on the house – Page 7

countdown to christmas: saturday.

December 26, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos 2 Comments

It’s really hard to believe this is our fifth annual Christmas in this lovely community. We scheduled our trip to the States to allow us to be here for Christmas, also knowing that arriving back in mid-December would make for a couple busy weeks. The chaos didn’t disappoint and even sent us for a few surprise spins, but was overall lovely.

Amidst the celebrations, I said very little. So now I’m going to do a little series of our countdown to Christmas, starting last Saturday, 19 December—a week after we arrived back from the States.

Really, we started Friday. After making our weekly Flour & Flower deliveries, we headed to the market for a few hours.

Thida is our life saver here. She’s quite the go-getter, so we asked her to take the lead. She chose the menu, dictated the time tables, and gave us tasks!

She thought mohinga would be a good option for this year. In short, mohinga is a fish soup, and according to Wikipedia, considered to be the national dish of Myanmar.

At the market we purchased:
400 spoons
30 kilos of fish
20 kilos of onions
1 kilo of chili
the add-ins: garlic, lemongrass, green beans, curry powder, fish paste, fish sauce, ginger, cilantro, & mint
so, so much oil
3 bags of fried bean chip-like crisps
5 boxes of water
32 kilos of oranges
and, get this: 75 kilos of noodles. 75 kilos!

We carted all this home, and got to work right away Friday evening. The fish—whole fish—were washed and put into the largest wok I’ve ever seen.

With water, spices, fish sauce, and fish paste, they were boiled over night, with a table on top.

One thing we did not consider was the placement of this fish-filled wok, which was feet from our bedroom window. For those who don’t know, fish paste is a fermented fish concoction—it is whole fermented fish ground into something that looks like concrete and smells, to Westerners, beyond the words of stink.

We chose to sleep with our window closed for the night.

The next morning, friends came over by 7am to begin stirring and cooking. We started by sorting through the fish to pick out meat for the soup, and leave the rest to be ground into…something.

This was a new experience for me. I worked very hard not to gag throughout, and did well. They only made a few comments that it was evident I didn’t know what I was doing!

We then chopped: onions, garlic, ginger, lemongrass, beans, cilantro, & mint.

We also added banana stalk from our yard—the whole stalk chopped down and chopped to bits with a machete, then boiled in spices.

We chopped for hours.

We stirred for hours.And then we filled 300 bowls with noodles and toppings!

We had a little pow-wow beforehand for us to wish the community merry Christmas, tell them how thankful we are for them, and share the Christmas story in brief. We also invited them to to a few events through the week.And then we ate!

The 300 bowls were gone quickly, and we resorted to our backup supply of bowls and bags to send home extras with friends. We’re estimating about 350 were served with leftovers, which is pretty epic.

We then crashed into bed for Sunday…

that happy ending.

October 10, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, kelli, on the house 1 Comment

Remember this story?

It was a sad one. We were desperately waiting for a happy ending as we brought food to this family week after week.

In some ways, a happy ending is forming. The husband is no longer on crutches and can walk again. The family has received some compensation from his job, and that has helped them make ends meet while he cannot work.

And this week, an opportunity presented itself. A friend of ours here in Mae Sot was looking for someone to look after her kids for a few hours each morning while she & her husband go to Thai class. Than Dar Oo seemed a great fit–she speaks Thai, to help them practice and to teach their kiddos; she is good with kids and can bicycle to their house. Today we went over to meet the family and get her introduced, and she starts Monday.

It’s just a couple hours a day, and she’ll make about $15 a week. They received compensation of about $300 total, which is nothing in comparison to his injuries and the months of work he was forced to take. They still live in a hut, which flooded just a few weeks ago.

I can confidently say this isn’t a great season for them, and you can see the exhaustion in their smiles.

But I guess I never know when to write: what happy ending am I looking for? What are they looking for?

I think a happy ending isn’t what I should have been looking for. Instead, it was a just a breath of fresh hope.

We can hope that they have seen Jesus in the rice we’ve delivered to their door or the balloons we shared with their kiddos. We can hope that they saw Jesus in the rides we gave them all around town while he was unable to walk. We can hope they see Jesus as we try to help them find work and go to an interview with her at 8am on Saturday. We can hope that they will continue to see Jesus in the home of this family she works for.

So here’s to a breath of fresh hope on their little home.

spoons.

