The House Collective

and it was all yellow.

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This past week we had the honor of visiting Bangkok to represent the Child Adoption Center at a national press conference! The government adoption agency that we went through to adopt Oak invited us to come back and share at a press conference promoting both adoption in Thailand and the return of internationally-adopted Thai children to visit Thailand.

True to form, we knew about this press conference but didn’t have a date until just a few days before. We booked tickets somewhat last minute and pulled together our plans to make it work. Either way, we felt it was a great opportunity to help them and continue to build relationships within the agency. We also loved the opportunity to promote adoption, in Thailand or anywhere!

But first, Oak’s first flight! He did great on the short flight from Mae Sot to Bangkok. He loved the snacks and books and a nap.

For the observant folks, you’ll be noticing the bandage on Oak’s left hand in this photo and every single one following. So I’ll interrupt my own story to explain that he grabbed a soldering iron last week and has two blisters. They should be healed up soon, and he’s been a complete champ: he cried for about an hour, calmed down with some Pez & went to sleep. Since then he hasn’t even said it hurt; he hasn’t cried again or whined over it. He faithfully holds his hand out to the side and protects it! We’re hoping the bandage will be off later this week.

He loved that you could see the BTS trains from most any place in our hotel. It’s also helpful that they continue to come every three to six minutes.

On Tuesday, we were all ready with our yellow outfits to honor the newest government leaders. We had shopped over the weekend, since our wardrobes held absolutely no yellow.

Upon arriving, they had yellow polos for us to wear to match everyone. It was…bright. Brighter than I’ve ever warn. But we also looked more Thai than we ever have! And I’m just not sure how to describe it, except to say it was all yellow. It was ALL YELLOW.

This is how Oak felt about most of the day. As the only foreigners in the room, holding an adorable Thai toddler who was sometimes screaming, we drew a whole lot of attention! It wasn’t easy for any of us to be on camera all day. 😆

Oak did get to see his two favorite caregivers from the children’s home, both of whom he remembered! They came with a group of children doing a performance at the press conference.

We were interviewed by both a major news station and in the press conference. I’d link them except a) they are 98% in Thai and b) it’s embarrassing. It was hard to know what they were wanting, and how to carefully honor all parties involved. We were nervous; and the results are mixed.

Either way, we are so thankful for the Child Adoption Center and all they do in Thailand. We are so excited to promote more adoption in Thailand.

We also love the idea behind program they host every three years: The Nativeland Visit Program, which welcomes back Thai children that have been internationally adopted to visit Thailand with their parents and families. Together, the social workers and families learn about Thai history and culture, participating in many traditional activities. We hope to participate in the future!

After the press conference, our social worker helped us to submit the paperwork for Oak’s passport. It was easier than we expected, and we picked it up at the end of the week!

Otherwise, we spent the week enjoying Bangkok. Since we do have a communal home and many, many aunties and sisters and brothers and grandmas and uncles and friends, we are trying to be intentional with some of our family-of-three time. We took this week to enjoy swimming at the hotel, train trips, ice cream trips, and playing together.

He was protesting photos for most of the week, though, often smiling just as we put the camera away. He did smile most of the time, even if we struggled to capture it!

We also did a bit of shopping for Oak and found a cardigan. I wasn’t sure he’d wear it, but on sale for $5? I had to try.

He decided to wear it on our way home and loved it. I melted. He looks just like Mister Rogers!

{Also, shout out to H&M, which puts sweet little inspirations on the buttons of their kids clothes! His shorts buttons say “Be Kind Be Brave” and his cardigan buttons say “I like you a lot.”😍}

We said our goodbyes to the hotel staff, who LOVED Oak’s regular & loud thank yous and byes in the lobby. One of the staff told us, “I will miss my boy!”

And then we hopped in our Grab, which was unique enough to be worth noting. She really loved Hello Kitty. And Pink Panther. And sweets. Oak’s face says what Stephen and I were thinking.

Oak using his passport for the first time to return to Mae Sot!


