The House Collective

summer program 2018.

by Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse, schoolhouse Leave a Comment

We’re already a week into the chaos of Summer Program 2018!

For about eight weeks through the summer, we have “hired” four teenage students–two are The Reinforcers, one works at our house regularly, and the other is Mwei Mwei’s sister & Thida’s daughter. In short, they are our sisters & brothers! We are quite close to them and have known them all since they were 8 or 9.

We had their shirts made at a local Bible school in town, and I love them! The back says “teacher.” (Technically, “male teacher” and “female teacher” respectively.)

We’ve asked them to come on Mondays & Wednesdays from 8-12 to be teachers for the kids. This allows us to simply coordinate–a big enough task!–and equips them to be learning and helping provide for their families over the summer.

The week before, we met together with the teachers to prep all the materials. They were able to help us translate some of the lessons I’d put together and prepare some lessons themselves. Stephen has also already taught the two guys to type in Burmese, so they were typing up documents for us!  It was fun to work with them, even amidst the chaos and lack of sleep. (Hindsight, I probably shouldn’t have scheduled the Summer Program to start the same week as Easter, OneHouse, and Flour & Flowers + Cinnamon Rolls; and the same week we started the M-Fund insurance program. Whoops!)

They are teaching Burmese reading and writing, English writing and speaking, math, geography, and science. We have about forty kids enrolled, from ages 5 to 14; and they are at all levels of reading and writing.

So far, it’s going swimmingly! Each subject has different levels. For Burmese, the lowest level is learning to write their consonants; the second level is learning vowels and tones. The middle level can read simple Burmese, so they are reading stories in The Storybook Bible in Burmese (which is in colloquial Burmese) and then answering questions. And the final level is reading Wikipedia articles (which Wikipedia translates into Burmese, but literary style) about famous people: Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Galileo Galilei, Nelson Mandela, and more. I am so excited about all of these.

For English, we have some writing the alphabet, others learning basic words; the older groups are using lessons from an ESL program. Math is divided into eight groups at all different levels, mostly done through self-study. The teachers are there to help explain new concepts one-on-one.

After these three subjects, the kids that aren’t literate get to go home. The older kids stay for two classes of Geography & Science. In Geography, they are learning continents and oceans, plus thirteen specific countries (which the boys picked, so mostly those famous for soccer!). In those countries they learn the flag, the capital city, the population, the languages they speak, and few interesting facts. In science they are learning the basics of the solar system and planets.

Overall, I feel like the kids are learning so much. After the classes, every student gets a piece of fruit on their way home, and the teachers have lunch with Stephen, Thida & I.

Every child enrolled–and all the kids in the neighborhood under 5–are getting free breakfast for the summer. This includes malnourished & nourished kids! We are doing this through the summer. For next school year, The Breakfast Club will be free for malnourished kids, but available to purchase for healthy kids (as we have more that have passed into nourishment!). We’ll offer a well-balanced meal with unlimited refills for 15 cents per person per day; or 9 cents per day if pre-paid for the week. We’re trying to promote health, planning ahead and savings all in one 😃

In addition to the two days of classes, on Tuesday & Thursday we have Playhouse. We have made in the morning for these summer days, when it is cooler. Honestly, we also hope to wear them out with safe activities before they come up with other ideas, too!

We have some friends who come to join for street football and crafts.

They brought chalk this week for the street, and it officially felt like summer! Sidewalk chalk & hopscotch? We’ve arrived.

This is all a bit of a switch up to our schedule, and our house got even crazier (somehow!). But, we love that the kids are learning and utilizing their summer months. We are also glad that they are at least getting a meal a day, snacks, structure and stability. We hope it goes a long way for all of them, but we know it does for some families in particular.

one giant leap for this community.

by Filed Under: house calls, kelli, photos 2 Comments

We made a big leap last week.

Just a few months after we moved into this community, a seven-year-old little girl broke her finger {at our house, because of our “creative, fun” idea}. Her parents said they couldn’t go to the hospital because they were afraid of the police. And since her finger was blatant perpendicular to where it was supposed to be, and because it was our fault, and because she is adorable–we took her to the hospital.

Little did we know, but this would unfold years of helping with medical in this community. It opened doors to trips and admissions to the hospital, trips to the emergency room, trips to the free clinic. It turned into trips for more labors & new babies than we could count, more vaccinations, more broken & set bones, and more bloody disasters than we knew a community could create.

