kelli – Page 34

o come, o come emmanuel.

December 18, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, kelli Leave a Comment

There was another stabbing in our neighborhood this week.

It was messy; messy enough that I asked Stephen, “Is he alive? Will he be alive by the time we get to the hospital? Do we try to call an ambulance?”

Because of where his house was situated, we didn’t really have that option. Instead, he was carried in a sarong-turned-stretcher, over a bamboo bridge and through a community, into the front seat of our car.

It was like a horror film in many ways. And then it got into our car.

As I squeezed in the back—literally in the fetal position because of where I ended up—with two friends of his, he leaned on Stephen and moaned as we drove to the hospital.

The words of O Come, O Come Emmanuel were in my head, so I started singing them to myself for sanity. And since our car is so ridiculously loud—or because all of the men in the car besides Stephen were inebriated—I didn’t even get an odd stare for my singing.

O come, O come, Emmanuel
And ransom captive Israel
That mourns in lonely exile here
Until the Son of God appears
Rejoice! Rejoice! Emmanuel
Shall come to thee, O Israel

And as I listened to his moaning, this seemed such a fitting prayer. Emmanuel, come be with us. Ransom US: captive to groaning, captive to sin, captive to brokenness.

It was also a good reminder of the call to rejoice. While it is a prayer for Emmanuel to come, it is also a statement of truth: He IS coming. He WILL ransom us. He IS with us. Let us rejoice until he appears!

In recent years, I have wondered often if adulthood just meant more awareness of sadness and brokenness. But really I think it just means feeling all the more. Yes, it is discovering more pain and more sorrows, but it is also discovering new depths of love. It is discovering a hope that burns beyond words. It is rejoicing while you wait for humanity’s promise to be fulfilled.

in short.

December 15, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, photos Leave a Comment

In short, we went to America! And we’ve already returned. It was very short, and yet so good! Here’s to a short list of highlights.

We are so thankful for just a little glimpse of time with family and friends. So much fun in so little time.

We were there for Stephen’s newest niece’s birth! That is pretty amazing coordination of time that we can only credit to God, and we’re thankful. It was a gift to be there. Stephen also drove her to the hospital, because apparently that is our side job no matter where we live. Really, we were so thankful to be there and so thankful to meet (and hold! Skype cannot offer this!) the beautiful Piper.
With the rejoicing comes mourning, and it was a hard season for their family. Stephen’s brother-in-law & father of the newest babe was in the hospital for ten days just after the baby was born. We tried to help while we were there, and we’re really thankful for the time with family, but it’s hard to see such hard seasons. And really hard to walk away from them.

We also got to see my family and enjoy Thanksgiving with them!

I feel like my sister & I’s smiles are looking quite similar in all of the photos here! Um, I mean this with my sister, Keri, although Hope & I share quite a bit of resemblance, too 🙂We went to a wedding which we were so excited to celebrate! It was just beautiful in every way, and we loved it. Thank you, Tim & Mal, for making it possible for us to be there. It was so fun to celebrate with you! It also included plenty of college reunion friendships, which is always a fun surprise!

There was also a sister date of shopping and sushi, which did not disappoint.

There were Christmas festivities already in full swing, including Christmas tree purchases…

…and a small-town parade! A personal favorite. It included one of the boys informing the others, “If you say ‘Merry Christmas’ they throw more candy!”

We saw Hunger Games. Win.

And that, in short, was America this time around!

who doesn’t love a good, local coffee shop?

November 19, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, stephen Leave a Comment

We made it Stateside!

We’ve already entered the whirlwind of attempting to overcome jet lag while we seize every moment with family and friends, every experience at Target, and every delicious taste of cheese. Carpe diem!

We do want to see as many of you as possible, and to make that happen–in the central Arkansas region at least!–we’re having an open house-style get together. On November 30, we’ll be at Guillermo’s Coffee Shop, just off I-430, from 4pm-7pm. We’ve reserved a room in the back, so you can grab a lovely cup of coffee and we’ll attempt to share it with you.

We’d love to see you if you have time to drop in!

found!

