The House Collective

the breakfast club | week seventeen.

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Last week we wrapped up our seventeenth week of The Breakfast Club, and as of last Friday, Thida–with very minimal help from us–has served up 3,070 meals to kids in this community.

3,070!

That is so much rice I can’t even wrap my head around it, even after buying it and lugging it home from the market each week!

Thida is an incredible gift. She is a chef, server, leader, mom, grandma, and friend to each and every child, mom and dad that comes to the door. She understands the power of a steady, healthy meal in the unsteady, unhealthy lives of these kids. She gets why some are served free and some not. She gets why it’s hard to draw lines in the sand. She gets the value of it and the challenge of it; and she’s taking it on day after day with excellence.

And she’s become one of my best friends, in many ways through this endeavor. While we’ve shared the responsibility of early mornings and market trips and planning for feeding, that isn’t what brought us closer. It has been sharing the pain of the poverty of this community.

They ask her for loans, too, and she has to figure out what to do. They tell her their pains and ailments and worries, and she has to find words, too. She has unknowns in her future, too. She has become a confidant on how to handle difficult situations, what to say (in theory and in actual vocabulary!), what to hope for, and what to pray for. I don’t know exactly what she believes, but I know we’re having regular conversations about our prayers and hopes.

__________________________________

Last week as two of the bread ladies came in to bake, they dropped their kids at the door for breakfast & came into the kitchen. As they looked back at the large group of kids gathered around our Thanksgiving leftovers, one of them asked, “Do you just like feeding the kids? Are you happy?”

You see, while Thida gets it, most of the community doesn’t. It’s weird that we serve breakfast for free, only to the kids, and only to the skinny ones. It’s weird that we pour in loads of meat and eggs and pumpkins and beans. It’s weird.

But I was a little confused at her question. Am I happy…today? Am I happy to feed them Thanksgiving food? Am I happy…for what?

And once I understood, I tried to explain. This is in short what I attempted to say in Burmese: Well, yes, it does make me happy to see them eating good food. But, that’s not why we do this. We knew many of the kids were too skinny and not getting enough food. So we told our church about it, and asked if they would help us feed the kids breakfast. We thought about 50 of the kids would be “too skinny.”  Now, it’s more than that, so sometimes I get nervous we won’t have enough money to feed everyone. But, I think it’s really important. If they eat enough food and eat healthy food, they will be smarter. When they get older, I think this will help their lives be easier.

Easier? They asked.

Both of them have recently been in very hard seasons, and we’ve been helping them out. So I felt comfortable to say: I see how hard life is for you. It’s hard to get work, it’s hard to live, it’s hard to live here without papers, it’s hard to have enough money. I hope that if you’re kids eat healthy, life will be easier for them than it is for you.

And while this isn’t the first time we’ve explained The Breakfast Club–maybe more like the one thousandth time?–they seemed to see it. Three thousand meals in, and maybe a couple moms looked me in the eye and got it: it’s a long-term plan.

And it’s enough of a plan we think it’s worth getting up at 5am for. It’s enough of a plan we are going to measure all your kids and put them into a system and keep track of their growth. It’s enough of a plan for us to go to the market every week and buy insane amounts of food. It’s a plan, and it’s working.

We’re 3,070 meals in, folks!

fourteen.

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This girl, who means the world to us, turned fourteen this week.

I know it may seem like she’s my neighbor, a little girl I know, or a friend.

But we love her. Beyond words.

She is the little girl who broke her finger on our porch, with Stephen’s great idea of soaping up steps in the rain. She is the little girl who had a whole bowl of oil dumped on her head in our kitchen. She is the little girl who I imagined as a teenager {in a distant blog I cannot now locate} and now she is.

She is the little girl who was baptized this year with her father, in one of the most redemptive moments in my life. She is one of the best gifts we’ve ever gotten, and she’s not even ours.

She is this little girl…

And this one.