If I didn’t love that little-girl-turned-teenager so very, very much and have celebrated her baptism last year, I might regret that first trip to the hospital. And if so many of those emergencies hadn’t turned this community into our best friends, I might regret them.

Instead, we celebrate that House Calls has created epic opportunities this community.

We’ve had to adjust our methods all along–when we couldn’t afford to pay for the hospital for everyone, we started accessing the free clinic. When they couldn’t do everything, we had to learn what their specialties were. When we had medical problems beyond our capacity, we had to call in reinforcements.

And after a few recent situations–including the breech baby emergency–we realized the free clinic was no longer a good option for our neighbors. We felt we needed to come up with something else that was still feasible. It was also through the breech baby emergency that we learned about M-Fund.

M-Fund started last year, and is a local organization that has partnered with the public Thai hospital to create an insurance program for undocumented migrants in Mae Sot and surrounding areas. For our neighbors, they can pay $3 per person per month (plus family discounts; and a higher rate for chronic situations) and receive entirely free treatment at the public hospital, up to $3200.

For those of you in the turmoil of American healthcare who perhaps just paid a premium of hundreds or thousands of dollars, I know you’re thinking this is insane. It is a bit. Even at $3 per person, that’s about 1/3 of a day’s wage, and not readily available for the community around us.

But, it’s an incredible development. For our community, access to this means that they will get better treatment available within biking distance. The better treatment includes X-rays and CAT scans; casts for broken bones; and surgeries. It also means that pregnant mothers can have their baby in a hospital, where a C-section is available if necessary, and their child will receive some form of official birth certificate & access to some Thai social programs and even legality in some cases.

!!!!!

For us, it means we can be done with 30 minute trips out to the clinic multiple times per week.

!!!!!

However, it is no easy feat to convince a community of impoverished families to invest in healthcare and insurance. We admit we are a bit of the problem: if we provide a free ride to a free clinic, even with poor care, it’s still free. It’s still easy and non-committal. We also realize that jumping into pay for your whole family is a big portion of their income–comparable to rent–and not easy.

Looking at our community budget, so much of our finances goes toward emergencies: C-sections, broken bones, and hospital stays. We decided to present a plan to the community that we think (we hope!) uses our community fund more wisely and more sustainably for the next couple years, while also helping our neighbors toward development.

Our plan, which we presented at a community meeting last week, is to offer M-Fund subsidies for the first year. After a community family applies for M-Fund and is given their premium, they have an opportunity to apply with us. From now until October, we’ll pay a percentage up to 50% for different families. We’re creating a tiered system–50% for Tier 1, 25% for Tier 2, and 10% for Tier 3. We pay that percentage for 6 months, and then they are moved down a tier (or out for Tier 1). This happens again six months later. So that even for the highest tiers, we no longer subsidize at the end of 2019.

We have also committed to help with pregnant mothers indefinitely, and we’ll pay their individual premium from the time they know they are pregnant until 3 months after birth. This is mostly because of the breech baby emergency, and that paying premiums has both the potential to save us thousands and change the trajectory of the baby’s life by giving them access to Thai social programs.

Meanwhile, we hope that this creates a window for development: a chance to see how insurance works and how it is beneficial for the family. It also creates a habit of saving and planning. It also helps to create a long-term plan for the community for the future, when we might not be here to help in the same capacity or at all.

And guys, it feels pretty epic. We’re not driving out to the clinic anymore! I just gained two hours most Tuesdays!
Instead, we’re pushing for huge strides toward development.

Following our community meeting last week, we’ve had three more to register new families. Over 60 people have registered!

It comes with challenges to: drawing a hard line in the sand is complicated. There are grey areas; there are hard no’s and situations to mourn. It’s not easy.

But it’s also a part of moving forward. And we do feel like more than ever, our strategies and involvement in the community are intentional: intentional for development, for projects that create returns, for things that are sustainable. And honestly, it wasn’t something we set out to do or had a long-term plan for, but God has led us.

Despite it just being the two of us, despite being in over our heads regularly, despite our inexperience and disorganization, God is good. He has heard our cries, and we are often amazed to look around and see how he led us forward, even just showing us a tiny step in front of us.

And that’s how we’re seeing M-Fund. We didn’t know it would come or when, but we’re excited for what it means practically and developmentally for the community. It’s a giant leap forward for these friends of ours.

whispered needs.

by Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos, schoolhouse 1 Comment

It’s been almost a year since Mwei Mwei came back from Bangkok. It’s been just over two years since she left.

