We bought a watermelon at the market today, and it’s in fact sparking a post. Call us easily amused, perhaps, but we’re studying another language for quite a few hours each day, so it’s inevitable.

First off, watermelons are fairly small here, more like cantaloupe-sized. This worries me for what they put in those ginormous watermelons in the states that are more the size of a small child.

When we purchased the melon, the guy picked it up, took his little spoon, and used the end of it to cut out a piece of the watermelon–like this:

He popped out the piece, showed it to us (assumably to impress us at the lovely color and delicious-looking quality).  He then put it back in the melon and handed it to us in a bag.

And we thought it was cool. That was about it.

Two other side notes equally as irrelevant to the world:

– This country is obsessed with plastic bags. They could very easily be using the same amount in Mae Sot as the whole of America, and it’s ridiculous. And they tend to get offended if you say you don’t need one and you’ll just stick whatever-it-is in your own bag. Today I bought some corn from a vendor that already had all the vegetables bagged–they were in tied plastic bags, divided in the amounts she wanted to sell them in. And even then, when I implied I didn’t need to put my already-bagged corn in another bag to go along with my six others I was already carrying, she looked shocked… ?

– Hula hoops are making a comeback in this country. They are in every store and market, with kids and adults alike bringing them back for both exercise and fun. It’s bizarre, like we time-warped into the 80s.

In an effort to lighten the recent mood of this blog, I thought I’d share a little about the Partners’ Staff Retreat that we were at this weekend.  Here are my thoughts and comments:

– The hotel is very nice. It’s more of a resort, really, with multiple swimming pools; sprawling gardens with ornate bushes, flowers, and sculptures; a lake with paddle boating; bicycles for rent; etc. We enjoyed an afternoon of paddle boating on Saturday and thought that was pretty lovely.

– It reminded me a lot of family camp at Miracle Camp. I’ll just leave it at that and let you read into the positives and negatives 🙂

– Friday night we did a “culinary endeavor” (not a craft, because this has been highly criticized in the past…).  The theme this year was Partners’ Garden, so we had to use vegetables to make a model of ourselves.  I’ll leave out comments and simply show our final products:

The worst part was really that all of the statues were placed on a table for the weekend, and I was stupid enough to sit near it during the last session. It was not a pretty smell.

– We really loved getting to meet all of the Partners’ staff. All of the national directors from Australia, New Zealand, America, England, and Norway flew in; the directors, Steve & Oddny (who started Partners and are now working from Norway and on global speaking tours), were there and it was nice to meet them! Even just to have all the international staff and national staff all together was fun. We have quite a few local staff hired for sewing, cleaning, finances, translation, visas, gardening, farming, etc. Some are Thai, but all are ethnic–so perhaps they are Thai-Karen, or Thai-Shan, etc. Others are completely ethnic and legal; and still others are ethnic and illegal. The entire conference was translated into Thai or Burmese, which is fun. The little table in the back with each of them having headphones is just fun to see–it feels like a minuscule UN conference! This is actually one of my favorite things about our Mae Sot office staff meeting every Monday–to have the entire thing translated. It excites me, for some reason!

– We got to do a little shopping in Chiang Mai (the big city for us, with all the amenities!). We managed to find both and oven and some speakers for Stephen to enjoy music and record with. The oven isn’t really a full size oven, which is pretty expensive here.  We opted for a HUGE toaster oven that will hopefully work alright. The advantage is it being electric (better here) and still being big enough to fit in a pizza pan or casserole dish.  Stephen’s very excited for homemade bread and fresh cinnamon rolls!

We also stopped by a pseudo-garage sale.  One of the Partners’ staff members lived in Chiang Mai for quite a few years before moving back to Canada with his wife about three years ago.  They had planned on returning when she finished school, so they stored some things here. It’s now looking like they’ll remain in Canada and he’ll continue as the national director there, so they cleared out their storage and sold some things while they were in town.

Worked out well for us!  We got some lovely pans for our new oven and even a few Pyrex dishes (real treasures in this country, particularly to be second hand and thus affordable).  Stephen bought his already-stocked toolbox so we now have a few basics in the house.  The best part, of course, was the free box, where we found this cell phone!