August 19, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

After hosting our first Bingo night in the community a few months ago, we realized it was a huge hit. We play every week before house church, just for pieces of candy and mostly with the kids. But occasionally, we play with the adults, for “real prizes.”

This weekend’s Bingo night was inspired by the birthday party we attended a couple weeks ago, and our not-so-sly attempt to gift spoons to this family without simply giving them to them.

Enter the elaborate plan to host a Bingo night for the adults and a movie night for the kids outside. We packed a Bingo prize table with $20 worth of items from around town, complete with glass cups, bowls, baby powder, laundry detergent, soap, small zipper pouches, notebooks, hats, razors, hair clips, and, of course–spoons.

I felt a bit like my grandmother, who used to always play Bingo with us and have a basket of goodies. I imagine this is what she felt like as she picked out little treasures she knew we’d be excited for. It’s also a bit of a social experiment to see which prizes go first; it helps to see what people might like for Christmas gifts! The glasses, bowls, & spoons were the first to go, but we can happily say that Pyo Pyo went home with a pack of six spoons.

Bingo night a hit, as was the Aladdin movie night outside. And most importantly, we successfully gifted spoons!

waiting for the happy ending.

August 12, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

Their life is like a movie.

A movie where the unfolding drama is surreal, you hurt for them, and just want the credits to roll with a happy ending.

But it’s a part of our story, too; and for so many of the people who make it possible for us to be here, it’s a part of your story. It’s a part of the global story of poverty and development, and hopefully a part of the story of the coming Kingdom.

They are a family of four. A father, mother, a little boy of three, and a little boy nearing 1 year. We met them when we first moved here and they lived in the huts across the street. They are connected in the community, and for those who know some of the community & of our bread delivery venture–the mother, Than Dar Oo, is Pyo Pyo’s sister and Nyein Nyein’s sister-in-law.

The father went to Bangkok to work first. When their oldest son was under a year old, Than Dar Oo followed and left their son, Doh Doh, with the grandparents. We watched him grow and laugh alongside his cousin.

They all returned to Mae Sot early this year with the newest baby in tow. They moved in with the grandparents–Than Dar Oo’s mother and her step-father, with Doh Doh, now 3.

First there were some abuse issues in the extended family. It was tense and we weren’t sure how to be involved. Than Dar Oo and her family moved out, down the road from us. But Doh Doh wouldn’t come. He didn’t know them and refused to stay with his parents; it was painful to watch for us, and I can’t imagine it for them.

The grandparents were quite exhausted of an ornery toddler. And to further complicate things, he liked us because he knew us. He’s been offered to us to adopt more times than I can count. It’s complicated.

Then Than Dar Oo came down with typhoid in June. Typhoid? Really? She was admitted to be given shots daily, and we helped them make the treks back and forth from the clinic for a week, moving dad and baby and grandma back and forth.

Just weeks later, we got a call from them at the hospital. She said they were already at the hospital, but could we come? We were pretty confused, but went and started the search to find them.

Than Dar Oo had been called to the hospital because a roof had fallen on her husband at work. They had dropped off at the ER with $60. He had a large neck wound with more stitches than I could count; it looks Frankenstein-like. He also had a broken hip or femur, which required surgery and a bolt to be put in. He was in the hospital for a week and his bills were over $300. Than Dar Oo did a great job negotiating the bill with social services and was able to give the $60 his work had provided. We simply helped with rides to and from the hospital each day.

Now he is at home, in a hut with crutches during monsoon season. He can’t work now, and we’re not sure when he will be able to. She has a one-year-old and her husband to look after.

So we started providing them with food each week. We buy about $10 worth of food, including rice, fish paste, noodles, and a few vegetables or fruit. The first they were shy, saying they didn’t need it.

The second week they took it gratefully.

The third week, we arrived as she was “making dinner” of chicken-flavored snack crackers and chopped onions.

This was about the time we learned about the bigger problem. She had gone to his work to get his pay–they owed him for nearly three months worth of work, about $600. And they said they didn’t have it and wouldn’t be paying it.

Than Dar Oo went to talk to a Burmese workers’ association here in Mae Sot, and did a great job taking the initiative. They both have papers, which is an incredibly huge blessing, so the Thai government has a responsibility to defend them. They have kept records over the three months, so they have evidence of what is owed in pay; they have the records from the hospital to prove the accident.