And now she’s this young woman who loves Jesus.

She has grown up right in front of us, right in our home, and she isn’t even ours. What a privilege to be a part of.

We love her. We love the way her family has shown so many signs of redemption over the years, and now functions, despite so many challenges, as a family. We love that we’ve been a part of witnessing it, even in the hardest things we’ve had to witness.

And so we celebrated her big, as a community and as a couple.

Extremely out of the blue on Wednesday, as I decorated her birthday cake, she asked me if we were moving back to America tomorrow. I said no, quite confusedly. She said she had heard we were moving away tomorrow, and she was visibly scared. I asked who or where this rumor had started, but reassured her we were definitely not moving tomorrow. She was so relieved.

I asked Thida about it later–had she heard this? She said no, but that Yaminoo would be so sad if we left. “She loves you so much,” she said.

Ditto.

weekends & sabbaths.

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Friday: I was up at 5am, meeting one of the bread ladies at the door at 5:30. We had our first loaves rising in the oven by 5:45am and our first pans of cinnamon rolls being rolled out by 7:15am.

While baking, we served oranges, soy milk, & vitamins to about forty kids.

One of the batches went funny, and the neighbors absolutely refuse to throw out a mistake. I absolutely refuse to sell one 🙂 So we bake it for the neighborhood, who will generally eat anything. And they did.

But it means that, in total, we kneaded sixteen bowls of dough. We baked 24 loaves of bread & rolled out 174 tortillas. And made 192 cinnamon rolls.

At various points through the morning, I also made twelve flower bouquets. Daw Ma Oo is still away for her chemotherapy & radiation treatment, but the family still needs the money from flower sales. Her sons have been helping to keep the business going, but sometimes ask for help with the bouquet-making.

We baked until 2:30pm, when Pyo Pyo & I climbed in the car for deliveries. There was a break for lunch–about fifteen minutes because Burmese folks eat fast!–and I took a shower while they packaged up the products.

We delivered until 6:30pm, when I joked with Pyo Pyo that we started before sunrise and finished after it. We counted up finances and I skidded off to dinner with friends, followed by two more deliveries. The last deliveries were made at 9:30pm that evening, for a total of thirty-three houses around Mae Sot.

I have absolutely no photos of the entire day, but I survived it, which counts for something! And it was our most profitable Friday yet 🙂

Saturday was relatively uneventful, with only a trip to the bus station at 5:30am with a friend; only one trip to the clinic; only one English class at church; a worship practice that was less than two hours; previous-days-failed-bread served to hungry kids; and two hours of play with only one broken computer.

Yaminoo beat us all six times in a row at Sorry!  And the sunset was gorgeous above a host of kids playing and giggling in the street.

It was a beautiful day in our little neighborhood, for sure.

Sunday saw us to church with a whole lot of excited kids. They were lectured in the car about sitting down, and how they must listen or they will go home. They were told to behave at church or they wouldn’t be returning.

This lecture went unheard.

Within minutes of opening up the back of our car, a kid jumped out into a large, slippery mud puddle, spraying me with water and mud and who-knows-whatelse past my knees, then sliding on his butt through it all. Right outside the front doors of the church.

As I tried to help him up, another 3-year-old was shoved out of the back by the remaining twelve or so kids–who knew our little crew of church-going neighbor kids can create a mob in a second?–and ended up face planting on the concrete from a few feet up.

Fast foward a few minutes, when I’m very muddy and now very wet, holding a naked, bleeding, crying three-year-old as we bandage up his face. Stephen walks out after worship practice to ask, “What happened?!”

Turns out he had also dumped his entire “non-spillable” mug on the church floor when he arrived earlier, so #winning. So thankful our church still loves us, even when we show up with a host of bleeding, muddy, misbehaving kids and make a scene.

