome to come! Can we come pick them up?
Yes! A million times yes!

A few days later they came by the community to say hello. We scheduled an eye clinic for next Tuesday, when they’ll come able to check vision, find prescriptions, and give out free glasses. If bigger problems are found–cataracts and glaucoma–they arrange for surgeries to be done at the local clinic and help with transport. (!!)

They popped into houses, mentioned the eye clinic, and asked if they could come by to teach the children. They chatted with the neighbors, they laughed; they were welcomed instantly.

Stephen later said, “I feel like we’ve been planting and watering for years, and then we just called in the professionals.”

This Saturday they arrived at the community about 5 o’clock; they pulled out a mat and thirty kids gathered around. They sang songs, learned names, and shared Bible stories.

SSThey came back Sunday to pick the kids up for Sunday school at 2:30pm. Ten children hopped into the truck and spent an hour with other Burmese Christian children. They memorized a Bible verse, sang songs, and heard another Bible story.

Church 1And they’ll be back, every Saturday to teach in the community and every Sunday to pick them up to go to Sunday School. We’ll be joining when we can, and they’ll continue when we can’t. Because they’re professionals.

Beautiful GirlsIt feels too good to be true! We’ve found a lovely Burmese church that loves us and welcomes us with limited language. They love what we do in the community, and they are walking with us!

We’re rejoicing that God sent the professionals our way!

the trio.

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We live in consistent inconsistency, so don’t worry if this is completely confusing.

In short: we had two ladies baking for Flour & Flowers–Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein; plus one organizing flowers–Daw Ma Oo. One of the baking ladies, Nyein Nyein, went back to Burma to see her mother, who was sick and hadn’t met Nyein Nyein’s son yet. She was planning to be gone a week, but that turned into three months. We added another young mother, Pwe Pyu Hey, who has been helping for a few months.

Nyein Nyein is now back, as of this week! We’re thankful to have her, her husband, and little Nyein Htet Zaw back in our lives.

IMG_0002As Pwe Pyu Hey has been such a great help and good addition to the group, we’re keeping all three! Pwe Pyu Hey has asked a couple times over the past month if she would have to stop when Nyein Nyein returned. She really enjoys the work and was delighted when I told her we’d try to keep her on. We had hoped to grow to three employees for bread this year, and here we are!

IMG_1012Thankfully, with the additional bread items we recently added, we should be able to make enough most weeks, and use any overflow to make sure they get a consistent salary each week. And hopefully we’ll continue to grow!

As Stephen and I chatted in the kitchen on Friday, we smiled at our three dear friends. This is a great group and a lovely collection of women and families. They are three great moms, all young and now able to work where their babies can be nearby. They can continue to nurse, they can take a minute to get them to sleep, and they have a nanny teaching the babes English! (That’s me.) It’s so fun to chat with them, laugh with them, and just see healthy families growing. They are married to three good men with four children between them.

IMG_0011And now that we have three skilled women working in the kitchen, including Pyo Pyo as manager, I’m mostly there to oversee! I step in when someone is nursing, and otherwise I’m the nanny of three infants, particularly as of this week when the older kids are off to school!

IMG_0007We’ve had Yaminoo stepping in to help over the summer, which has been so helpful.

We’re so thankful for this trio of ladies and their babes filling our home every week!

our first summer program: in the books!

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We did it: a five-week summer program for 25-30 kids in the community. We felt pretty good completing it, I must say.

To finish strong, our last day was focused on learning currency. We reviewed Thai currency values and added up amounts in worksheets. We did math problems about spending and saving and earning. And then, each student received pretend money for their age: 10 baht for every year they were, giving them 40-140 baht to “spend” in our “market.”

IMG_3282Yep, we created a little market in our house.

We have had some friends move recently and give us a few items for the community: clothing, a rice cooker, a light. We also always have a few items we can give away, and we bought some things in the market they can always use: notebooks and pens for school starting next week, new clothing, a few Burmese books, laundry detergent. All the things kids like, right?