{Confession: I only sort our laundry by color when we get back from a trip and we have enough to make that worth my energy. I think it’s beautiful to see all the color schemes; but just impractical every other day of my life. And while we usually have a red|pink|purple collection and a blue|black|green assortment, this was the first time I’ve ever had to do a yellow load!}

welcome to the chaos, buddy.

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We’ve wondered for years–literally!–how it would work to bring a child, particularly through adoption, into the bilingual, communal lifestyle that we live. It’s an odd life we live anyway, but this would be a whole new curveball.

There are days it really hasn’t worked: you can ask a few English students who really didn’t get a lesson at all a few times! There are days I think we just can’t do it, with so many people in and out of the house while trying to create a safe place for attachment. There are days we are struggling to make a schedule that will flex enough for a toddler, but allow us to continue all that we’ve started.

But there are other days that it works beautifully. And today was one of those.

Since every morning is an early morning, we had breakfast outside in our camp chairs.

We shared our eggs and yogurt with a few friends and then said our goodbyes when the “bus” came to get them for school.

He loves that two or three ladies come to work every day, and he runs to the door to greet them. This morning, as they began their day of jewelry making and I sat in on the starting instructions, they helped him to roll out clay and cut out a few pieces.

He rode with me to drop off our friend at work, and we had a day as a family, including a bike ride with dad, cooking with mom, puzzles, and Hot Wheels.

At 4pm, our friends showed up to play. He loves greeting Thida at the door, loves the hat she lets him wear, and loves that she will sharpen every colored pencil that he asks her to. (He really loves this. I run out of both steam and pencils. Thida goes for the second end.)

While he eats his papaya for a snack, all the toddlers line up for their bites. It’s a bit of an assembly line.

Tonight, Stephen taught The Reinforcers about sound. After Oak & I went for a run, he wanted to watch dad while he ate. So dinner and show!

He enjoyed his very locally, neighbor-made tortilla wrap.

Dad’s hilarious to watch with a microphone apparently, and both Reinforcers are pretty fond of O, too.

Today, I just rejoiced that he has so many lovely people in his life, and they are in and out of our home every day. I love that he is learning sharing in a unique way. I love that he’s absorbing this chaotic blend of Burmese, Thai, and American culture. I love that he’s hearing two and three languages every single day, and speaking all three in bits and pieces through the days, too! And I love that we’re learning how to live here as a family. God’s been really gracious to us in this season of shifting, and today was a beautiful picture of that.


a few firsts.

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These are a few of our favorite firsts over the past few weeks!


The first time the hostess asked, “Party of three?” We both melted.


Our first week at church as a family, when our pastors and elders and friends joined to pray for us and Oak!


Oak’s first time to wear thanaka powder.


Our first trip to the Pad Thai Shop, mom’s favorite restaurant!


His first puzzle!

meeting our son: part three.

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On Thursday, with our papers in hand, we headed home to Mae Sot! Of course the seven hour drive took ten, but we also managed to stop for some running around and Starbucks in the middle.

All things considered, the drive went incredibly: no carsickness (which we’d been told he had issues with before) and minimal crying for the car seat. For having not ridden in one before he arrived to us, he’s adjusted so, so well, and takes it in stride. He does prefer to have me in the back with him and holding his hand, if he’s nervous for any reason.

We arrived to Mae Sot to find our community waiting with open arms. They LOVE him!

  • Arriving HOME!

He adjusted to Mae Sot well–despite it being another adjustment!–and is doing really quite well. We’re fighting some battles with communication, and general discipline of course, but we feel so thankful for his apparently healthy attachment, flexibility, and sweet spirit.



He’s already saying a few words in English, he’s trying a few in Burmese, and seems to understand nearly everything said to him in English, Thai, and Burmese. For now, we’re focusing on English when it’s just us, and Burmese when we’re in the community. We hope to add in Thai once he’s speaking English easily, but it’s seems a bit too much to put on him for now, so we’ve paused his and our Thai lessons.


And just like that: we’re a family of three, happily making our little home in this community!

meeting our son: part one.

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And just like that–three years, many tears, and a million prayers later!– we have a son!

He’s incredible. He’s worth every prayer and every tear, and each long day waited. He’s ours, and he fits our family perfectly.