I then sat through church soaking wet with said three-year-old on my lap, sleeping from exhaustion while the lump on his forehead and lip grew exponentially. Thankfully, my anger in the car and the blood and mess helped the kids to shape up a bit, so they were extremely well-behaved through church and Sunday school, so…#youwinsomeyoulosesome.

Today, one of our best little friends, Aung Aung Ley, made his way to Bangkok to live with different family members. It’s hard to say if it will be better or not, but either way, he’ll be missed most certainly. Either way, he’s a big part of our lives, has brought many tears and smiles our way. I might even miss him asking every single day if we’ll be playing at 4pm.

And I sit here over a cup of coffee and thank the Lord for weekly Sabbaths, because that weekend alone nearly took me!

hi, it’s us again.

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And then we skipped off to the beach again!

Turns out that every year around this time, it’s just super cheap to hop down to the islands. We found $10 tickets again, and this time we had a couple free hotel nights…and it just seemed too good to be true. We squeezed in a shorter trip between two Flour & Flowers Fridays, and thankfully had the capacity to keep The Breakfast Club, sewing, church, The Reinforcers, and Playhouse going without us!

When we arrived at the hotel, the front desk staff recognized us. Because, yes, it’s us again 🙂 We did get a special fruit treat as returning guests, and they brought Stephen cake on his birthday again. We really can’t lose at this place!

And despite it being rainy season, we had a beautiful experience yet again. It was storming when we arrived, delaying our landing for twenty minutes; and it was storming again when we left. We had gorgeous blue skies for the days in between.

While you run the risk of rain during rainy season, you get a few benefits: everything is in “low season”–less people and less money, so win-win; the sunsets are stellar when you get them through the clouds; and the waves are indescribable–and a bit deadly–but amazing! It’s such fun to be out playing in the water. The undertow is powerful, so you can’t go out too deep, but the waves will crash way over your head at times and tumble you all over the place.

We found this cute little ice cream shoppe with locally-made ice cream and hand-dipped cones that taste so much like iced animal crackers. So it was delicious, and now we are requesting those in the next care package! 😂

still.

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Still.

We are still baking bread and making flower bouquets every Friday. And it’s still profitable! Three women make a days salary + savings on the bread baking, and Daw Ma Oo’s family is still coming together to keep up flower sales and make ends meet while she’s away for cancer treatment.

There are still two ladies sewing in our house three days a week, and usually a sleeping baby within sight. They are still cute as ever.

I’m still teaching Mwei Mwei a few days a week in math, English, and typing; she is reading Burmese books and answering essay questions; and she is taking a Thai class.

Oh, and I’m still an ogre next to all the tiny folks in this community.

This girl is still a part of our lives, day in and day out. And now she’s a teenager, going to church in her lovely outfits with her hair braided and styled. I’m still snapping blurry photos on my phone so I don’t forget the moment I realized she’s grown and beautiful.

We’re still resting one day a week to stay alive. We find pretty places or quiet places or cool places and make a day of it.

light of love: seventh anniversary.

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Last Sunday was the seventh anniversary of our church Light of Love. We attended the usual morning service (9am to 1pm) and the evening celebration service (5:30pm to 10:30pm), so, uhh…that was a lot of church.

But it was really beautiful.

Lots of our neighbors came for the celebration, three of the kids participated in a special song & dance, and I made lots of cake with two of the girls. After singing a few songs, Pastor Ah Tee asked a few people to turn off all the fans, which incited a small amount of panic as I sat surrounded by forty-some people in a space the size of your living room.  They then passed out candles to everyone and we lit them all as we sang and the pastor shared how the church–Light of Love–has been a light to the community for seven years; and how we as the Church are the light of the world. We then all put our candles together, showing the bright light we together emit.

It was a beautiful word picture. We only half-melted during it, and I’m pretty sure it didn’t top too much of 100 degrees in the room, so…bearable. I did get a little worried at the candles, in dirt and in a pan, on the plastic chair. 