Now we don’t have to purchase another one here, but we can each have one when we’re in different directions. It comes complete with the theme from “Outnumbered” as a ring tone. (Did anyone else play that math computer game as a kid, or was that just my family?) It also has this in “Messages”:

And then you pick your smiley face. Pretty great.

– We had a talent show on Friday night that was hilarious for many reasons. Some of the staff kids did a few Justin Bieber performances, yet we also got a crowd-involving performance of “I’ve got a river of life flowing out of me” with motions. Oh my. And, my personal favorite, Sweet Home Alabama performed by an English guy (?), which Stephen loved whether he’ll admit it or not. It was also quite great that one of the Karen guys thought it was “Sweet Home, Come on Obama”…

It was really pretty wonderful, mostly to see what we’ve joined! We are encouraged to continue to learn more about what Partners is doing and see the incredible impact they have on the Karen and Shan people. It’s amazing to hear of the work that is being done through Partners all along the Thai-Burma border and well into the Karen & Shan states of Burma. I was again reminded of what a small cog in the wheel we are of something making such an impact, but thankful to play even a role at all.

I’ve been mulling these thoughts around in my head for some time now and trying to form cohesive thoughts. I’m not sure if I’ve arrived at that stage yet, but we’ll give it a go.

Maybe I’ll begin with the assurance that we aren’t completely remote here, in the middle of nowhere without amenities. There is much more to eat than rice, so all your fears that Stephen will starve can be quelled.  We have bread every other day or so, cereal and cheese maybe once a week, plenty of ice cream, and the far better fruits and vegetables than you can find, I assure you!  We could have Western food more often, but we’re trying to be smart about the  prices.  Truth be told, there’s wonderful Mexican, Italian, and Indian in town, and we ordered take out pizza for our date night last Friday (granted, my vegetable pizza had little corns and green beans on it, so it’s a little different…but we’ll take it!).

Our house isn’t made out of bamboo. We’ve had steady electricity, plenty of water, and our windows only let in a few lizards and spiders. We do have a squatty potty, but we’re coming to love it.  It’s less drastic changes than we expected; perhaps more slight adjustments: learning to deal with the huge amounts of dust, the heat, the small refrigerator.  Simple things, really.

We’re not suffering.

But there is suffering around us.

There is war within miles; there are illegals living here and working here because they have fled their homes.  There are land mine victims walking the streets. There are hundreds of mothers willing to give up their children in hopes that they find a better life.  There are children begging for money; there are deportation trucks taking people back to the border each Monday.

And to be honest–the ones here, living in Mae Sot–they are called lucky.  Yes, lucky, to live here as the poorest of the poor, with the risk of at any point being taken advantage of–for money, for your bicycle, for your life.  And you are lucky, because the others, they live in a war zone. They have their villages burned, they watch their families killed, they see their sons taken off to fight.

And we live here.

What kind of house do you rent if you live in that?  What kind of groceries do you buy?  What kind of car or motorbike do you drive? What kind of money do you put in savings, for this so-called wisdom that sometimes feels more like storing up for yourselves treasures on earth?

I’m not sure.

And I’m learning how to reconcile that. We’ve been trying to find this balance where somehow we live here, try to help the suffering, try to make sacrifices, and still stay afloat ourselves.  And maybe the hardest part is that I don’t even know the goal. I don’t want to “adjust” and not be bothered by these things. I want to always have my heart broken by the children in the market, by the man missing a limb, and by the crowded deportation truck.  But somehow, I don’t want to simply have my heart broken constantly, because where are we then, if we have compassion for suffering but do nothing to alleviate it?

What, then, am I doing to alleviate suffering here?

The role of global missions seems idealized–as if we are able to make a grand change in the world simply by being in foreign place, often where there is suffering of some kind and those who don’t know truth.  But really, I find myself simply in another location, struggling with so many of the same battles I fought in Conway and Oklahoma City–Am I truly making an impact? How do I love people well? How do I live in such a way that others might live, know Christ, and see the kingdom?