May was quite a month of chaos, though.

At the end of April, the adoption agency scheduled us to “be approved by the board” on 22 May. We thought this meant the next step in the process was to be approved; leading us to believe that we’d then meet him a month later, and the process would slowly move along. So, we hoped that he might be with us by June or July.

They called us again on 3 May to ask if we could come meet him on the 16th and take him with us on the 17th. We’d then go before the board on the 22nd as they said, but with him. We’d be approved to go back to Mae Sot with him!

So we left just a week after that and caught a few days at a beach near Bangkok, just the two of us.



We visited a water park–the best I’ve ever been to and my birthday gift from Stephen!–and spent a day on the beach. It was nice to have a few days to prepare, and since we’re getting so good at accentuating those positives, I’ve nearly forgotten that I was throwing up for part of that trip!

And then we went to Bangkok. We had a day of chaos, trying to get Stephen’s Apple Watch fixed (at the new Flagship Apple Store in Bangkok, which is a “thing” we do: we visit Flagship Apple Stores when we can), go to the dentist, and see our sweet friend Musana who lives an hour or so away from the city.

  • Flagship Apple Store in Bangkok!

On the 16th, we went to meet him! We were told to be at the office at 10am on the 16th to meet him, then 10am on the 17th to just pick him up. We were nervous about Bangkok traffic and unknowns, so we left an hour early and were just nearly pulling into the parking lot at 9:15am, when we got a call. It was our social worker asking where we were. I explained that we were actually nearly there, but we were also very early. Was everything alright? Turns out she thought she told us 9, so we rushed inside, a little bit flustered and nervous to meet this little guy.

We were greeted by her, and she sat down with us in the hallway, showing us photos on her phone of our sweet little boy. At this point we were pretty confused. Wasn’t he in the next room? Why didn’t we just go meet him?

Well, all the things they didn’t say on the phone: He wasn’t at the office, but we’d be going out to the children’s home to meet him and spend the day with him, not just for a few minutes in the office. They also didn’t know we had a car, but were thrilled that we could just drive the social worker out there ourselves! So we got back in the car, and Stephen patiently (and awkwardly) drove us over an hour to the children’s home, with late directions from the staff member, who also mixed up her right and left every time, in Bangkok traffic. All this resulted in us having to back out of a toll lane on a Bangkok highway, and other significant stressors. I’m pretty thankful Stephen is the most relaxed, most patient person I know.

The children’s home was also full of surprises for us. First, it was huge: about 250 children all under age six, cared for by about fifty staff members and five social workers. They are incredibly organized, and incredibly kind. They cared for all the kids so well, and we were just thanking the Lord for them every moment of the day.

They gave us a bag of goodies of his: a bracelet he was wearing when we arrived at the home, his first stuffed animal, his toothbrush because he loves to brush his teeth, and a half-burned candle from his second birthday. They also gave us a photo album that we will treasure forever. I can’t quite capture how incredible it is: pages and pages of photographs from his time in the home, from the day he arrived until the day we did. An incredible gift.

And then we went to meet him. I’ll never forget that.

He’s incredibly adorable, and did quite well warming up to us. They had been showing him a photo album of us we made, and they had taught him that we were mom and dad in both English and Thai. They also showed him a video we’d sent, with Stephen playing two songs on the guitar and me reading a book to him. (We sing those two songs every night before bed and read that book at least twice a day still. He loves them.)

We spent the day playing with him, laughing and running around. He did incredible adjusting. We just relished it.

During his nap time, the social worker sat down with us and told us the names of his primary caregivers and best friends, so we could add names to the photos in the album. She also gave us contact information for many of his friends that were adopted to various countries–Denmark, France, Germany, and Belgium–so we could be in touch with those families if we wanted to in the future.

He was practically famous at the home, mostly for his expressions. He’s incredibly expressive and joyful, and he drew everyone’s attention. And he’s ours!

That day, we left around 5pm as they went for dinner. Stephen and I rushed off to the store to purchase the things we still needed. It was a frantic night of buying a car seat, bedding for him, a bike seat; all the things that will be more challenging to buy in Mae Sot or that we needed immediately, particularly now that we knew his size.