And I had another panic when, during the service, a little boy from our community got up for water and tripped over the fan cord–unplugging the fan and nearly falling into the tipsy folding table holding flowers and four cakes. 😳 It was a close one.

But we really are so thankful for our church and it was fun to celebrate!

literacy & learning.

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Our pastors asked us a few weeks ago about teaching in our community. A few broken conversations later, we had a community meeting, and still a few more conversations after that, we re-arranged the community space for whiteboards and…we have community adult education classes happening!

Our pastor, Ah Tee, and his wife, Pranee, are teaching on Tuesdays and Thursdays. They teach one hour of Burmese literacy, teaching five Burmese women how to read and write in their own language. And then they teach an hour of Thai class. And since the neighbors also requested English, Kelli teaches English for an hour on Wednesday evening.

Guys, this is a community center if I ever saw one.

We are really thankful for the opportunity for the neighbors to learn, and that it doesn’t take much from us! We are so excited to have our pastors and friends in the community with us, helping us sort things and observing and advising.

We also love that they are teaching literacy. We had been working on this for sometime, shortly after we learned that San Aye, who sews with us, can’t read or write. Pyo Pyo, our bread manager, is also limited in her literacy. Both of them are taking the class, and it’s so beautiful to see!  There is also a young teenage girl who attends Thai school–and so doesn’t get to learn Burmese–that has joined.

The two sewing ladies have been practicing their alphabet as they sew, reading letters aloud, or spelling words out letter by letter. Thida, while she waits for all the children to come in the morning, has been practicing her Thai letters. They are using new English phrases they learned and testing them out on us!

Meanwhile, Mwei Mwei is our young seamstress that we still want to ensure keeps studying. She is now taking Thai and English classes with the adults in the evening, as well as practicing Burmese reading and writing, learning typing, and learning math with me in the afternoon.

On Tuesday, I helped Mwei Mwei with her typing program until the kids came at 4pm. I then played with the kids in the main area while the literacy class was held in one of the rooms; and Stephen taught The Reinforcers how to solder in the studio. And then we swapped it all around at 6pm for the Thai class to continue.

It’s incredible to see the space used so much and see so many opportunities for our friends! And we love seeing so many opportunities for new skills and languages.

this bites.

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I’m nearly out of words, friends.

Since we landed back in Mae Sot in April–what seems like ages ago!–it has just been one thing after another. It has been life-changing shifts, government surprises, arrests, emergencies, deaths, and tragedies at every turn. Whoa.

And this week was another biting one, this time literally.

One of our bread ladies has had her two-year-old admitted to the hospital all week, so we’ve been visiting them every day. And while she sure does look cute on this creepy old hospital bed, it wasn’t a fun week for her.

And since they were still in the hospital on Friday, I filled in with bread making. We served breakfast starting at 6:30am, and while kids still trailed in, we started making bread and tortillas at 7am.

I came back from deliveries pretty exhausted. We were ready to call it a day, but one of the girls in the community said her “uncle” had a sore foot and asked if I’d come bring him some medicine. They live on the road behind our house, and then down a little path in a field. Since it’s rainy season, I went as far as I could on the motorbike and then hopped off to walk the rest of the way through the mud and cornfields, growing high over my head.

Right where the fields break into the clearing for their house–just a few meters from their house–three street dogs lunged toward me, two in front and one ran around behind me. Since we have some twenty street dogs on our road, I didn’t think much of it, just pulled back a bit to let them call them off, throw rocks, or whatever they would do.

Ah, but not so lucky.

The one that came behind me was more aggressive and bit right into my calf. I was a bit stunned, since I encounter street dogs all the time, have been out to their house multiple times; I just thought nothing of it. But as I kept walking I was certain he had got me.

I went ahead and gave the girl’s “uncle” the medicine he needed–for a wound, mind you, that was much smaller than the one I’d just gained giving it to him!–and I tried to just make my way back home quickly. I had a ways to walk back and still the motorbike to drive home, but I couldn’t see blood seeping through yet and thought I’d just hurry!