And I’m finding that really I’m still asking the same questions here; it’s just that I ask them from here because God told us to be here rather than there.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been mulling over this quote I saw at the Winston Churchill War Rooms in London:

There are many nights that I lay down and let this roll through my mind. I’m very proud to have been only a very small cog in the wheel.  Perhaps it’s just been a day of learning Karen and buying a few vegetables down the street, but it is in effort of living here; in preparation of loving well and serving the people here.  And maybe it wasn’t making a grandious difference in the life of Mae Sot or Burma today, but maybe it was taking the steps in front of me for my life–on the whole–to be only a very small cog in the wheel, counting it simply a blessing to play even the smallest role in bringing the kingdom.

I suppose I love this most because it challenges me in both directions. It puts me in place of realizing how small of a role I play, while at the same time creating an image of the greater machine moving forward.

This Sunday was Global Day of Prayer for Burma, so I was praying for Burma and thinking, again, through Luke 18:1-8. I want to pray big things for Burma, and I want to ask persistently;  I want to ask for the kingdom to come and wait in expectation, even. But I don’t always want to be waiting for the kingdom to come and what that looks like on a grand scale of Burma being freed; I also want to rejoice in the little things–the little ways that His kingdom is coming now. And that brings me back to the small cog in the wheel that I am, and perhaps all of us are.  That maybe it’s all just little things we are doing that are somehow bringing the kingdom now in little ways, while we ultimately wait for The Kingdom to come.  Said better in lyrics: “it’s just a little thing, just a little thing; but it will make a change, it will make a change…I see His kingdom come and every small thing done” (Kaitlin Pflederer, “The Kingdom”; And can I just recommend the whole CD–Can You Hear Us?).

In another part of this same song she sings, “I see a crowded room of flies and restless kids praying for the guns to quiet down and the houses to be full again.  And as they run home, hand in hand, the peace talks come to an end and the wind blows through the empty war camps.  The Lord will reign forever; the Lord will reign forever…”  This gives me shivers each time I hear it. Perhaps because a war camp is where my heart was broken; perhaps because we live and love so many that have grown up and even now remain in these same war camps that litter the border around us.  Either way, I hope for this so deeply.  I hope for the small chance that I could be the smallest cog in the wheel of changing something; of bringing the kingdom of heaven to this place of darkness; of somehow watching wind blow through empty war camps here.

Jenn has always said the best thing about living overseas is the packages, and I think we both agree!  We’ve already received two!

This second one came in yesterday from the Spurlocks.  It was packed full with wicking shirts and shorts, Stephen’s favorite soap, some hair bands for me, and what we were probably most excited about…

Thin Mint cookies!

While we were having a few with lunch today, Stephen was telling me that this was the best cookie in the world. I was questioning that judgment, saying that although they are very good and I was loving it, a soft, warm homemade chocolate chip cookie (or really any soft, warm cookie) might rival it.  To this, Stephen replied, “No. Take any warm, soft homemade cookie and it won’t stand a chance to this highly preserved, shipped from across the world cookie! It’s the best.”

Also, the soap they sent came in a Ziploc, which I was particularly excited about.  I can’t find Ziplocs here; just plastic bags with rubber bands, and as I’m trying to put the rubber band on I tend to spill whatever is inside…

So, we’re reusing this one. Probably quite a few times 🙂

Well, here it is, the grand tour of our new place. We’ve finally been able to unpack and make it a little more like a home. This very well could be overload, but perhaps some of you are interested…

We do have an address, by the way!  Unfortunately, we’ve been told not to receive mail at our house, so after such work of tracking down an address, we’re supposed to use our work post office box. For those of you who would like to have an address for us, let me know and I’ll get it to you!

This is when you enter through the front door.  The “dining room” is to the right, the first door on the right is our bedroom, and the second door on the right is the guest bedroom.  The kitchen is straight to the back, with the bathroom off the kitchen to the left.

This is the living area from the other end, near the kitchen. See the place we’ve reserved for our couch? We decided to go for it, and it should be here in about two weeks!  We also are choosing fabric to have covers made for the seat cushions.  One of the Partners’ local staff who works with sewing will be making them for us.  We are also working on ordering photos to create a photo collage on this wall.

I’m still not a fan of the curtains in our house, so we’re working on finding fabric and making new ones. We also may decide to paint some walls eventually. (Currently they are a pale pink, along with the tile in the rooms.)