And then we crashed, thrilled for the next day.

languages schlanguages: two for one.

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Our language woes continue.

Yes, woes. Perhaps it’s a day where it’s not feeling like language successes are abundant, but also just that language learning continues to be so much of our life is woe in itself. Many years of efforts and woes!

And now, it’s two for one! Two language for one person. Every week.

In hopes of being placed with our adopted child soon, we wanted to learn some basic Thai phrases, specifically helpful for working with children. We began taking Thai classes at the end of April.

Here’s what this looks like: every Friday morning we have two teachers come to our home for two hours. Stephen starts with Burmese for one hour, while I take Thai in the next room. Then we swap.

While this is happening, three ladies are making bread in the kitchen, often listening to Burmese music and occasionally popping over for questions. For the first half-hour, a ten-year-old comes to do his daily guitar lesson on the iPad, so we hear chords being strummed (…this is too gentle a word for this guys’ passionate playing). And one woman sews in the Housewares room on an industrial sewing machine that sounds similar to a jet engine, while she also listens to Burmese music from her phone.

It’s a bit of an intense couple hours.

But, here’s what we’ve learned:
Kids learn language faster than adults, so our hope is that our child will pick up Burmese & English very quickly. That’s a good thing, because we aren’t too fast at it. (Coming from the two of us in year five and six of Burmese language study, that seems obvious.)

Your third language IS easier. People always said that, and I was skeptical. But now that Burmese really does have a place to go, so does Thai! The best way I know how to describe it is that my brain finally created a card catalogue for languages, and it now knows exactly where to put that. I’m not forcing it in: it just eases right into the system. So that’s nice.

With Burmese, we started from the alphabet, which just takes awhile. Not only are you learning sounds that your mouth struggles to make, but you’re drawing swirls and trying to memorize them and give them meaning. While incredibly difficult, I think this was the best way for us to learn Burmese: I love that we can read and write, and I’m a strong believer that it makes us more accurate in our pronunciation, understanding, and communication.

That said, we aren’t doing that with Thai. Honestly, we don’t believe we’ll be in Thailand forever. We feel a more long-term commitment to Burmese, and we mostly just want the capacity to communicate at a basic level in Thai.

So, all that to say: we’re figuring out what works for us, what we need, and what we have capacity for. Language teaches you so much on so many levels. It can show you how dumb you are and how smart you are, nearly at the same time!

And we’re going for it! Here’s to two-for-one language learning.

becoming a family of three!

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I can honestly say this adoption process has been
the weirdest, most confusing, most challenging thing I’ve ever done.

More weird than when we put a deceased woman into our car and drove her to the hospital because I couldn’t convince the family–either due to language or culture or grief–that she was, in fact, deceased.

More weird than when one of my neighbors tried to convince me to buy an old computer monitor and “turn it into” a television.

More weird than every day in our life of weirdness.

More confusing than living in another culture or learning two languages at the same time.

More challenging than moving overseas at age 22 as a newly-married couple. More challenging than attempting to live between two or three cultures.

We have known so little in this entire process. We have guessed so much.We have hoped so very, very much.

And oh, have we waited.

But it’s here! Or at least we think it’s here, to the best of our weird, confusing, challenging knowledge!

____________________

I haven’t known when to say what for years now.

We announced our adoption at Christmas 2016, when we were told we were on the waiting list and might receive a call at any point. That was clearly pretty far ahead of schedule.

We went back to America in the spring of 2017, with hopes that it would be our last trip, and we might meet our child that summer. That was clearly pretty far ahead of schedule, too.

And then we answered questions with very vague answers (similar to the vague answers we were receiving) for a couple years.

And then we started getting pieces of information at the end of 2018. And we weren’t sure what to tell people or when.

We heard we had been matched with a son, but we didn’t have a name or a photo or a file, or really anything that felt too official. So do we tell anyone?

We thought more information was just around the corner, so we’d wait until then to tell everyone.