But they are still Burmese. And he is still on crutches, they don’t have money for living expenses now, and they aren’t sure what the future holds.

So this Monday & Tuesday found us at the workers’ association office, putting in official complaints and files and then negotiating with the employer. The negotiations went something like this:

We’d like 150,000 baht ($4,225) in compensation, in 3,000 baht ($90) increments per month.
We’ll give you 15,000 baht ($422) over the next two weeks.

There is only so much we can do. But we can help get them back and forth in the car rather than her biking him across town, with crutches and baby. We can help make sure they have food now, until they know about tomorrow. We can help Doh Doh recognize his mom and encourage time with her. We can try to bring restoration and redemption to pain and deceit. We can pray for God to be their defender.

We can pray for a happy ending!

It’s been hard to see this family. It’s been hard to see his face cringe in pain. It’s been hard to break down the barriers of what their needs actually are and how we can help.

But I’m so thankful to be here. I’m so thankful for people who support the community fund and allow us to buy food for a family that is so desperately thankful for rice and fish. I’m so thankful for the people that pay for our rent and food and car, so we can spend days sitting alongside them, doing life with them. It’s a messy, sad, painful life for them right now, but we can do that with them, too.

at the tea shop: part four.

July 22, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

We had a really lovely trip to the tea shop on Sunday.

I’m not sure what made it particularly lovely–it was rainy, which I do love; particularly with all the cute little umbrellas.

We also had our usual group, plus Nyein Nyein’s husband, Kyaw Htet, who had a surprise day off of work. And then it was just nice conversation, beautiful laughter, and realizing how much you really love the people you do life with.

weird days.

July 14, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

I can’t make these things up.

Sometimes I wish I could…so that I could also un-make them up. But I just can’t.

On Sunday morning, we headed out to the tea shop, per usual. There are five regulars that come along with us: we’ve chosen them in different ways and for different reasons; mostly that it works. They all are quite young, from 16 to our age. Three are mothers, so there is a three-year-old & four-year-old that come along. The third mother is pregnant and due in December. Two of the girls are students at local high schools. They are all becoming fast friends with us an help us practice and learn Burmese. One of them is a small-business owner and buys her ingredients and items for the week of sales while were in the market.

Anyway, that is the usual.

This was not a usual day, as we were to learn. A grandmother in the community asked to come along with her grandson who was sick. There’s a clinic with a Burmese-speaking doctor in the market area.

One of the 16-year-old girls’ mothers also asked to come along for some special purchases this week. Despite this now totaling nine adults and three children, it felt do-able. We went for it, dropping off the patients at the clinic first and heading out to the tea shop.

But everything was just off. Nothing went normally and we were all just out of sync.

In reality, Stephen and I’s lives hardly have a sync, so we weren’t phased. We just sorted enjoyed what we could and took what we got! And then we headed off to the hospital for one of the women to visit a friend that was having complications recovering from delivering twins just a couple days ago.

And that’s when we lost the window out of our car.

For most people, your car window is a little square of glass at elbow height. Our car is kind of one big window. So when we lost our window, we lost the side of our car. In the middle of the main road, no less.

When it fell, Stephen thought it was something off the roof of our car, where we put the excess market purchases that don’t fit in with all the people. Thus, he didn’t panic or anything–he just slowly pulled over to pick up the onions that had fallen. Or the ginormous piece of glass, which by sheer miracle didn’t break.

We were also thankful that it fell out right near Canadian Dave’s restaurant, where our good friend Dave let us store this ginormous piece of glass for an hour or so while we took everyone home. Since we already had loads of people and plenty of market goods, we were a little too full for a heavy piece of glass very nearly the length of the car.

Our priceless moment on the way home was passing our Burmese teacher–who already thinks our lives are little odd–sitting outside of his house, who gave us the BEST face of bewilderment. {Side note: Stephen left his phone at class the other day, so our teacher returned it by simply driving towards our house and asking where we lived to all the people he passed. And he found us!}

After dropping everyone off, we felt like we needed to try to get the window fixed as soon as possible. It is monsoon season after all, so it was only a matter of time before our car flooded. {Another side note: did I mention that our door took in water about a week ago? The seal on the window isn’t great, so after a few rainy days, we had a door full of water, like enough for fish to survive and enough to get sloshed on you when we turned corners. A hole in the bottom of the door now solves that problem. Sort of.}

We headed off to Car Shop #1, which was closed to eat and for a holiday. Hard to say which one. I will say that the phrase “It’s always a holiday in Thailand” is not unfounded; this is the country of holidays. But they directed us to Car Shop #2.