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

On our way through Bangkok, we wanted to try to meet with a friend from the neighborhood. She’s been a difficult story. In short:

We met the family with a dad, two teenage daughters, and their three-year-old nephew. The two young girls held all the responsibility for the home & little boy.

The oldest teenager left for Bangkok at 15. We weren’t sure what her work was, but it seemed questionable.

The little three-year-old was reunited with his mom and dad, who had been in jail for three years for some sort of drug charges; we aren’t sure if it was use or trafficking.

The second teenager quit school to work at 13; we knew her really well and did our best to come up with solutions: job options after school, other forms of income for the family, supporting her schooling, etc. They were sometimes taken for a few weeks and the denied, or denied on the spot. Before long, she was off to Bangkok, too, and has been there over a year.

We’ve been trying to get in touch with her—to keep up the contact, to love on her, to see if she needed a way out. We know the home life wasn’t great for a myriad of reasons. But we also weren’t sure what sort of career she was open to, and we wanted to keep up the contact so she always felt she had a way out, a friend, or whatever else we could try to be.

Three trips to Bangkok later, and she’s a bit hard to reach!

Sometimes her phone is out of minutes, sometimes it’s been disconnected altogether. We finally acquired a current number for her and called this trip.

It was quite the conversation, a full twenty minutes of chaos in three languages.

Someone else answered, so I asked in Burmese if Chit Mhwe was there. We went back and forth, saying the name with different accents and emphases, until she replied, “Oh! Chit Mhwe!”

I then hear her shouting for Chit Mhwe to tell her a white person was on the phone. {So glad my Burmese is so convincing.}

Chit Mhwe was so excited—she immediately shouted our names and asked how we were. It was so lovely to hear her voice.

When I told her we were Bangkok, she asked, “In Bangkok? Now? You?”

I explained we hoped to see her, and she shouted, “Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow!” in English.

At some point here she put us on speaker phone, so that all the girls around her could hear. She told them we were her teachers and we were here in Bangkok, and we attempted to decipher the Burmese of five or so girls talking all at once.

I asked where she lived, and got, “Tomorrow! Yes, tomorrow!”
“Yes, tomorrow. Where? What time?”
“Tomorrow! Where are you?”
“I’m in Bangkok, near Mo Chit BTS Station. Where are you?”
“—-no idea what she said—“
“Hmm…do you know the BTS? MRT?” (These are the two major transit lines, elevated and underground.)
“Yes, I know.”
“Do you live near there?” (I start listing off stations.)
“Kelli, one minute.”

There is much chattering. Suddenly the only male voice I’ve heard comes on the line. I ask if he speaks English, being my best guess of what they went after.

“Yes. English.”
“Where are you?”
“Yes, I am ok. Are you okay?”
“Yes, I am okay. Where are you?”
“I am okay. Tomorrow is okay.”
“Yes, tomorrow is good. Where do I go? Where are you?”
“I am okay. Are you okay?” (Repeat this interchange a few more times.)
“Where are you?”
“I am at ———.” (Repeat this interchange a few more times.)
“Do you speak Thai? One minute.”

We go down to the front desk and explain. They graciously take the phone and talk for a few minutes.

We learn they are in ———-. About two hours by taxi. We should go to this region of “Bangkok” (the wider definition of Bangkok, if you will) and then call her, and she’ll give the taxi directions.

Suddenly, our plan to go see her tomorrow gets slightly foiled. A wild goose chase of at best 4 hours driving, before a flight to the US?

We apologized we couldn’t see her tomorrow, but we’ll be back in three weeks and do our best to see her then.

_______________

Fast forward not so much time: maybe twelve hours. She has found us on Facebook! This is our initial interchange:

It then balloons into a “conversation” of many emoticons and broken Burmese. She writes so many questions and was so patient while we attempted to type out Burmese on our phones, and ultimately resorted to writing it and sending her photos. In the end, our battery was dying, so we snapped a picture of us and sent it to her.

And now, we have plans to make. We have a friend to visit next time we’re here, a trek to determine where she lives, and three weeks to determine more specific directions.

But I suppose, it was just really beautiful.

