One significant joy of returning to Mae Sot is being back in the kitchen. I love the entire process, from visiting the market to starting from scratch. I particularly love it when there are kiddos playing on the kitchen floor.

I have loved being back to making bread and tortillas. I experimented with vegetable broth; this was after deciding that purchased broth is just too MSG & sodium-filled, then trying chicken broth and finding it too smelly.  Vegetable broth is right up my alley and worked like a charm; my freezer is stocked.

I have also sorted out peanut butter, which was a bit of a task here. The peanuts in the market have an odd burnt flavor I had to sort out; let alone the fact that I burned up my blender on my first attempt.  A few tries later, we have peanut butter! It’s delicious and smooth, and I know what is in it.

And last–my favorite–I made applesauce! And it worked. Stephen said it “might be the best applesauce” he’s ever tasted. I don’t know what that means, but its good enough for me!  I need to find a faster way to peel and core than my Thai-purchased vegetable peeler, but I’ll sort that out in time.

It’s so fun to be back in our kitchen. I’m thankful I’m not trying to feed a family from scratch in my little kitchen with our little refrigerator & freezer, but I do love all the experimenting and learning.

Patient One: Admitted to the children’s ward on Saturday, received a call today that she was discharged. Spent one hour waiting on final paperwork, helping them get social assistance and pay.

Patient Two: Follow up appointment from Saturday night; was dropped off by Stephen at 7:30am this morning and was helped to get social assistance. Delivered back home at 4pm, with yet another appointment in two weeks. Also required an awkward, broken & translated conversation about his test, potential STD, and how it can spread to his wife.

Patient Three: Learned this morning that he stepped on a nail two days ago and now has a high fever. The wounded area of his foot is exceptionally hard. We know there is infection, we know he should have had a tetanus shot two days ago. He is taken to the hospital at 9am, picked up at 12pm with antibiotics, pain medicine, and a bandaged arm from the tetanus shot.

Patient Four: When taking Patient Three to the hospital, we learned this little girl needed to go to. Mother & daughter were willing to take care of it themselves, but just needed a ride. They were dropped off at 9:15am and picked up at 12:15pm.

And then there are two kiddos with fevers still in their homes we are watching for dengue, or bone-crushing disease.  And me, with a sun-burned farmer’s tan from spending too many hours on the motorbike.

We’ll just call this hospital Monday.

We took a date night last night. We brought dinner home, ate by candlelight, and watched a movie.

Somewhere in the middle of dinner, the kids tried to crawl through the shut gate to sneak up and say hello. We heard them, and I shouted something of,
“Bye bye! See you tomorrow! …. Ok, go home!”

“You see, honey, they are,” Stephen said. “They see this as their home.”

We surprised Tata with two new badminton racquets yesterday.

She loved the ones we had, but we lost the birdie. She went and collected her own birdie from somewhere, but then our cheaply-purchased racquets broke.

We bought the new ones and presented them to her smiling face. She really loves to play badminton, even with her three-year-old nephew hanging on her leg.

We then watched a few games, played some cards with the younger girls, and said hellos all around. And then we finally sat down to a late, slightly-cooled dinner for a few minutes before little Mango Oo & his dad came over with a fever, Mu Sa Na had a nose bleed, and about six other kids needed bandaids to cover up their oozing school sores.

And then we finished dinner and shared funny stories about the crazy kids screaming behind us.

We ended with a question, one we ask fairly often: how did we get here?

Stephen has been having dreams about the community about once a week. We know all the little voices outside our door, and when they peek their little eyes through the screen I can tell who it is. The little boys that were all babies when we arrived grew into little toddlers that tell on each other and make us laugh each and every day.

When I think back to when we moved in, I don’t actually remember the community around the house. I just remember wanting so badly to make the right decision about where to live and praying for wisdom constantly.

Then I remember the early days of playing together and bringing a football out into the streets. I remember the day some hid behind our house when the police came.

It was somewhere around there that we decided we had an opportunity in our neighborhood, but we had no idea what that meant or what to do next.

And, really, there was no time in the past two years that we knew what the next step should be. We made attempts: the garden, Christmas gifts, a Christmas dinner, hospital visits, gifts for the newly delivered babies. But we never had a plan, per se, of how to best get to know the community. We simply took opportunities as they arose.

And even in our grandiose plan of loving them, we never would have guessed it would look like this.

I never would have guessed that I would value their way of life and their culture in the way I do. I never would have guessed that I would try to emulate them.

I never would have guessed that I would love them this deeply, or pray for them this naturally and sincerely. I never thought I would be in America aching for them the way I did.

I never thought I’d fear the fact that I likely won’t be able to keep in touch with all of them, as I struggle to remember that this is a time–just a moment in time where I can love them while they are in front of me. And someday, perhaps soon, they will be scattered around Burma and Thailand. And we will be scattered elsewhere as well.

And though Stephen doesn’t write on this blog much, I’ll say that I never thought it would look this way for him, either. I never thought I’d overhear ten children shouting at him with popularity, and see him laughing as he swings them around, holds them, and shows them true, healthy, pure love. I never thought I’d see his heart break for them the way they do.

We talked about Proverbs 16:9 promising that we plan our way, but the Lord determines our steps. I guess I planned to serve and help the community, but now we see them as dear, true friends. I didn’t plan to love them in this way, and hurt for them to this extent.

