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!
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!
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!
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.
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.
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!
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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!
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 😍
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.
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!
We have had many epic moments recently: moments we have waited years for.
I can’t tell you all of them, really. For some I don’t feel the details or intricacies are mine to share, for some I don’t think it’s worthy of being public. Some I just want to hold closer, for them to be mine and not the world’s.
Writing here gets harder and harder, and I nearly quit so often these days. I am afraid of not representing my friends well, not representing myself well, not representing my faith or my beliefs well. The internet is just a messy place, and I’m not sure I want to be a part of it anymore.
But I also want to celebrate, because we don’t always have so much to celebrate. I also want to write, because while we live here without kids and without careers and often with more questions than answers, somehow year after year we still remain here: for the kids that we love like they are ours anyway, for the job skills we see our friends learning, for the aunties and brothers and sisters that we see floating on hope, for the answers we are finding in people and relationships.
So while I’m terrified to write, I also sometimes can’t seem not to. Here’s to a few thousand words.
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Rewind to about three years ago, when I had the opportunity to take a sewing class. I had a Burmese friend that wanted to learn some sewing skills; we had another friend with a promised job if she could sew. I wanted to touch up skills I’d learned from mom & grandmother and attend the class as well, but we were left with one spot to spare.
Stephen & I had the idea of finding a woman in a challenging life situation, so that after the training she might be able to work in a sewing factory nearby. But as we prayed about who, our friend San Aye continually came to mind. For months on end, we felt like this was who God brought to mind.
At the time, it didn’t seem very logical. She was seven or eight months pregnant with her second child, and she’d have the baby in the middle of the training, requiring us to take a break in the middle for a short maternity leave. It was also unlikely she’d get a job at a local factory once the baby arrived. From our perspective, their family was also in a more stable financial position, and it seemed the training would be a better opportunity for a different family.
But alas, we couldn’t shake it. I went to ask if she’d like to do the training and she agreed. She had the baby halfway through, and a number of other family challenges came her way. By the end of the training, it was clear she needed steady work in a safe environment, and we were looking for how to make that happen. And as God so often does in our little neighborhood, things fell into place quickly: a local shop asked if we had any friends able to sew for a product they wanted to outsource, and we became that outsource. Within a month of the training, San Aye was sewing in our home a few days a week with her newborn beside her.
Fast forward to today, when she continues to sew two days a week with us, and also makes jewelry three days a week in our house, through our partnership with Sojourn Studios.
In many ways, we’ve known God orchestrated this from the beginning, as He has with each of our eight House Collective “employees.” It’s a random conglomerate, but we can see his orchestration of each one, and we’ve told them that. It doesn’t have to make sense; it’s obedience.
Last week, as we sat around a cup of tea with the jewelry ladies, we were discussing our greatest achievements: what accomplishment are we most proud of? San Aye shared that it is her ability to sew. She said as a child she always wanted to learn to sew and set it as a sort of goal in her life, and she’s proud that now she can.
I was a bit shocked, since I thought it was a more random skill. The training was offered, the job was needed…it all happened in such quick succession from my perspective. So I asked, What did you think when I showed up to your house asking if you wanted to do a sewing training?
She said she was “joyful,” but didn’t really know how to tell me how excited she was. She said my Burmese wasn’t as good then, so she just said yes, but really she was so excited. She’d previously tried a few days of training that were offered for free in the market—the top “students” were given jobs at factories, so it was sort of like an interview or exam to see who could pick up the skills fastest. But she wasn’t chosen, so she wasn’t sure how she’d learn.
While I’ve told her before why we asked her and a bit of our side of the story, I told her again. I told her how much God had told us over and over, and I just wasn’t sure why. But not only did He know the challenges she’d be facing in just a few months, he also knew her dreams, her goals. He knew her! He knows her.
And he loves her so much to tell us over and over, to create a training, to send a shop in town with a bag design and a job, to provide a sewing machine in our home. We’ve now moved through three or four other sewing projects. She’s learned to make beautiful porcelain jewelry. I can’t even really begin to share all the ways we’ve seen her personally thriving in the past two years. She’s meeting life goals and we’re witnessing it all right from our little house and over sweet cups of tea.
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We’ve known Pyint Soe since he was nine, and he celebrated his 18th birthday this month. It felt so epic, and I’m unable capture quite why.
We have so many hopes for him, and we’ve invested so much of ourselves into him. Recently, we’ve had some hard conversations, we’ve asked big things. We feel such pride and concern and love for him, like he’s our little brother. And now he’s 18!