Sometimes it feels like we are doing nothing; that we see no results and we just see one broken story after another. And though the broken stories are numerous and sometimes pushing to the forefront, there are little glimpses into the joy. There are broken emoticon-conversations, where we love this culture we live in. There are broken Burmese conversations, where we give thanks for what we have learned to communicate. And there are these people, these friends, that we realize we love. We will make phone call after phone call and trek around a city of millions to find, because she is loved and needs to see that.

it’s a win.

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

I haven’t written much recently. I even currently on a plane around world to the United States and we haven’t really mentioned it. I’m not sure I’ve known what to say: about this or that, or anything in between.

The good stories have been muddy recently; the hope has been fogged. I’ve been searching, I promise, but the problems needing solutions and fractures threatening greater cracks have been glaring. There have been more losses than wins.

I’ve asked many, many questions about why we are here and what we are doing and if God is in this. I’ve cried many, many tears. We have prayed and prayed and prayed.

But there are little treasures there, and I don’t want to neglect them in search of the big answers and great triumphs.

A few weeks ago, we had a meeting with the two ladies who bake & sell bread and the one woman who sells flowers—our Flour & Flowers crew. It wasn’t the easiest little get-together and required some address of issues, using our best cultural approaches and wearing us thin as we try to love and give grace while we challenge and hold accountable.

Life is so messy.

But in the midst of this messy meeting and messy issues, one of the women asked us a favor. She asked if we might help her to save some money. She just found out she is pregnant with her second child, and she wanted to have money ready when the baby came. She asked if she could give us 200 baht every week for us to keep for her and save up until the baby comes.

As our previous banker role has always been as a lender, this is certainly something we were interested in!

In fact, it is one project we have long discussed starting, so we’ve been considering systems and solutions. That is mostly because God is good like that and {sometimes} just helps us to have some thinking time before He springs such opportunities on us.

But we have done our thinking, and we are so thrilled to encourage such a practice! Our little banking system has begun, and she’s saving 20-25% of her income from bread deliveries each week.

Savings!? 20-25%!?

And the development strategists go wild!

And her neighbors that love her and this growing family are absolutely thrilled. It’s a start; it’s a little treasure. It’s a win.

our extreme water park.

November 10, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli Leave a Comment

Since we moved to Mae Sot, we’ve had a cattle farm just down the road from us. The smell wasn’t overall pleasant, but in an odd way I liked motorbiking or running by–it smelled like the little farm town I grew up in. It’s funny how when you grow up on in a farming community, you learn to know the smells between cattle stink and pig stink. This was very much cattle stink. And compared to the many other stinks around town, it was familiar.

I was kind of sad to see them building on it just a few months ago. I assumed it would be another development as Mae Sot continues to grow and grow around us.

Until one day, there was a sign up. No English in sight except for three words in the top left corner: Extreme. Water. Park.

Now, this was a small plot of land. We didn’t think it could be too extreme, per se. But a water park, nonetheless? For a town that has relatively zero entertainment options, it was something.

And I do love my water parks!

Then it unfolded before us: literally. They actually unfolded blow-up structures and it became a blow-up water park. Not huge compared to most water parks, but huge as far as any blow-up water parks I could imagine.

I was feeling oddly neutral. Inflated plastic in 110 degree weather sounds pretty hot to the touch, even with water on it. The $10 price tag–which apparently includes a swimsuit?–seemed steep. And, our lives are crazy: visiting a water park didn’t make the top of my list.

So we haven’t been yet.

But in my head, it’s been, Oh! The water park. Some Saturday that will be a fun little outing.

Until this week. Now I put on my angry eyes and think, Oh. The water park.

You see, we ran out of water this week. And it didn’t come on for three days.

After a few days of getting behind on laundry, showering at the pool, and eating out, we were now out of water for even flushing the toilet. So we purchased a truck load of well water {read: brown water} for 200 baht, or $6. They filled our tank and we are now able to wash our clothes, flush the toilet and shower with expensive, sort of gross water.

Kelvin & Laura ran out of water the next day, and it was now 350 baht, or $10, less than 24 hours later from the exact same truck and with the exact same brown color.

Oh, and this is the fourth time we have run out of water this month.