Well, long story short: It’s really, really good I was wearing jeans. You could see a full ring of bite marks, but only two teeth had punctured. He had gotten all muscle, and it huuurrrrrtt. But the worst part: those two little punctures (and the fact that he’d bit three other people that week) definitely meant I needed rabies shots.

Off to the ER.

Since our public hospital is Thai-run but encounters primarily Burmese patients, they have translators on staff. We had met one of the night-shift ER translators last week when we brought in our friend with a bicycle accident. He loved that we knew Burmese, invited us to church with him, and just generally really wanted to be friends.

So on Friday, he was incredibly friendly and welcoming. It was nice to be able to tell exactly what had happened, and to be honest, even though we haven’t learned Thai, we are finding that most Thais we encounter are at least impressed we learned Burmese (and Burmese translators are easier to find than English!).

Alas, it was still a rough night. There was a stab victim in the ER, too, and that was less than pleasant. We were also given masks shortly after arriving, because apparently the H1N1 outbreak is continuing to get worse, and they had had five cases already that day. 😳😷

I had to have six shots in the end–one in each upper arm, one in my lower arm, one in my hip, & two into the wound itself, which I will openly tell you IS THE MOST HORRIBLE THING. I don’t know exactly what they did, but it involved putting the needle in and moving it around for a very long time, where you have just been bitten by an angry dog. I screamed in shock when she started moving the needle around in the wound. I also limped for two days following, perhaps from the bite and perhaps from the shot.

Oh, and I have four more rounds of shots to return for in the next month.

So that bites.

a few of my favorite things.

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When the word feels like its crumbling in your own neighborhood, in your host country, and in your home country–just accentuate those positives. Big & small alike.

1. Smart fish. So, we went to a coffee shop outside of town last weekend. It was lovely in so many respects, and I posted pictures of us there in this post. However, THE FISH. They had a lake full of fish, with these nice little walkways across it where you had the option to buy fish food and feed them. I had no fish food with me, but the fish follow you! They followed our footsteps, hoping for food, as we walked and walked back and forth different directions. A whole host of them. I don’t have a great photo, but just take my word for it: those smart fish were very, very awesome.


2. Podcasts. This is my new favorite way to be involved in America and American culture. I still love the Instagram photos, but Facebook is wasting me away. And the news: oh, I simply can’t handle it. But, podcasts give me a taste of America from an admittedly biased, personal perspective that is at least palatable. My current favorites, of which I’ve found them all on iTunes, are: This American Life–always have loved and always will; I feel like Ira & I are friends. Persuasion–recommended by a friend and have loved it! Two American Christian ladies just chatting about some important and some not-so-important things. They are humble, not having all the answers but just chatting. Also one of the ladies is from Central Illinois and it feels oddly like home. Still Processing–another humble, we-don’t-have-all-the-answers podcast. This podcast often addresses racial issues and as of yet was my favorite perspective on Charlottesville–it was just honest and it challenged me and it broke me. I think that’s probably what we need most. Upside Down Podcast–more Christian women chatting about difficult things. These ladies all seem to live in similar communities to what we do. I feel like we’re already friends. Hey, girl.–American women from different backgrounds and races chatting about a variety of important and not-so-important things. The Red Couch–an interesting, personalized take on politics and society. Diverse, unique, and hilarious: a winner.

3. Reading aloud, currently Lord of the Rings. We’re always trying to find new ways to decompress in the evenings. While we still go through the occasional TV series or season, I have to say there isn’t that much I want to watch, particularly when you eliminate serious, scary dramas (i.e. police, crime) or too-life-like dramas (i.e. This is Us is out). It also has to be accessible to us here, which is a whole different issue. Anyway, we’re exploring other options. We’re trying podcasts together, currently listening through Serial in the evenings or the occasional This American Life. And, we’re reading together.  We have been for years, and we’re currently nearing the end of Lord of the Rings trilogy. While I’ve always loved reading together, I’m really loving it now. I’m realizing how peaceful it is and is becoming one of my favorite things at the end of long days.