These two are of the guest bedroom (and laundry-drying room), which we made a little more Thai-style. One of my favorite things are to read what’s printed on the bedding at various guest houses: it’s typically odd phrases that are grammatically incorrect.  This bedding set talks about traveling the world (“I’ wish you al the happiness and joy in theworld”) and boasts buses and landmarks from around the globe. And it has mint on it, which I love!  I’m sure you all can’t wait to visit 🙂

We were excited to find our magnets for the fridge, something we did choose to bring with us (and add some in England on the way).

We like our growing collection, with a few scenes of OKC, a Spero magnet, a few Free Burma wishes, sushi from our stopover in Japan, and some souvenirs from a London market!

This is when you first walk into the bathroom.  The box on the wall is our water heater, and shower head just sprays into the entire bathroom. We keep the cement tub full to flush the squatty (below) and to shower with in hot season, when water sometimes runs short.

This is directly to the right of the shower, where we have our newly installed bathroom sink. This is a definite improvement–it used to be a five gallon bucket.  We also have our shelves to keep things dry. (Can you see the mint-colored whale toothbrush holder? Wasn’t Stephen sweet to let me pick that out?! I love it.)  And our squatty.

We’ve been creative about a few things, and we wanted to point out a few inventive solutions:

We had some candles but couldn’t find any holders, so we melted wax in the bottom of some glasses, stuck the candles in, and then supported them with rice–something extremely cheap and prevalent in this country!  We did a test, too, and even if you drop a lit match into rice, the rice puts it out.

We also haven’t been able to find a knife block here, and we wanted to keep our nice knives sharp. So, again using prevalent and cheap materials, we have this handy-dandy  storage for them.

So there you have it.  We’re really liking it and finding it pretty comfortable.  We’re excited to have photos up on the walls and continue to add some small touches, but we’re thankful to be settled in!

I just watched the delivery man carry in our 9.5kg washer on his back. Yes, one man and one very large washer. Wow.

And, hula hoops are making a comeback in Mae Sot. They are in every market and in every color. We’ve also had the privilege of watching the kids do some pretty amazing work with them.

Really, though, we wanted to write about our neighborhood.  We love it, but we also feel very burdened.  There’s only one other foreign couple that we know of, and it’s a quite diverse area.  They are some wooden homes, some bamboo huts, and some concrete homes (like ours); and there are multiple ethnicities present. Directly across the street from us is a small community of bamboo huts, like this:

And to the left of our front door, you can see our future garden (!) and this:

We’d really love to get to know these communities.  Rather than being the white people who live comfortably across the street, we’d love to invite them into our home. We’d love to be out and play with the children.  We want to love on them.

But we’re really not sure how to do this.  Obviously it will take time, and I think more than anything the patience to wait for God to provide opportunities.  So if could, pray with us that we’d have eyes to see the chances to get to know them.  We’ve started by simply smiling and waving at everyone as we go.

And last, we had a request for a photo in our borrowed, moldy, sweaty helmets. Here you go, Leslie!

It’s been quite the whirlwind of a few days, but here’s what we’ve got:

First, we spent Monday to Tuesday in Noh Poe, a refugee camp about five hours south along the border. Refugee camps change the way you view things. A little village is built around the idea that it is a temporary place to live, but they have been there for nearly twenty years now.  Choosing to focus on the more optimistic or light-hearted aspects of the trip:

• The drive was extremely curvy and mountainous.  For those of you that have been to “the mountain” in Gatlinburg, imagine that last fifteen minutes of vomit-worthy curves on the way to the house, and then multiply that into at least three hours. Between Stephen and I in the two days, we took a pack of Dramamine.
• On the way we passed Umpiem camp, where our dear friends Law Del Moo et al. are from, and it made me miss them all so badly. I wish I could swing by to their house to celebrate another birthday over ice cream sundaes, sew for hours, or hum along with a beautiful hymn.
• We had a lot of bananas and water. Every home you visit offers you food, and bananas must be in season now.
• We spent most of our time at two children’s homes that are supported by Partners.  Each has about 100 students of varied age (maybe 10ish to as old as 25).  They are all attending school and live in the refugee camps, but their parents are back in Burma, so they live at the home.
• We attempted to understand many Karen conversations quite unsuccessfully, but more than we did a year ago.  We did come back more motivated to study, too!  (On a side note, Karen lessons are going really well, so thank you so very much to everyone who is faithfully praying for us!)
• It’s going to be a rough year for the refugee camps.  We learned that the UN is actually not very involved in the refugee camps here in Thailand…it’s all political and right up my alley, but you may find this uninteresting: Thailand is a part of the UN Convention for the Status of Refugees, they ultimately never ratified the document in the 1950s.  Thus, they were recently ranked as one of the top 10 worst places for refugees.  Either way, this comes into play because the UN has very little control or power. Thailand does their own registration for refugees on the border, provides soldiers, etc.  (Interesting note–they haven’t officially registered refugees into the camps for at least five years.) Food and provisions are provided by local NGOs, with the primary organizer being the Burmese Border Consortium (TBBC).  (For those curious, the only place the UN really does play  a role is in resettlement because refugees have to be registered with the UN and apply for resettlement through the UN & UN partners.)  All that to get to this:  TBBC has had to cut their budget this year by 75%. That’s a doosie. Thus, rice will likely only being given to registered refugees and it will have to be simply shared among thousands more.  Bamboo and leaves to repair homes are only being given to the most dire situations, but many are still really desperate to make repairs.  It really breaks my heart because when it comes down to why budgets are being cut: a few big supports of TBBC have claimed that providing for the refugees and displaced actually prolongs the war because it makes life livable outside of their country.  In some ways, yes, this is true–the war is prolonged, but is that bad?  It’s easy to say from an international perspective that war is bad and should end.  It’s a completely different story when that “end” involves the end of whole people groups. It’s a completely different story when you walk in a village of thousands of people making their home in a foreign land where they are quite unwanted because they are simply lucky to be alive.  Anyway, it’s going to be a rough few years, it seems. Partners, too, has had to cut back their budgets in some small ways (not nearly at 75%, thankfully).  It’s hard to be the bearer of bad news into these places of need.

[Sorry; back to lighter note.]

• We were fed some wonderful Karen meals, at one of which I ate these beans that were kind of difficult to chew…I ate quite a few though because I liked the flavor and the opportunityt o eat vegetables. Then I noticed after the meal that everyone was pulling some string part of it off and leaving it on the table. Ooops.
• I went to shower before heading to bed and we had a candle to use.  I decided to go ahead and bring a flashlight so I had some more freedom to move it (and I figured if I was throwing water everywhere, that candle would out pretty quickly). Well, with my trusty flashlight I discovered a very large spider on the wall by my towel and a whole pack (Stephen counted at least 13) of ginormous cockroaches along the back wall.  They were at least three inches long each.  I started to wonder if maybe it’s best to not know so much of what’s around you.

And that’s Noh Poe in a nutshell?!  Really, it was a pretty short trip and hopefully we’ll be back before too long with a team.

Second, we have a home! We were able to move in Tuesday afternoon when we got back from Noh Poe.   It’s still quite a mess as we try to sort through things and purchase the things we need (dishes, sheets, rice cooker, etc.), but hopefully we’ll be settled in a few days.  They are still a few things to be installed, as well–they are putting in a sink for us (there isn’t one in the bathroom currently) and a hookup for a washing machine this weekend.  Either way, we’re thankful to be in a home and not a guesthouse! We’re thankful we can cook our own food instead of eating out, even if it’s currently eggs & cereal.  We’re also thankful to unpack our clothing for awhile and rediscover what we actually packed a month ago!

Oh, and we came home to find a HUGE and very fast spider on the floor. He was quite hard to get and had to be massacred leg by leg, but Stephen won.  Aren’t the pink curtains in the back pretty wonderful? We’re hoping to say goodbye to those this weekend, but we’ll see.

Tonight we got our bedroom in order. We emptied it, washed down the walls, mopped the floors, etc. And one room is wonderful!  We’ll continue to pull things together and post pictures.

And third, we have a motorbike!  We were able to purchase one today. Stephen loves it, mostly because he’s now realizing how awful the one we had rented was.  The brakes work, it turns easily, it starts easily, the gas gauge works, it doesn’t randomly die in the middle of the road…could you ask for more?  It really does work great, and we’re excited to have transportation around town.