The water park has been open for one month.

Coincidence? I think not.

They are just a smidge nearer to town than us, so when water is turned on–which it isn’t always–it has to go through the system. As it is filling up other houses and locations, this lessens the pressure, so there isn’t enough to get to our house. Once they are all full, we get a trickle of water in our tank. It’s usually every night between 2-5am, and we get enough stored up for a day or two of use. If it isn’t on for a couple days, we’re alright with our storage tank…

But not if the water park is sucking up all the water every single day.

So, boo. Not sure what to do about that. Just going to go wash a load of laundry and finish up our dinner dishes with some brown water…

the playground.

November 10, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

It was a Tuesday night, and Laura & Kelvin had invited us over for dinner with another couple. I came in as they were talking about a playground our friend Cole had built for a local organization. He had all the wood cut and prepped, all the supplies, and four students helping him put it together the next morning at 9am, but the organization had just told him they couldn’t do it that day.

It was one of those things that just plays out faster than you can think about it–which I say very, very often about our lives.

He came back with four boys and a truckload of wood and tires the next morning at 9am. We did relatively nothing, except leave our door open for them to have access to drinking water & electricity.

Let me just tell you, that is the best way to do home improvement projects.

So we came home to a new playground for the kids!

There were a few tricky days of keeping the kids off the wet paint. Plenty of kids claimed to have not played on it while sporting green smears of paint in their hair.

There were things we didn’t think through, like the location of playground mere feet from our bedroom window. We are greeted each morning around 7am, as the kids come to our “bus stop”–bags and lunches are piled on our porch and children are piled onto the swings.

But hey, that one morning it was 6:30am showed us that 7am isn’t too bad. And giggles and shouts outside the window are better than blood and fighting! It’s all about perspective.

And really, it has been so fun.

It has been a small way to bring some kids and families back to our street after our little community was disrupted nearly 18 months ago. We are seeing faces we have missed and our house is seeing even a new phase as the hub of the neighborhood.

We are so thankful for those who give our House Collective Fund and provided for the playground supplies, along with Kelvin & Laura’s help! Cole also did a great job organizing it all, and has already been back to fix the things the kids break. We are also really thankful for the giggles and smiles filling our yard 🙂

choose your own #hashtag.

November 7, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, stephen 1 Comment

Remember the Choose Your Own Adventure books? I think we need a more modernized version: Choose Your Own #Hashtag.

One night this week as we brought one family home from the hospital and were attempting to make dinner on the grill, we were interrupted with fighting.

Before I could take it all in, Stephen made the right decision and ran across the street to physically break up the fight between a husband and his pregnant wife. Right decision, yes; albeit surreal.

So many thoughts running through my head.

#everydayhero? Perhaps.
#getanewneighborhood? Perhaps.
#istilllovemyneighbors. True.

the thin grey line.

October 26, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli 2 Comments

This weekend, we left our house. It was decided at one of many breaking points on Thursday: we needed to get out for a bit.

Out of the chaos, out of the sadness, out of the burdens, out of the pain.

Recently we’ve been asking ourselves often (more and more often): all of this is worth something, right?

RIGHT?

Sometimes, I can’t imagine a harder road we could have chosen. Of course there are so many horrible, painful roads we don’t choose–cancer and miscarriages and poverty and death and infertility. There is so much outside of our control, and it is often painful and challenging. But, I have continually wrestled with the choice involved in living here—the choice to be away from family and familiarity, the choice to live in what we affectionately call “the armpit of Thailand,” and the choice to live amongst poverty, choosing to befriend and hear the stories of suffering day after day.

We do it because it’s something God has put on our hearts; we do it because we love this people group, we love this little community, and somehow we even love this town. We do it because of Jesus and the coming Kingdom. We do it because we hope that God will use us and our lives to bring truth and grace and love into the lives of this little community in the middle of nowhere.

With Jesus, it is full of potential for a beautiful story. It is just bursting with prospects for sustainable businesses and bible studies and conversations over tea!

But if you take away the hope and Jesus, it’s just crazy.