But it was two months more months of silence. And then a call that went something like this:
Caseworker: Hi, this is _____. Do you remember me?
(Insert emotions of ?!?!?! We wait to hear from you EVERY DAY! YES, WE REMEMBER YOU.)
Stephen: Yes, I remember you..
Caseworker: Can you send me your new passport and work permit and visa papers?
Stephen: Yes, we can email you that.
Caseworker: He looks just like you! (And then other things not understood…)
Stephen: …Who? Who looks like me?
Caseworker: Did you see the photo? I open the photo and he looks just like you and your wife!
Stephen: Who?
Caseworker: The little boy. You have not seen the photo?
Stephen: No. we didn’t get a photo. Did you send a photo?
Caseworker: Congratulations! I’m so excited! I want to tell you congratulations!
Stephen: Uh, thank you…yes…you say congratulations…for what? Are we…moving forward?
Caseworker: He looks just like you! Ok, bye. Send the work permit and visa.

(Just for the record, we have now seen a photo. Most people who have seen it agree he doesn’t look too much like either of us. Which we are okay with… which is why we started the adoption process in a foreign country in the first place.)

But after this call, again: do we tell people? What do we tell them?
There is a boy…he might be ours? He might look like us?

And then a file, finally. With a photo and a name, but still not a lot of specifics: What is next? Can we share this? Is he really ours, or is this a suggestion?

And then it just all started rolling forward.
Can you send a final yes? YES!
Can you send him a book of photos of you and your home? YES!
Can you come meet him next week? YES!

  • (Here we are sending off our photo book and a short video!)

And if things go as we understand from a jumbled phone call, we’ll be meeting our son this week, and hopefully bringing him home to Mae Sot about a week after that!

While we still aren’t very sure of much, we feel it’s all certain enough to tell you: We’re going to have a son!

We have so many questions, partially because we’ve never been parents nor adopted before; but primarily because communication is extremely limited. We are very unsure of how these next two weeks will go. We are making plans to be in Bangkok for…awhile. Our neighbors are graciously rolling with it, too!

We still aren’t sure if we can share photos or names or information, so we’re just passing on that he’s adorable! He’s just under two and half years old.

Our friends are excited to meet him. We’ve been telling the neighbor children that we’ll have a son soon, and that he won’t know Burmese but they’ll have to teach him! They are excited, telling their parents about their new friend.

And we can’t wait. We can hardly believe it.

And maybe we’re a little scared to believe it, to get too excited; considering all the weird, confusing challenges this process has held.

Our current plan: we leave on Sunday! We meet him Thursday! We wait for approval, and then we take him back to our home, with neighbors thrilled to meet him, to a room that’s been awaiting him for months and months.

And we become a family of three 😍

the reinforcers: new staff!

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Over two years ago, Stephen began working with two teenage guys, training them weekly in sound reinforcement. We soon found out it was important they learned some other skills, and it just became an apprenticeship. Stephen taught them a variety of things from soldering cables to wrapping cables, from saving files to typing in Burmese, from how starting up a computer to using iCloud. He taught them how to set up speakers and ground a system if you’re getting shocked. He taught them how to run a projector and even to appreciate coffee on long production days!

After just over a year of training, one of The Reinforcers graduated and needed to move on to a full time job. His job in town is every day until six, so he wasn’t able to to work with Stephen anymore. We were down to just one Reinforcer.

We have been looking and considering who we might add into the mix. For this year, we didn’t feel an urgency, and more importantly, didn’t see too many options due to age, maturity, and other factors. Stephen instead focused on Pyint Soe, strengthening the relationship, expanding his skills, and investing in his future.

This year, he’ll be heading into tenth grade, which is the final year of school here. It’s an intense year as the students prepare for Myanmar’s final exam–a six-subject test spread over six full days, with a pass rate of around 30%. Students often have extracurricular study early in the morning and late into the evenings, sometimes over the weekend.

We still aren’t sure how this will play out for Pyint Soe, and we’ll do our best to continue investing in him in the coming year and hopefully further. But it did become clear over this summer that we needed to have another trainee moving in. And thanks to a few projects Stephen has taken on, he’s been able to train Pyint Soe further and cover two weekly salaries!