Car Shop #2 claims they don’t work on windows, despite the selection of windshields in the corner.

We visited Car Shop #3 today, which appeared to specialize in glass, but really might only make glass cabinets? We aren’t really sure. They might not even be a car shop, but directed us to Car Shop #4.

{Yet another side note: When I say “directed,” in all of these scenarios that involved a worker at one shop getting on a motorbike and leading us to the next one. It has a very small town feel, I must say.}

It was at Car Shop #4 that they agreed to fix the window. However, it was also here that we didn’t know where the car shop was. Stephen was in the car and followed the unknown-person-on-the-motorbike to the shop, but I was just planning to meet him there on our motorbike. When he’s not where I thought he’d be, I get this call:

“If I send you a map, do you think you could find me?”

Uhh…we clearly did this backwards, because there is very little of chance of that working. Apparently the motorbike had taken him down a number of little backroads in a neighborhood, and he wasn’t sure where he was.

Thus ensued me driving the motorbike up and down tiny little one-lane roads while shouting on speaker phone what I could see and what he could see. Thankful it is a small town after all, and I did find Stephen!

And now our car is mostly-sealed yet again, without a downpour in between!

on hope, yet again.

July 4, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house Leave a Comment

If I could choose one word that God is continually shaping in me, challenging me with, and defining my life by, it would be hope.

It’s a tricky concept. I first encountered it in my political science studies; politics and development is a bit of a depressing field. And then I ended up here…so I guess it’s all fitting.

I hold onto Romans 8 as if my life depends on it; because many days my faith does. I lean on the fact that I am no different from anyone else or anything else when I sense the groan for something different. I rest in the fact that we are waiting for our adoption as sons; that we are witnessing only the first fruits and this is actually bondage. I anticipate the fact that these sufferings will not even compare to the glory revealed, and that by nature & rule, I hope in what I cannot see.

This is where I am currently ruminating yet again: the idea of hoping for what I cannot see.

I was talking with a friend over lunch, discussing how we stay “balanced.” There is an equilibrium to be reached. On one side rests all the hopes for God to do incredible things here, rejoicing the little smiles and joys and relationships; celebrating the “successes.” The other side lies all the sorrows–fights and abusive relationships; death and sickness and suffering; poverty; human trafficking.

To state the obvious, we always fighting for equilibrium. I think this is why it’s so difficult, though: first, we work in a sad place. I think it’s safe to say the sadness is more prevalent than our lives previously, but also more likely to come to our front door–quite literally. When your goal is to reach out to the sad crevices of your little border town, you’re inevitably going to see it more. And then, most significantly, the sorrows are so tangible. They are so real. They are real people, real relationships, real blood, real hunger, real traffickers and those being trafficked. You can’t deny it when it’s right there in front of you, at your door.

The hopes, the joys that bring us to open our door day after day, they are less tangible. We hope that God is answering our prayers for our little house church each week. We hope that these relationships are bringing hope and change and goodness. We hope that marriages are healing and abuse is less and children’s futures are bright. We hope that love, trust, safety, goodness, grace, and peace surround us and this home and these relationships.

But we just don’t know. We innately can’t–because by definition we hope in what we cannot see. For hope that is seen is not hope.

So when I try to find my equilibrium, I’m dealing with these hopeful-can’t-be-seen bricks on one side and these very-real-very-messy bricks on the other.

Most days I do okay. Somehow hope comes out on top, as just a little taste of it being what it is: HOPE.

But I have noticed that once I question it–just the slightest, tiniest doubt that I am hoping for nothing–and one side comes tumbling down to nothing. If I couldn’t see them before, now they actually are absolutely nothing. And those messy realities win.