So some days, when fear sets in, I wonder: what if God chooses not to answer all these prayers for this community? What if all the efforts to show love, well, don’t? What if that time I think I shared my heart with them and I think they understand why we are doing this, well, what if I said something entirely different? What if they understood something entirely different?

I could go on. The questions are truly endless, but ultimately end in: what if God isn’t in this, and then it is nothing more than crazy?

I never realized how close Jesus is to crazy.

But I read that “faith is…the conviction of things not seen” in Hebrews 11 and “hope that is seen is not hope” in Romans 8. I start to think that faith and hope and love, to be truly faith, hope, and love must be a wee bit close to what we might call crazy.

Earlier this week, in a similar moment of breaking, we had stopped to pray amidst a hectic day and a hoard of shouting children outside our house. Stephen noted, “It says that God is in the still small voice, and sometimes I just don’t know if we can hear that with all this shouting.”

And so we found ourselves this weekend, sitting in a hotel less than a kilometer from our house, paying $16 a night for the solace to pray, the silence to listen, and the hope to see the thin grey line between Jesus and crazy.

the space between us.

October 12, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

The space between us and our sweet friends in Mae Sot is getting smaller.

Sometimes I am able to see the small ways we are more like each other and learning from each other; making that gap just a little smaller. I have taught them to go in a circle when we play a game, rather than a randomly. They’ve taught me to just be with friends and appreciate silence. I’ve taught them what a blender does and how to use an oven; they’ve taught me how to play with rocks and truly enjoy it.

We’ve taught each other that we’re not so different, and we boast about each other to our friends. I hear them tell market vendors about us and what languages we have learned and how we help them; I show them how I post their pictures all over Instagram and Facebook.

But sometimes there is still a space between us.

A few weeks ago one of the young girls asked me if I wrote all the books on my bookshelf. When I told her no, she asked if my friends did.

She pointed to two pictures on two different, unrelated books, and asked if it was the same girl. When I said no, she asked if they were at least sisters.

How smart does she think I am? Or all my friends, even? I tried to tell her that they were written by all different people about all different things with pictures of all different people. I showed her that some were about God and some were about children and some were about government.

She looked pretty confused. Because really, our worlds are still very different, even sharing the same street.

_____________

We came back from Bangkok last week. We are usually bombarded with people helping us carry our bags in and opening the door and greeting us with hellos (and the ritual “Oh, how fat you’ve gotten!”). Our bags end up right inside the front door and the kids began helping us to unpack.

We have extremely helpful friends.

They loved to find the toys we had bought at Ikea, and pulled out the train sets and stuffed rabbit and memory games with excitement.

And then they found the Ikea catalogue. They excitedly asked if they could read it and seemed confused looking at the different pieces of furniture. They came to a page with a birthday cake on it, and asked who’s birthday it was. They pointed to each person over the next couple pages: Is it her birthday? Is it his? Who’s birthday is it?

{A few days later being asked that question more times than I could count, I’ve decided who’s birthday it is, and I tell them the same girl every time.}

After a few more pages they found a spread of food on a table. They gasped and started to pretend eat it.

Have you seen kids do this around a picture of food? They grab at the pages and pretend to stuff their faces with this incredible spread.

This incredible spread all designed on a perfectly arranged table with perfect lighting by a whole team of people.

_____________

Sometimes we see difficult things here. Sometimes you come home from a birthday dinner to find a stab wound bleeding out on your porch and you fall asleep in the ER while you wait for him to be stitched up. Sometimes people ask us for jobs or tell us that if their husbands hit them “just a little” it’s okay. Sometimes you see houses flooded up to the knees and watch your friends pile their precious possessions of blankets and televisions on your front porch.

These things can dwell with you and wear you out, it’s true.

But sometimes, its just when a child asks if you wrote all the books in your house or tries to eat the food out of your catalogue. You don’t expect these to stick with you or wear you out, but you can feel the weight.

The weight of knowing there will always be a gap between us.

We will keep learning more about each other and we’ll become better and better friends. I’ll learn to recognize their laugh from far away and find more jobs for them.

But there will always be a gap.

I will always have been born into privilege. And they will not.

Perhaps that is the weight that really wears; perhaps that is really the space between us.