Enter La Pyint. This is Pyint Soe’s younger brother. {Let me interject here to say this community turns out to be just a few big families. Everyone is everyone’s brother and cousin and auntie.} We’ve known La Pyint since he was six. Now, at fifteen, we both felt like he was at a great place to move into the role. He’s shown so much consistency in the past year, coming to cajon lessons weekly and English lessons once or twice a week. He’s also been increasingly interested in computers and music both.

And since they get along quite well, they were both excited for the collaboration!

Now, they’ll both be attending church with us weekly, continuing to learn and manage the sound system & PowerPoint. They also train one night per week on basic computer skills & typing in Burmese. Currently, Pyint Soe has another day or two a week he works on recording projects with Stephen, which we hope to bring La Pyint into with time.

Both of them are taking intensive English classes with me over the summer, and La Pyint will continue to cajon. Stephen hopes to meet with them monthly for focused mentoring when the school year begins.

And we love them. They are like brothers to us: making us laugh, teasing us, & teaching us. We are getting to know them more and more with each week, and we love that.

And while I was initially skeptical of the name, it’s grown on me. We are loving The Reinforcers and all it’s growing to become! It’s still serving to invest in teenage guys in our community, and perhaps doing so more than we even hoped. We are thrilled that one young man was able to finish high school, and that we have another preparing to graduate in just under a year. We are really hopeful for what the boys are seeing & absorbing; we are hopeful for their futures.

Meet The 2019 Reinforcers.

when easter looks different, too.

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It has taken some time to see, or maybe just to accept: holidays look different here. So many holidays and traditions are based around family, and we just don’t have that.

So many others can be replicated, but should they? And are they worth it? Take for instance EVERY TRADITIONAL HOLIDAY FOOD FOR EVERY HOLIDAY. I could spend the entire month of December trying to recreate flavors from scratch, that in the end taste vaguely “different” and you aren’t sure why. And rather than cherishing traditions, you’ve really just sweat your way through the month in the kitchen.

And Easter, too—it just looks different. And each year I accept that a little bit more, and I’ve even begun to love it. It makes me laugh, at how we’re just so close and yet. so. far.

{I’ll tell you, those Instagram posts of cute families in front of clean front doors with their hair blowing in the spring breeze: we’re so very, very far from that.}

So this, THIS was our 2019 Easter. In all it’s chaos and glory.

I left at 7am to pick up Thida to go to the market, because we usually go early on Sunday morning, and we couldn’t do last week because of the nationwide water flight. And next week I’ll be away. So Easter it is! I went ahead and just wore my Easter dress to the market, and walked right on through who-knows-what. And then we went to our version of Costco or Sams, which is also my least favorite place in Mae Sot. Really, my LEAST favorite.

Also at 7am, Stephen met with the two Reinforcers. (Yes, two! We hired another Reinforcer, and Easter was his first week because…I’m not sure why.) They worked together to make PowerPoint slides for church, and then we had a quick meeting with them at 8:30, as we unloaded the car of community groceries and reloaded it with the community!

Stephen left for church with the Reinforcers and the first load of attendees. I finished gathering things for Sunday school.

By 10am, we were all gathered in church for the service. It was just crossing over 100 degrees Farenheit outside, and we were inside, with doors closed to not upset the neighbors with the loud music. It was indescribably hot. I have only two ways to describe it to you: I stood there in my Easter dress, which has been my Easter dress for three years running because that isn’t really a thing here, and sweat is running down…everything. Quite literally every person in the church had sweat spots on their shirts, and we’re all wiping our brows. It was unbelievably and indescribably hot.

Halfway through the singing, one of the toddlers fell out of his chair. He had fallen asleep sitting up and just tipped over. Whoops. I picked him up and tried to get him back to sleep on my shoulder, at which point our two combined body heats were about to put me over the top. I stepped outside, and responded with relief.

Let me just tell you, when temperatures over 100 degrees and a blaring sun feel like a cool relief to you, you might be on the verge of dying.