———————————————

Perhaps a month ago, we were headed to the tea shop for our usual Sunday morning snacks & tea. As one of the women climbed out of the car at the market, she (and perhaps a few more) noticed that her zipper had split on her sarong. Just for a cultural context; you have a long sarong that you wrap around in front of you, and some of us “cheat” and get them sewn into a more proper skirt with a zipper. It is less risky for it falling off…until the zipper splits, I suppose. She was clearly embarrassed, as culturally this is a very, very big deal. I tried to search for a safety pin with no luck; I attempted a bobby pin, with clearly no luck (because it was an obviously bad idea). And then she resorted to carrying her friends little handbag on her hip to cover the spot.

It was awkward. Imagine having a button open on your shirt and carrying a small coin purse right in front of it to hide the gap, perhaps drawing more attention than if you just walked by with skin exposed.

A few minutes of this and I had another idea: my purse slings across my shoulder. While it generally hits her 4’10” frame at her knees, I could adjust it shorter to fit just over the split zipper.

I described my idea and we sorted it out on the side of the road while the other ladies blocked everyone’s view. And of course Stephen stood off to the side as if he didn’t know what was going on to make her feel the least uncomfortable.

Why do I tell you this story, in the midst of some jabber about hope?

Because I am holding on to this story, weeks later. She carried my purse all day; we giggled as we tried to communicate over the whole mess. Every time my phone would ring or buzz, we’d have to sort it out. Every time I needed money, she was required to know what i needed. We laughed and miscommunicated and stayed by each others’ side.

And it required trust in a new way: her trust for me to help her in an awkward situation, and my trust for her to have all of my valuables right by her side all day. We trusted each other.

I had hope for where these relationships might go and how God might use all the unseens bring such great glory to His name.

It’s a weird story. There are a lot of cultural implications that can’t be communicated. And maybe the idea that the day one of my neighbors’ skirts split was suddenly a deep connection point for us just seems odd to communicate. Almost as odd as the way I feel connected to the woman I helped to clean and shower after she was bloody and beaten up by her husband.

It’s not that we are living here waiting for weird situations, which might be what it looks like.

Instead, it’s trying to put tangibility into these complicated concepts of hope and trust and grace. Sometimes it feels like I am holding up these weird stories, trying to put a story, a feeling, or a moment of reality into so many unseen dreams and prayers and hopes.

Maybe it is a bit like the wind that we can’t see, but can see the effects of it (John 3:8). Or as Lu Xun wrote, “Hope is like a path in the countryside. Originally, there is nothing–but as people walk this way again and again, a path appears.”

As we go over the stories and the faces again and again; a path appears to show us the unseen hope that pushes us forward.

a recap, for when life comes at you fast.

June 4, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

Things have just gone so fast in the community recently. We are nearing the end of a three-month summer…I don’t really know how to describe it, except to just say that our yard & house are the daycare plan, and it’s exhausting. There are so many kids around our house, all day and every day.

But they started school on Tuesday, and we are kind of excited about that.

We can now go outside in the morning and catch smiles and goodbyes, and then enjoy a semi-quiet day, with adults or just two or three children outside . Our evenings are then more community-centered, where we have the energy still left in us to play with the kids and talk with the adults.

The summer chaos and summer heat has been tiring, but we have had a lot of little things that have gone well.

Tea shop visits have been going so well recently. We have a small, constant group we take each week and get to talk with. It is so fun to see these relationships growing. A few weeks back, one of the girls’ zippers split on her side, and she was quite embarrassed. We came up with a quick solution and she wore my purse to sit right on top of the split. It was so cute to see everyone work together, to see the growth of relationships, and just to see trust grow. It amazes me how much time it takes to really know someone and call them friends, particularly with language limitations and challenges; it takes living life together. It takes week after week of little conversations, little memories, and getting to know their quirks and habits.

Two of the girls also came over last Friday to bake dozens of cookies for the team we met in Bangkok. It was fun to see them make themselves at home in the kitchen, and we are dreaming of ways to expand this..

This little guy, Lay Ta Oo, is still around and still absolutely adorable. He loves Stephen and really wants to be just like him—he tries to play instruments, to wear his hat, and really do anything he sees Stephen doing!

Zen Yaw is nearing two, and has really taken to us recently. He learned to say Stephen’s name since we got back from America, and it might be my favorite thing to hear. He loves to call our names and lights up just to have us respond. And since we can understand his level of Burmese, we have great little conversations.

He also heard Stephen practicing songs for church the other day and kept calling and calling his name. I took him in to listen, to which he tried to “la-la-la” along and clapped. It so fun to see him grow & learn.