And ultimately, I suppose I never thought they would teach me so much about the love of Christ. I wouldn’t trade our experiences with this community for anything, even if they leave tomorrow and my heart breaks. They have genuinely taught me more Scripture, more faith, more hope, more joy, and more love than any number of books or sermons or pastors.  They have put faces on truth in an extraordinary way.

Just because we all need a little laughter in our Wednesdays.

_______________________________

Mong Ey was knocking on our door and shouting at us just after 6am today.

To be fair, our alarm had already gone off and been snoozed a few times, but we were still sleeping.

I jumped up and started shouting that I was coming, to wait just one minute, and asking if everything was okay.

I opened the door, still blinking my contacts wet and with crazy hair, obviously having just woken up.

“Oh,” she says, laughing, “Mo Bya said you’d be awake!
I will tell him you are sleeping!
I brought you pork.”

Yum.

I take two slabs of raw pork, which I’m told later by our office staff are the premium cuts. I tell her many thank yous and tell her it’s no problem that I was sleeping because I should have been up anyway.

How great are our neighbors?
Do yours get up and present you with freshly butchered pork at 6am?!
I think not.

_______________________________

Stephen’s monologue as he chose his shirt color today:

“I could wear this green one. Oh, wait, I wore green yesterday and they used to make fun of me for wearing red all the time.
I could wear black. No, you’re wearing black and they make fun of us for matching.
Red? No! That’s what they made fun of me for wearing before!
And then I’m back to green!”

Perhaps we need to widen our color schemes. Or hire staff that make fun of us less.

_______________________________

Stephen has been working on the internet at the office the past few days. Fiber optic internet just made it to Mae Sot, and at the office we now have 30MB speed through a company called 3BB. The internet guys came out yesterday, and Stephen was working with them to sort it all out. He had been checking the internet speed at SpeedTest.com, and it was only coming up at 16MB. Very fast, yes, but we were paying for 30MB.

He had our office manager ask them about it. They asked which test he was using, and determined that this one was not accurate–we had to use the 3BB Online Test that they provide.

It said we had 44MB speed.

Hmm.

Some days, it just feels like everyone is losing.

We listened to an update today on Burma: the fighting and abuse that continues on the Western border, the poverty that continues on the Eastern border, and the economic abuse that is growing in the center.

We then attempted to have meetings and work in an imperfect organization full of imperfect people with insufficient funds, trying to bring about good, but–per expected–doing so imperfectly.

And then we came home to see our neighbors, who we just can’t save. We can love, we can help, and we can befriend; but we can’t save. We can’t actually change the fact that the country they were born into doesn’t claim they exist, nor will they protect them or help them in any way, shape, or form.

We studied two languages we just can’t seem to grasp, and grappled at communication in a marriage of–again–two imperfect people that repeatedly hurt each other.

And then we were just so tired, because everyone is just losing.

I know, like other times on this blog, you will all be recommending counseling about now. I won’t deny it could be helpful. But really, I do know I can read Scripture that promises hope, I can find an inspirational quote, or find a photo that captures a wonderful memory of someone winning.

But, really. We are all losing. Currently, “the whole creation groans and suffers the pains of childbirth together.” We groan “as we wait eagerly for adoption as sons” (Romans 8:22-23).

So perhaps all those other days when I don’t feel the weight of everyone losing, maybe those are the days I should be worried about. It is those days that I have fooled myself; I haven’t participated in the groaning, but left my brothers and sisters to carry the burden.

The plague is out tonight, and we are holed up in our bedroom with night-vision headlamps–well, and the computer, on the lowest screen setting.

And our neighbors? They have asked us to turn our outside lights on. They’d like to collect the bugs and fry them up with oil and salt.

Supposedly they taste just like popcorn.

Isn’t it ironic?

We have electricity, and yet it is nearly all off to avoid the plague. They have no electricity, and would like to borrow ours for a snack.

We came back to rainy season. We’re just a few weeks in, and it should last for another six months or so. It will rain most every day and plenty of nights; it will flood often enough. And when it’s not raining, it is humid enough to feel like it still is.

I really quite like it. It’s a little cooler, and rain is just a good thing.

But it comes with some creatures. The snails come in abundance; flies are ridiculously prevalent. But the worst, are these flying ants or flying termites–everyone calls them something different. We all agree that they are horrible.

Usually just after a rain in the evening, they flood the lights. They swarm like nothing I’ve ever seen before.

And then they die, losing their papery-wings, and leaving a disaster to clean up.

Last November we were staying in a village when they were out after a rain storm. We had been in our mosquito net and all the lights were out; Stephen needed to get something from his bag, so he climbed out and flipped on his headlamp. He meant to switch it to the red, night-vision side, but accidentally turned on the bright light. They swarmed his forehead and face. I heard him scream and he threw the headlamp onto the ground.

And then it disappeared. The light literally disappeared and it went black.

He finally had to reach through all the bugs and switch the light over to red; they dispersed.

I know you are all thinking that they are just bugs; how bad could it be?

Far worse than you could imagine. It feels like you are in a horror film.

I’ve decided it’s the closest I can come to understanding the plagues of Egypt. They always seemed a little disconnected for me: I understood how rivers of blood or boils could be terrible; but frogs? Gnats? How bad could they be?

Horrible. They could be truly horrible, and they could make you go insane. It is so interesting how something so physical and small could really make you go crazy mind, body, and soul.

We’re avoiding going crazy. When we see one, we shut off all the lights and pull out night-vision head lamps.

So maybe we are crazy?