Stephen’s spent so many hours with Pyint Soe in recent years, and he’s learned so many things. We’ve been watching him learn so many unique skills: to type in Burmese, to use a Mac easily, to run Powerpoint for church, to run live sound for a variety of different events, to do the basics of sound editing, to speak and write English more fluently. This week we’re anxiously awaiting his exam results, praying he is able to enter grade 10 in June, praying he’ll be the first to graduate in his family.
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The love I have for this young woman is scares me. She’s meant so much to me over the years, and she is one of God’s good gifts to me.
We sat over coffee recently and had my favorite conversation to date. It wasn’t easy by any stretch, but it was one of the most beautiful, epic moments in it’s own way.
I’m thanking God again for her, for our nine years here, and for the woman she’s become.
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This young woman on the right turned seventeen this month, too—another epic moment! In some ways it was another day: we had a jewelry meeting that morning before she worked in the afternoon. We all slipped out for a special birthday lunch and snapped this photo.
But it was epic to me, because I realized just how much I love her and pray for her.
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This is still the year of conversations; conversations we’ve been waiting years to have. Or friendships and relationships we’ve waited years to hold the stories and history and memories they do.
I can’t help but feel a sense arrival; some sort of peace. Our house is crazy folks, and so many days are just one jumble after another. But these friends we wanted to love so well; we were reaching to love them. And then we fell in love with them. They became family. We don’t have to reach anymore, but just be. It happened.
We’re watching the years go by together and having conversations wondering how this unlikely friendship became so normal for all of us. And there’s something very epic about that.
We hopped across the border last week to visit Burma yet again. We had to cross for a new visa stamp, and it seemed the perfect opportunity to visit a few friends.
Our “little sister” Pwei Pwei has been in school in Burma for the past year, and we’ve been promising to visit her. This week, she took her final exams, and we finally made it across to say hi!
Pwei Pwei is one of Thida’s daughters and has always been dear to us, and then she nearly broke our hearts last year: she finished Grade 10, took her final exams, and passed five subjects, but failed one–English. She failed English, with a “big sister” and “big brother” who speak it fluently. Major fail on our parts.
The effects of this for her: she spent the last year re-taking grade 10, and last week, re-taking the exam. For us, we started an English program using Rosetta Stone & conversational English, focusing on students that will be taking this exam in coming years; hoping we don’t let them down.
Either way, we traveled last week with Thida to visit!
Things we love about Burma:
We speak the language!
We can read the signs!
It’s quite easy to get around on our own and impress nearly every one we come into contact with. That’s always nice.
It’s also beautiful–the mountains, the colors, and the people.
We were able to spend two different days in Du Win Zeit, the village that many of our neighbors are from. We met family members, friends of friends; and generally went on Thida’s tour, introducing us–showing us off? broadcasting our tricks?–to the entire village.
Du Win Zeit is famous for it’s large, freshwater shrimp. According to Thida, there are 10,000 adults & children in the village, and 8,000 of them fish every day for shrimp!
Nyein Nyein is also from Du Win Zeit, so she came to visit her family & join the parade after baking bread on Friday. So this little one already knows us pretty well, and thankfully likes us in both countries.
Nyein Nyein’s family used to live in Mae Sot, so we’ve known this teenager since she was seven!
We’re thankful this girl will be back in our neighborhood next week, at least until she hears the results from her exams and makes some decisions about university.
We could visit friends in their villages, but as foreigners on a tourist visa, we had to stay in a registered hotel. The nearest one to their village is in Thaton.
It’s a beautiful town and our second visit there. Last time we visited our hotel had bicycles for rent, which they no longer offered. This left us walking for the first two days, but we still managed to cover 12 kilometers on foot, asking at each bicycle shop if they’d rent to us. It was in that twelfth kilometer that we found a nice shop to rent us bikes–mine in beautiful mint with “Biscuit” written on it, and Stephen’s with a compact mirror built into his bell. Classy.
We enjoyed bicycling around the town the following few days. As the only foreigners there at the time, and able to speak Burmese, we had some very interesting conversations.
One stranger: “I’ve seen you for three days! You should move here.”
Or from Thida, when she arrived to see us: “My friend called me! He said he saw my friends in town walking everywhere, in the sun! Did you not find bicycles?”
We did find my new favorite spot in town: the public library!
I loved the children’s room, complete with drawings and artwork, books in English & Burmese. It was fun to meet the librarian and chat a bit with her and her kids. Again, speaking Burmese in a small town (with white skin and a beautiful nose) makes you an instant hit.