On a semi-related note, Stephen was asked by someone at Burmese church on Sunday if they could come visit our orphanage. When Stephen looked confused, she said someone else told her we have an orphanage. This kind of made us laugh.

Last week, a young couple, Kyaw Htet & Nyein Nyein, came to bring us a gift. It is probably one of the sweetest gifts we have received from the community! Kyaw Htet works in construction, but mostly does windows and doors; he has actually fixed our windows and doors from child-destruction before! With broken pieces of windows he presumably found from work, he made me a vase!

They know I love flowers and buy them from Daw Ma Oo each Friday, so this was a really sweet, thoughtful gift. I’m not sure I can even explain how much it means to me! We really love this couple, and are really excited they’ll be welcoming their first little babe this winter.

We had our first Bingo night a few weekends ago, and it was such a success!

We hosted it with a small team in town to see how it went…we weren’t sure how much chaos there would be. We had the kids outside playing Bingo with basic English words and playing for snacks, pencils, erasers, and pencil sharpeners.We invited the adults inside the house to play with traditional Bingo cards, since this would not require literacy and was easy to translate into multiple languages since we know our numbers in English, Burmese, Karen, & Thai! It felt the most inclusive. We also had somewhat practical prizes mixed in: snacks, toothpaste, toothbrushes, laundry detergent, soap, baby powder, and dish soap.

They were so excited for the hygiene prizes! It was fun to see everyone get so excited and have fun together. We have a lot of difficulty getting men to participate in activities, but we had a mixed group, which we were so excited about. We hope this is the beginning of a very fun, participatory community activity!

And my last, perhaps weirdest little anecdote, is on hair color. The kids love to color. The love the princess coloring books and often color them to be Caucasian or light-skinned, with blonde or brown hair, even if it’s a generic princess (not Cinderella, for example, who they might be coloring as she is in the movie). It saddens me that they usually don’t color to fit their own beauty. One week during the sermon at church, I gave the kids coloring pages of a little girl praying. Each one color her hair black!

I was really excited, and I can’t even tell you why. Is it because they could actually see themselves as a little girl praying, rather than as an elaborate princess which feels too distant from their lives? Did all of my coloring girls with brown skin and black hair finally convince them that is beautiful? I have no idea, but it gave me great joy. I hope they can see themselves as beautiful, just as God made them!

And so that’s a wrap: it feels like the past couple weeks have really turned a corner into goodness and seeing growth in relationships. Praying that continues and blossoms!

vulnerable.

May 20, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

Last week at our community meal, we told the neighbors about a new weekly event: we’re going to have a bible story, discussion, & prayer each Thursday evening. Our hope is that it will create space for communication, asking questions, and knowing each other better.

This has come out of multiple things, and in some ways is something we’ve wanted to do for a long time. We have been attempting to connect with a local Burmese church each Sunday, but it is more often than not kids coming along with us, and we become the children’s coordinators–or children-quieters. We have had some adults come along, but this involves us trying to help them find the right passages and songs in Burmese. Usually, by the time we find John chapter 4 in five Bibles in another language, the passage has long been read aloud, and everyone else has moved onto the Psalms.

While it felt like it wasn’t ideal–including the fact that we can only fit so many in our little Zuk–we weren’t sure what to do next. But some time in the last year, we felt like God gave us the idea to share the Bible as smaller stories that are part of a larger story. We also felt like it was another opportunity to open up our home, which allows many more to come.

And as our own story here has unfolded, it brought us to this week, and we’ll be hosting the first one.

It feels really scary.

We have put so much of our lives into this community. We have put so much of our hearts into praying for them and opening up our lives to them. And somehow, this feels really risky. I feel vulnerable.

What if no one comes?

What if no one cares?

Per usual, I don’t know.

I just know that we are praying. I know that we have prayed over the words and passages, we have prayed over the translators, we have prayed over the homes and individuals that surround us. We have prayed for our home and this space. We are praying, praying, praying.

And to be honest–I still don’t know what that means. On Saturday at our community meal, we prayed that God would multiply the food so that there would be enough for everyone. I don’t know for sure, but it doesn’t really seem like he chose to answer that; or it didn’t feel like it when we drove around from shop to shop finding curries to deliver to houses.

I don’t know why that is. So we just prayed that he would be glorified in us delivering these curries; that somehow these families would feel more loved and see more of God in the way things played out.