4. ကျွေးတယ် || To feed. This is likely one of my favorite aspects of Burmese childrearing. From a extremely early age, kids are taught to share their food. No matter what. Every bag of squid chips is shared with the whole group. Every pop-ice. Even every sucker. It may not always be the most sanitary activity, but I do love how the kids learn so quickly to share so freely. And it makes for adorable situations like this:




5. Sewing. This is my newest hobby! A team purchased two Singer machines for our little sewing project, and that means there is usually a machine available to me on evenings and weekends. I’m only tackling simple mending, curtains, pillowcases, and blankets for now (read: straight lines, easy to fix mistakes), but I am happy to be listening to a podcast & the hum of the machine.

6. Injuries that bring us together. There is always quite a bit of sickness during rainy season, but we also have had our fair share of major injuries. On Wednesday, we took one baby to be admitted at the clinic for potential H1N1, and then found ourselves at the orthopedic doctor with an eight-year-old with a broken tibia from playing football.


And just a few hours after that, we were called after a bicycle accident. Two people had collided on their bicycles just returning to the community from work. Stephen & I ended up at the ER with our friend San San, while they put twenty stitches into her leg. With other injuries in the mix, it was a long week. But I was thankful that we tackled them together.


Stephen helped carry the little boy in and out of x-rays; and he was there to help get San San into the ER. And we ate street food for dinner on a hospital bench, so–while it does get more romantic than that, I’m thankful for the fact that we do this together. He’s the best.

7. ဝတ်မှုန်း || Win Moun. Speaking of injuries, one of our favorite little girls is currently admitted to the local hospital. She has an infection on her tiny little finger that has gotten ridiculous, and they need to watch it for a few days and potentially lance it while she is sedated. But this girl–she has our hearts, and she is bringing a smile to our faces every day when she calls for us, Uncle Stephen & Aunt Kelli. She is very verbal, and held both arms out yesterday at the hospital–one having a hurt finger and one having just had blood taken–shouting, “It hurts! It hurts!” in her best pathetic tone. She also shouted to the doctor, “Don’t do that! DON’T DO THAT! It HURTS!”

I was wearing this sweater when she held my cheeks and said the Burmese equivalent of, “I wear it.” She then went to get my pink jelly shoes to complete the ensemble. 😍


8. New glasses. (Read: any happy-ending story.) It was a feat we’ve been tackling since June, but eight appointments later and a only a few tears, this beautiful little girl was able to get glasses!  And adorable little pink ones to make it even better.



9. The Rock Game. We’ve been playing this for years, but I’m getting better at it now! It’s similar to jacks, but much harder and the kids play it from about two years old on up. So I’m way behind on learning. But we now have a little group playing it a few times a week during Playhouse–mostly teenage girls and young moms, and it brings a smile to my face. Especially if I can at least play on par with the ten-year-olds!


The world is probably still crumbling in broken stories. But the positives have been successfully accentuated. ✔️

the reinforcers.

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Alternate title: What Stephen is calling “The Reinforcers.” I’m just not sold on it yet.

At the beginning of every year, we sit together and talk about what has changed and evolved in the community over the past year, what God has done, and what prayers have been answered. And then we make goals for the next year.

At the beginning of 2017, we specifically prayed and strategized for very little growth–we wanted to deepen relationships, to get better at what we do in the community, specifically to grow in quality and not quantity. We have felt in over our heads for so long, and we just really didn’t want to start anything new.

That has become the running joke of 2017: Let’s “not start anything new.”

Instead, we brought on Mwei Mwei and started a new side of our sewing project. This also involves providing part-time education for her, so I now teach her English & math three days a week. And she wanted two friends to join her on Wednesdays, so we have a little English class in the afternoons.