Stephen’s most excited about the nice shade of red, while I really love the basket on the front to hold all of our treasures!  This is the driveway of our house, by the way, with our front door in the background.

It also came with a free cheap helmet and a very cool Honda jacket, which I thought was much more practical than the blanket…

So there you have it.

Oh, and something I learned about myself this weekend: I’m biased to think that men are better drivers. Perhaps because it’s true of my parents (no offense, mom, but it’s true); and Stephen & I, as well. Hmmm.

Just as a heads up, you may find this overly interesting and wish you could participate, but there are a significant number that will think this is way too much information involving things such as manure.

In an effort to get to know the various aspects of Partners, we got to visit the Partners Farm outside of Chiang Mai yesterday, and I loved it. There is another farm outside of Mae Sot, and I’m already scheming how I can get out there once a week.  I loved learning about their farming techniques.

We first helped with the process of making compost and shoveled manure into the compost bin. We then used the previously-made compost to plant some moringa.  Moringa is grown here and then used to make vitamin capsules. It is apparently a wildly nutritious plant, so they concentrate it into capsules and distribute them to IDPs on the run inside of Burma. They also make soap with it so they can teach refugees along the border how to create their own natural soap.

These are the ones we planted.

They will grow into these.

And eventually into these. We replanted quite a few that were at this stage and ready to go into the ground.

And we got these great hats to wear for shade!

I’m including this simply because I thought my dad might appreciate an idea of what pig pens look like in Thailand!

We also helped make pig feed, which was really interesting. The feed in the market is pretty expensive, so they mix it to make it stretch further. We made this mix of banana stalk, sugar, and salt, then it sits for 3-5 days and is mixed with the pig feed in the market (1:1 ratio).  The large green stalk is from the banana trees and is going into this larger chopper machine. I don’t have any official terms because our translator was Karen, and knew just a little more English than we knew Karen. It made for a day of observing while we tried to figure out the next step.

The banana stalk pieces were then chopped up and compacted with a shovel.

And then stomped on.  They put in a thin layer of sugar, a sprinkling of salt, and then more banana stalk, more smashing, and more salt & sugar until the bin was very, very full and very, very densely packed to weigh around 170 pounds.

We thought this was pretty amazing. They’ve created a bio-dome and use bio-gas to cook with.  This is the dome full of pig manure & methane gases being burned off.

This blue pipe feeds down into the bio-dome, so they put seven kilos of manure in each day. (Well, we think about seven kilos. Again, this is through rough translations.)

This is hanging nearby, I think to release a certain amount of gas? Not sure, really.

And then they transport the gas to the house through this black tubing.  They have just recently built all of this and were proud to announce they haven’t bought a gas tank for the stove in four months!

All in all, it made me really hope for space to have a garden in Mae Sot, and hope to be a part of the farm out there. It’s wonderful to see how efficient they are to use each bit of waste in a new way.

Oh, yes: the SuperBowl, with a Thai twist.

We were ready to go this morning at 5:45am to head over and catch a little pre-game, which turned out to be three Thai men commentating in Thai.  We then saw the kickoff through the third quarter with a small party of 7 (five Americans, one Aussie, and one Kiwi). This included the first ten minutes having an awful echo with sound issues, and really various sound issues throughout. It would get much louder and then much softer, went mute a few times, and then we watched the three Thai commentators while we listened to Maroon 5 & Keith Urban for awhile…it was interesting. The real downfall, though, was that the commercials don’t cross over.  We missed them all and instead watched the same Red Bull ad with the same stunts at every commercial break…

We were then joined by some additional staff for breakfast and to catch the last of the game just before 10am.  Not exactly the norm, but it was quite fun to see something familiar in a very unfamiliar place.

It wasn’t your typical SuperBowl party with chips & soda, but it was fun to spend some time with the Chiang Mai team and laugh at the life we’ve just taken on!

And our fearless leaders: Brad & Joyce lead Partners Thailand (and hosted the party as proud, football-watching Americans!).  They were excited to cheer for Green Bay today, enough so that Brad created a few cheeseheads over the weekend out of matresses. Please note that these are made of two foam matresses glued together.  We were glad to be there to cheer on the Packers, too!