And I guess that’s what we’re looking at for tomorrow. We are praying, and we don’t know how God will answer it.

In case you haven’t put the pieces together from this blog: we don’t know what we’re doing. This is beyond us–beyond our comfort zones, beyond our capacity, and beyond our imaginations. But we serve a God that is far beyond this, and he is good. We believe he is working in the families and homes around us; we believe he is in these relationships.

And we believe that whatever it may look like, He will be here tomorrow in our vulnerability and in this community. Please pray with us!

good days, & then those last thirty minutes.

May 19, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

After completing a two week training in a village, we returned to Mae Sot on Thursday night. After a selling flowers on Friday and a few meetings, we woke up early Saturday for a community day!

We try to have community meals somewhat regularly, but it always depends on the situation. We decided to have one Saturday to officially introduce Kelvin & Laura to the community and to tell everyone about our bible story class starting this Thursday. We also hadn’t done one since Christmas, so it seemed a good opportunity to pull everyone together.

We made the rounds to tell everyone on Friday night, and headed to the market around 8am on Saturday. It was Stephen & I, Kelvin & Laura with Thida & San Aye, who coordinated the meal. Daw Ma Oo, who sells flowers in the market, came along for a ride into the market and grabbed some tea with us first before starting her day of selling.

We spent nearly three hours in the market gathering rice, potatoes, onions, garlic, chicken, spices, bowls, cups, and watermelon. Since we still had to fit six adults and a child in the car on the way home, we loaded up the trunk with “clean” food and put the rest on top of the car–this included 30 kilos of raw chicken, a huge bag of potatoes, and a mysterious red sauce with one bottle broken open.

As we drove through the market for the last few stops, a bloody-watery mix from the chickens began running down the front of the car, streaking the windshield. It was pretty disgusting.

It was about this time that San Aye handed out a piece of watermelon to each of us to eat in the car. Something about the blood running down the windshield, sweat running down our backs, and watermelon juice running down our arms…it was a rough few minutes. Stephen nearly lost it.

After a shower and scrub of the car, we started cooking! It was a fun afternoon while everyone gathered around to chop vegetables and chat while the kids played.

As they started to stir the curry, they asked me for a big spoon. I brought out the two biggest & strongest I had, to which they laughed. I was kind of confused, until they came back with this one…I think we were looking for the word “paddle.” I realized why my two offerings–both out of my kitchen drawer–were clearly ridiculous!

Laura & Kelvin work with a nearby children’s home, and a few of the staff came to help us translate. They’ll also be helping us translate the bible story class each week, which we are so thankful for! They did a great job and it gave us a chance to chat about a few things around the community and just bring everyone together.

The whole day and serving up the food went really smoothly…until the last thirty minutes. By nature of our community moving into surrounding communities, we had waaaaaay more people come to join us! We filled up 200 bowls of food and pretty quickly ran out. This left us to running to buy a few extra curries for the remaining families and the students helping us from the children’s home, which we felt bad for.

So besides the last thirty minutes of chaos and a small food shortage, it was a pretty great day.

We managed to find dinner for ourselves, sweep, mop, and crash into bed by 10:45pm.

Sundays are our usually busy days, so we were up and ready to go to the tea shop by 7:30am. We headed out with a larger-than-usual crew, managed to get a little babe to the clinic and get breakfast.

We usually come back from the tea shop just in time to head off to Burmese church. Because of our busy day on Saturday, we thought we might take a week off.

But things never go as you planned. We had three adults waiting to go with us, and a few kids that aren’t usually permitted to go…so we jumped in the car and went for it.

And it was such a good day! After the songs at the beginning, I usually go off to the side with the kids to play during the sermon. It went really well this Sunday–just giving the kids space to play and having a chance to really love on a few of them as they learn new skills. The kids are always learning, and it is such a privilege to be able to speak life into them and tell them how smart they really are and what they are capable of.

All thirteen of us were in line for our rice & curry after the church service just as the littlest–a 1 1/2 year old I’d been holding for most of the day–decided he was sick and vomited all over both of us.

I tell you, it’s those last thirty minutes. We were doing so well!

It was a good weekend: so many good moments with so many people we love, while we welcome Kelvin & Laura into this lovely mess! We just need to work on those last thirty minutes 🙂