IMG_3284Well, they did. They loved it! Each child went home with a little set of treasures while they learned to count and spend their money. It was a pretty fun way to finish!

We then had a little ceremony, giving participation certificates to all & awards for perfect attendance.

IMG_0015We gave out special certificates for best English, best math, beautiful handwriting, and best singing. The kids love certificates; the whole country of Burma does, really. They were so proud to see their names written out, and we were so proud to hand out homemade certificates entirely in Burmese 🙂

IMG_0017As we finished everything yesterday, I took out a bag of extra printouts and notebooks we had left over and left them by the trash. We came out today to find eight kids circled around our table & porch practicing English & math, so apparently they didn’t have their fill yet.

But that’s a wrap: our first summer program successfully in the books!

girls in white dresses with blue satin sashes.

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Spoiler: There weren’t really any white dresses or blue sashes. But there were beautiful dresses all the same, and even more beautiful girls. And these are a few of our favorite people wearing their favorite things!

IMG_2832Some friends of ours in town wrote us last week to ask if we’d be interested in having 20 dresses donated to girls in our community. They had a friend of theirs–a 9-year-old Iraqi–who wanted to give other girls her age the opportunity to wear beautiful dresses like she can. She raised funds to pay for a local Burmese seamstress, who works with our friends at Global Alms, to make all twenty dresses and give them out in a local community.

And we are that community! We were so honored to have them ask.

IMG_2949We always love a chance to bless these friends. This in particular was just such a great opportunity. We live in a neighborhood where things are seemingly always breaking: families, houses, clothes, opportunities. It feels like everything is coming apart at the seams.

To bring in bright colors, beautiful ribbons, gathered fabric, and flowing skirts full of innocence and beauty; handmade with love–this is an opportunity not to be missed!

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Excuse my arm in this shot, but I love her face! IMG_3168
IMG_3087 IMG_3141 IMG_3126It is so fun to see their confidence soar as they try to minimize their visible excitement!

IMG_3199We are so thankful for friends around us in Mae Sot partnering with us in the community. We have a family that comes to our house weekly to play with the kids; another family blessed our community with their tithe this month. We had computers donated last month, and now dresses!

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you may say that i’m a dreamer, but i never take the jump.

by Filed Under: kelli, on the house 1 Comment

We met with our friends this weekend to help come up with a plan for their homelessness.

They came to our house, and we told them we had some ideas. We wanted to help, and we just had ideas for them to choose & determine if they were actually helpful.

For Option A, we had a friend and organization with a farm about a kilometer from our house. There was a house on it that needed some repairs, or it could be land to build. Either way, they could live there free of charge if they would serve as security for the farm over nights and weekends. It didn’t have electricity and water was scarce; but it was a good price, good land, they could move their pigs. It also had the potential to become a farming job in the future.

They were interested in the land, as he is a farmer at heart, and we went to look at it. They loved the house and are the type to see the potential rather than the failures. However, it’s not on the safest road and they had some concerns for their girls going to school. There was also a reservoir next to the house, which alothough picturesque, was a danger to their two youngest–a four-year-old son and one-year-old granddaughter. They decided this wasn’t a good option for them.

For Option B, there was a concrete house near us for about $100 per month. It’s two stories and large enough for their large family, but a little expensive. If they felt it was a better option for them, we had ideas for them to earn more money.  We had a couple “business” ideas up our sleeve.

So we talked about some options. And I’ll just jump ahead here and say this: we’re {officially planning on} opening up a small community center in our house, and they are going to help manage it being open a few days a week.

It seems rushed, and in some ways it is! Stephen and I are reworking our schedules and determining how to rework our house to make this possible. Doing all this in a few weeks wasn’t in our plan, and that’s a bit overwhelming.

However, this fits us. We tend to dream and discuss options endlessly; we think of these great ideas and talk abut someday starting them. We think through the ins and outs and repercussions. We tweak and edit. But in a current state of keeping our heads above water, we never feel ready to take the jump. Instead, it usually is something like this: a friend is in need, and thankfully we had some tricks up our sleeves.