We started The Breakfast Club, which is an epic undertaking involving new community members being hired into the house, a warehouse full of bulk rice, eggs, and noodles (in addition to the flour and baking goods we buy in bulk!), and the added bonus of waking up by 5:30am Monday to Friday.

We got more involved in our church, with Stephen helping on the worship team and I’m helping with Sunday school. As of Saturday, I’m teaching English to the pastors & elders at our church.

Oh, and The Reinforcers. We just started that last Tuesday.

First, the background: We have previously partnered with Kingdom Mission Fund, who is funding Stephen’s current project with OneHouse. While Stephen continues to work on the recording and translation projects, we have found its coming slower and more challenging than we thought. He keeps trekking ahead, but also felt like God opened up a different door.

Stephen felt like there was an opportunity to begin mentoring two teenage boys, training them on live sound and hopefully computers and recording in the future. His hope was to purchase live sound equipment that could be used for our monthly worship nights, and also be rented out to local non-profits and businesses. He hoped that if the equipment was purchased with the grant, the project could then sustain itself, providing part-time jobs for the boys and teaching new skills. It would also provide new opportunities for churches, non-profits, and other ministries in town. Meanwhile, it gives the boys a part-time job on the evenings and weekends, where they can contribute to their families while attending school–and hopefully keep them there. So many teenagers are pulled out around this age because they are needed for their income, and we always want to prevent that. And as icing on the cake, it provided an opportunity for Stephen to invest in two specific guys. One of them has no father figure in the home. The other has a physically present father that is not the best role model, and his mom is currently battling cancer (our Flower lady, Daw Ma Oo) and has been gone since April.

Pretty amazing project idea, right? Stephen always comes up with the best ideas. I just wish we could do them all.

We applied for an additional Kingdom Missions Fund grant this year and hoped to receive it when we were stateside. Unfortunately, we weren’t chosen this year, which left us in a predicament: we still felt like this was a great project and a genius idea. Upon returning in April, we felt both of the boy’s situations needed it more than ever. But our grant was requesting $4,000–something we just don’t have in any of our budgets.

So we’ve been praying and praying and praying. We have been considering options and re-working the idea. Where was God leading us? Why did he give Stephen this great idea, and why were we both so unsettled? It didn’t feel right to simply close the door, but we also weren’t sure how to make it happen.

Until this month. Our church had a new building open earlier this year, and recently acquired some new instruments and has some new musicians–including the two newly-baptized young men in our community. They have the capacity for a full band, but they are still trying to get in a groove.

We began talking with our church, and we have re-worked the idea for our current situation. For the time being, Stephen is partnering with our church’s worship leader and his good friend, Saw Min Tun. They are going to purchase a few things for the sound system at church that makes it more usable. They are setting up the mixer in the back of the room, and Stephen is going to go ahead and train these two guys to run sound weekly for our church. They will still learn the techniques and it opens the door for additional training. And we are investing some: we are making a few initial purchases as gifts to the church, and then we are “hiring” the two boys each weekend. They will run sound for band practice every Saturday and for church on Sunday, and we’ll pay them each $6.

And we’ll wait. We’ll see if God provides a way to purchase a sound system and open up doors that way, or perhaps He has something else in mind. And for now, it still provides a way to support these families in need through education, new opportunities, and skills.

Stephen is training them one afternoon a week, doing what he loves, and loving getting to spend time with these great kids. And they are ecstatic–they are really beyond excited to learn about sound and music. They are both artistic and very smart. And they’ll be coming to church with us regularly while providing additional income for their families.

Because even when his first great idea doesn’t work, Stephen finds a way 🙂

{If you’re like me, you’ve read all that and you’re still asking: so why “The Reinforcers”? I’m told that live sound is officially called sound reinforcement, so these guys are now The Reinforcers. I think they all just like that it makes them sound like superheroes.}