After singing, I slipped out with the kids and Pwin Pyu Hey, who I’d ask to come help me with reading the verses. We did a life-size gift-wrapped version of Resurrection Eggs, including an attempted crown of thorns I’d made that morning & left me with a lovely little jar of roses.

And then we made tombs.

We built tombs out of chocolate wafers and rolled a chocolate Oreo in front of it. Then we looked in and said, “Is Jesus in there?”…”NOPE! He’s not here!” 😂

After the service, they handed out hard-boiled eggs.

(It’s the beginning of American traditions making their way here, but just not quite arriving yet. So we just eat hard-boiled eggs together.)

And then we ate lunch together, and I can honestly say I have no idea what it was. It had coagulated blood in it, some sort of fish flubber that translates literally to “fish oil,” and what Stephen & I both thought were noodles but turned out to be bamboo shoot.

And then we had ice cream for an Easter special! Strawberry, lime sherbet, and rainbow. We still live in Asia!

We made it home with everyone dropped off by about 1:30pm, and showered before the kids arrived at 2pm to play.

We played with trains and the new dollhouse; we played CandyLand and Monopoly Junior. And we made Easter bunnies.

And then Stephen and I went for dinner when everything finally wrapped up for the day. We finished the day working on our current puzzle and sharing some seashell-shaped chocolate, because egg-shaped chocolate didn’t make these shelves.

That’s Easter, folks. We didn’t embrace traditions; but we did love embracing this community and our church home. And we still hold the same truth of the Resurrection, the same hope of new life; and we just often find ourselves on the untraditional side of those truths!

celebrations.

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On Saturday, we finished our twelve-week course in self-defense! I was pretty proud of us all: we finished, we did well. We learned what we were capable of and got quite a bit stronger. We also made plans for being safer and smarter as individuals and as a group.

That’s a lot of wins!

So we wanted to celebrate. I told them we’d be going out to lunch afterward, but I took them to a bit of a “special” place. It’s a new place in town that Stephen and I have come to love: they have some delicious spicy salads, grilled meats, and smoothies made with all real fruit (and you get to choose your level of sweetness, which is very, very helpful here). Anyway, I asked them if they were up to try it on us, and they agreed.

When we got there, one of the ladies said, “Oh, this place is expensive.” I told her I’d picked it and I’d be paying for it. I said a friend had told me about it, and right away I wanted to bring the women. I knew they’d love it, and I just wanted them to enjoy it.

{I also feel like I’m saying this all the time recently: the person who chooses it, deals with it. If I choose the restaurant, I pay for it without any hullabaloo. The same goes for your casino bill: you choose to play, you figure out how to pay it. The list goes on, but somehow I’m still saying it.}

Anyway, we had a lovely meal. They loved the smoothies. They loved the crab & papaya salad. They loved the grilled chicken and chicken salad. It was lovely and fun.

And for the record, it was $44 for ten women to “go crazy” with smoothies and salad!

And then we hopped in the car.

“That was expensive, wasn’t it? How much was it?”
“I’m not telling.”
“I saw that this salad cost 40 baht, and this kind of smoothie was 50 baht…”
“Stop counting. Stop doing the math. I chose the restaurant, I paid for it. It’s what I wanted to do!”
{in whispers} “Some of the smoothies were 70 baht…”
“STOP COUNTING.”

Later that evening, some of the ladies were together at our nails night. One of the ladies said the lunch was so delicious and she loved going there. Another agreed that it was some of the best food she’d had. I told them I knew they’d love it: I had known it right when I went!

It was a good day.
And it was a good class.

I love that over twelve weeks I got to really know these women, discussing fears and challenges in their lives. We talked about their marriages and their families and their concerns in the community. We talked about their worth and how we can stick together.

I love that we hit each other with pads and sometimes accidentally hit each other for real. I love that we learned groundwork with each other: sitting on each other and tackling each other. I love that we broke down barriers, so that by the last week they weren’t apologizing every time they hit me or had to sit on me. (They still apologized some. But we made progress!)

Thankful for the organizations that made this possible and invested in our friends, told them they matter, and loved them well!