But it isn’t really us having any tricks at all.

We’ve been talking about a community center in our house for over a year now. Then about a month ago some friends donated three computers to us to use in the community. It started us talking: how do we make these available for learning games, English practice, and Burmese? For years we’ve wanted to provide a sewing machine for moms to make simple repairs to their children’s clothing. We’ve wanted to have an open space to play the Burmese news or show a local sports game. Could all these go hand in hand?

We started talking more often about it all: how we’d set boundaries for our own personal space; layout plans and hours and rules. We talked about who would be a good manager: who we trust enough and respects us, yet is old enough to be respected by the community hierarchy. We’ve asked if we are ready and how to start slow.We prefer to do everything slow.

You might say that we’re ambitious dreamers that just need that final push to jump.

Thida was one of the women who would be great at this role, but she had tea shop business of her own that put her out of the running. But with their forced move, it seemed a good way for her to make some extra money and pull her back near our community.

So we’re planning on opening a community center of sorts soon. We have a manager! We have a God that started orchestrating this months ago and knew we needed time to dream. We have a God that also knew we needed that final push! We have some amazing friends donating to our community fund and making things like this possible.

And really, here’s the best part of the story. We needed a little time to, y’know, to make a community center; they were sleeping under the stars now; and rain is coming soon {or we are certainly praying for that}–there was a crunch. So we gave them one month of rent to help make ends meet and get into a shelter before the rain comes. We told them it was from our church. We asked them not to tell, as we can’t give to everyone, but our church gives us money to help when there are needs.

She replied with this: God blesses. God gives. This is significant for two reasons: she is not a Christian, and yet she is giving God credit for this gift. Further, in Burmese, she used the term for God that literally means the God above all gods. It’s used at church and by Christians, but not always popular to Buddhists, as its claiming the Christian God is higher.

So that’s pretty amazing. Yes, God blesses! God gives! And sometimes, he pushes us to jump into the dreams he’s put before us.

in other news.

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A few random bits of other good things amidst it all:

IMG_0728These kids are amazing. They are eating ice for a snack. I really love how much they enjoy the little things and consider everything a gift; I’m working on acquiring that.

IMG_0003While I was out with an eye infection last week, Stephen went to a wedding in the community. It’s fun to see everyone all dressed up and celebratory!

IMG_0006And this beautiful girl? Love her.  She’s a sister of the bride!

IMG_0942Oh, Asia. We’re falling in love with you.

IMG_0940This week we got to celebrate our friend Nu’s birthday, and we just love her, too.

IMG_0949She & her husband, Adam, are really good friends of ours and have been such a blessing over the past year. They’ve been an answer to prayer in more ways than one!

a project that needs tweaking.

by Filed Under: housewares, kelli 1 Comment

I’m in the process of re-working a few aspects of Flour & Flowers. We’re adding a couple items, making some pricing and system changes, promoting someone to manager.

Really, we’re always making little tweaks.

Because I have no idea what I’m doing. 

I put together a letter to our customers this week, to inform them, to thank them, and ultimately to say, Please, please don’t give up on us. I’m sorry I don’t know what I’m doing, but this is helping these families so much. So many beautiful things are coming out of these friendships. You buying their products is putting gorgeous smiles on their faces and hope in their step. Please, please like these products; please, please think they are a good deal; and please, please keep making this possible week after week. Heaven only knows we can’t eat $30 worth of bread every week or buy $20 worth of flowers; we need you!

And meanwhile, I’m telling these women: please keep working with us. Be patient with my Burmese. Be patient when I stop to chat with the foreigners. Be patient with our little car. Can you see how much I love you to do this with you every week? Can you see how much Jesus loves you and your family to bring us here to sell $30 of bread and $20 of flowers?

There have been some discouragements as of late; some challenges. There have been tears. There have been a lot of prayers that we can only do this with grace and miracles and that we need Him!