After Thaton, we visited the larger city of Hpa’an. It’s considerably bigger, with more tourists and more English.
We biked here as well, but by then had biked about sixty kilometers and decided to switch to a motorbike for our last day to reach a few further spots.
This market seller was another favorite: he had three colors of “candy,” melted down to a moldable paste. He would make candy suckers for kids to buy, each in different shapes and styles: a monkey fishing, a chicken that actually whistles, a rose, a helicopter. He had incredible skill, even just sitting on the side of the road with a small toolbox.
As a bigger city, Hpa’an has some great offerings: a bookstore, a movie & CD shop, a large store. It was fun for us to get a few new books in Burmese, new music to share with the neighbors, flash cards for Toddler Schoolhouse, and movies with Burmese subtitles for community movie nights!
Our hotel in Hpa’an was…well, mostly just weird. But, the bathroom had quite a few ants of the biting variety, and the towels were covered in them on the first day. So the second day, I wrote a note to ask if they could leave the towels on the bed so that the ants wouldn’t get to them.
I think they liked the game of writing notes back and forth 😂
Overall, while Thaton holds a special place in our hearts, Hpa’an was fun to see again and tour around. It’s another beautiful place to visit and adventure!
A local organization in town, Global Alms, provides excellent certified self-defense classes. They also run Yes She Matters–a crisis line women can call locally to receive emergency assistance in four languages.
Knowing some of the particular challenges our community was facing, Global Alms & Yes She Matters offered us a free twelve-week self-defense course for twelve people. That is an incredible gift!
Further, they have been personally working with me, so that I am equipped for things we might deal with in our community.
This just makes me so thankful, as I think of these women teaching myself and my dearest friends week after week so that we can live safely. That is an incredible gift.
But it’s also a big idea. They are so brave to take it on in a group with varied backgrounds of abuse and experiences, some in current situations of abuse, in addition to other fears and concerns.
We’re already seven weeks in, and I’m still not sure what to say.
It was hard to see it in the first week: those that carry past experiences wear it on their faces and in carry it in their bodies. Their eyes give them away. They are desperate to learn, desperate to be there.
But there are also those that only feel a threat in the distance; they haven’t seen it close. They wear that on our their faces, too.
It’s been a learning experience. It’s been exhausting at times: physically, mentally, emotionally. We’ve had some of the hardest conversations yet around this class. Some I never thought I’d ever have, and most I’m still not sure if I’m more thankful or more heartbroken for them.
I do know I’m thankful we serve a God that heals the broken-hearted, because there is so much broken-heartedness around us.
We made safety plans a few weeks ago, discussing our exit strategies, our safe places, and people we trust. We packed bags and stored them in secret places, with spare keys & copies of important documents.
We’ve also laughed. We’ve accidentally smacked each other instead of the foam pad. We’ve shouted at one another, “Get back!” and “Give me back my money!” in simulations. (I’m still working on my angry Burmese.) We also got to see Yedi “attack with a full gangster act, and we all rolled with laughter.
It’s been a bit of an overwhelming experience, but a good one. I’m thankful for what I’ve learned, thankful for what I’ve seen my friends learn. I’m so thankful for Global Alms sharing their skills and expertise so generously. And thankful for a chance to spend every Saturday with some of my favorite women!
While stateside, I had often admired leather earrings I was seeing in different places. I knew my sister and a few friends had purchased some from Noonday Collection, but I also knew that wasn’t really something we could swing, nor could I explain to my neighbors that I spent over 1,000 baht on earrings.
So instead, I bought some pieces of leather and just made a few myself. I visited Noonday Collection’s page for “inspiration” and made a number of pairs.
Fast forward many months, when last week I found myself welcoming one of Noonday’s founders into our home to meet the artisans that will now be making product for this lovely company.
{That’s right! You’ll see jewelry made right in our house by our best friends in upcoming Noonday collections!🎉}
We sat around our table as the ladies opened Noonday’s Look Book of items, to see where their items would soon be showcased. On the first page sat a quite familiar pair of leather earrings, to which Mwei Mwei exclaimed, “Kelli! Those look just like yours!”
Since it was in Burmese, I smiled and encouraged them flip the page.
Another pair of leather earrings. Another exclamation.
By the third one, I laughed and explained quietly in Burmese. And asked them not to tell. Thankful for secret languages! 😂
I’m also thankful for great facial expressions captured by friends!
And for organizations like Global Child Advocates, Sojourn Studios, and Noonday Collection that partner with small little neighborhoods like ours.