You see, I know it isn’t huge. We’re reaching about three families and getting them about $10 a week, with some business skills mixed in.

Meanwhile, I know business isn’t me. I calculate the costs, and recalculate them; they’re probably still inaccurate. I want the women to win; I want them to make money. But I also want the customers–my friends–to be happy, to love what they are getting. And business is not for people pleasers.

But beyond business, I’ve been realizing lately that this is more draining than just that. For a language-learning introvert, going door to door visiting foreigners with three Burmese in tow is no piece of cake. Working in a kitchen reaching over 115 degrees, with two ovens running and a stove top flame cooking tortillas is not for the faint of heart. Neither is rolling out 120 tortillas and baking multiple loaves of bread before noon. And for that matter, doing it in another language and simultaneously discussing domestic abuse, school schedules, when we’ll play Bingo, who is in the latest crisis, and how much my shirt cost me can wear you out, too.

For some reason it took me a number of months to realize why Thursdays & Fridays have worn me out. I only just noticed that it stretches me mentally, physically, relationally, spiritually, and psychologically. I only just realized that we are taking the longest, most challenging road possible to give these families a small sum of income.

It would be so much easier to just give them the money.

But I wouldn’t know Pyo Pyo the way I do. We wouldn’t have been able to ensure they get a good meal of meat and vegetables once a week.  We wouldn’t be able to talk about all the hard things we talk about. We wouldn’t be able to talk about savings and budgets and costs and profit. They wouldn’t be picking up English and I wouldn’t know as much Burmese. I wouldn’t get to see their elated faces when someone gives them a 10 baht tip. They wouldn’t be able to see Stephen and I interact, to see me make him coffee and hear him say thank you. They wouldn’t hear us tell each other we love each other or see us help each other out. I woudn’t have been able to learn different Burmese dishes we cook over lunch or how to cut the pumpkin most wasteless-ly.

The list is endless. In short, if we just gave them the money, we wouldn’t be friends.

Instead, we are just tired after a long day of being friends and doing life together {in a place that is sometimes difficult to do life}.

So Flour & Flowers keeps growing and took a couple big leaps this week. We added two new recipes and we’ll now be baking and delivering on the same day! I’m passing over tasks to our new manager, to equip her and ease the work on me. We hope to add more young moms and families soon.

I keep telling Stephen I don’t know what I’m doing; he keeps telling me it doesn’t matter–it’s working! So here’s to things working 🙂

the sausages.

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There’s another side of House Church every week. For awhile we were serving soy milk & fruit as snacks afterward, but the soy milk became unavailable to purchase in bulk. So a little over a month ago, we hired San Aye, a mother in the community, to make sausages for house church every week. She had a sausage shop on the side of the road previously, but her mother-in-law was our friend arrested last month and she was scared to open her shop again.

Being able to hire her every week to make snacks was a great way to help the family and spend time with her. In general, we love finding ways to benefit the community in both directions: who we are purchasing from as well as giving to.

Other than that, it was a stretching experience.

Every Thursday San Aye & I would head to the market at 6 or 6:30am. We’d buy sausages and then get back in time for me to bake bread at 8. Around 3pm, San Aye would come back to our house and fry up the sausages.

I’m just not sure I can describe it to you.

IMG_0007I have no idea what these sausages are made of. She says they are mostly chicken and fish; I’m skeptical. The one I could read in English was shaped like boiled eggs–white circles with yellow centers. The ingredient list is:

Ingredient Meat    60%
Lard  10%
Flour    10%
Seasonings    10%

“Ingredient meat”? What does that even mean? And ten percent lard?! We were hoping there is protein in there, but it’s hard to say for sure.

IMG_0008We also put this sticky, spicy sauce in tiny individual bags, which is a big, sticky mess. We cut up about 5 kilograms of cucumbers.

Then she fries all the sausages, which I just didn’t know was a thing. They puff up while they fry and then shrink back in a very unnatural way.

It smells awful.

But the kids love it. And we love win-win-wins 🙂