I remember sitting with Thida after summer program in 2016, trying to use my limited Burmese to explain trafficking and why we were worried about her thirteen-year-old going off to Bangkok by herself.

I remember sitting with Mwei Mwei at an ice cream shop in Bangkok, after we miraculously found her in January 2017. We showed her pictures of her family and tried to gauge the danger of the situation she was in. She cried, and we left worried.

In Sara Hagerty’s book Unseen, she writes, “To meet any need, I first have to hear God’s whisper about that need.” I think that’s what happened as we sat with her over ice cream. We didn’t know the details of what she was in, or where it would go, or what was true. But we knew he had whispered that we needed to do something.

We told Thida we’d create her a job if they’d bring her back to Mae Sot, even if we didn’t know how we felt about hiring a fifteen-year-old. We weren’t really sure what it was we needed to do, but we felt there was a need.

And then she arrived back to Mae Sot just as we landed back from America, and we scrambled to get her into a sewing training and ultimately, to come up with a plan.

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The past year has been a lot of “coming up with plans.”

While we tried to create additional sewing work for Mwei Mwei, our regular seamstress–who had a contracted job with a local organization–lost that contract. We now had two ladies, both coming from painful, rough situations, looking to us for work.

There were a lot of weeks of made up projects. I have a whole stack of zipper pouches and bunting and bags that we made samples of as I tried out new ideas and chased new prospects.

While her family has told her she’s not the smart one, we knew she had so much potential. We didn’t want to see her end her education. Somehow, we wanted her getting some education while she was able to work and be viewed as a contributor to the family.

But coming up with education opportunities wasn’t easy, either. We created a group English class for her join, but she hated it. We had our church come teach a group Thai class, but she sat in the back silently. I worked with her in math, and it was like pulling teeth. I tried to have her read Burmese books and write book reports, and then spent ages trying to read them myself, realizing this wasn’t a time-efficient plan as her “teacher.”

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In the end, we found solutions. It just took a little time & chaos.

For work, we are so thankful to be partnering with Sojourn Studios here in town. This is a project of a local Christian nonprofit, training teenagers and women to make ceramic jewelry. Both Mwei Mwei & San Aye make jewelry for them two days a week, and Mwei Mwei also participates in their Youth Program, where she makes jewelry with other students her age and participates in a life skills course.

Sojourn Studios plans to have this jewelry for sale internationally in coming months, but for now–watch this video, and be inspired!

We are also just beginning a partnership with a local Bible school. They screen print on to t-shirts, and we are partnering with them to sell reusable grocery bags with screen prints on them. We hope this will be available internationally soon, too.

Either way, they both have steady, sustainable work, right in our home! 🎉

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We found a few solutions for education, too.

First, we bribed her. I couldn’t get her over the hump of her multiplication tables, but I knew she could do it. I gave her three weeks to memorize them, with a reward of an extra weeks’ salary as a reward. She couldn’t give it to her family collective, though–where money traditionally goes. She’d go on a special trip to the market with us to spend it on her.

It worked 😁

More than anything, I think it showed her she could. Since then, she has completed all her multiplication lessons and passed the “exam” I gave her with flying colors. We’re on to division, and she says it’s easy. And I am loving that time with her every week.

Second, we let her vote on what she actually wanted to learn. And we’ve learned: if she wants to learn it, she gives it her all.

English got ousted; she just wasn’t interested. She hopes to open a nail salon someday (as you can see in the video above), and if she plans to do that in Thailand, we wanted her to start learning Thai. So now a portion of her salary ifrom Sojourn Studios goes to hire a Thai teacher once a week. She has just started, but the teacher already says she’s doing great.

We also offered her most of the things we know and could train her in: and photography was voted highest. Enter Stephen. He now is teaching her photography using our Canon DSLR & Mac software on our computers.

Mwei Mwei’s also becoming a bit of a teacher herself. San Aye is becoming literate in Burmese, and has a teacher that comes once or twice a week. However, she requested more practice and study time. As part of her work time, she now studies with Mwei Mwei helping her three days a week.

And still further–she’s one of our teachers for the Summer Program this year! Two mornings over the summer she teaches Burmese, Science, Math & basic English to the younger kids in the community. She is absolutely thriving in so many things these days.

_________________________

She celebrated her sixteen birthday a few weeks ago. It fell right near when the two Reinforcers were both turning seventeen, so we hosted a party for all three! We told them they could each bring five friends, and pick what day & time, the menu, and what movie we’d watch on the projector.

They initially picked Saturday morning at 8am for hamburgers, which surprised us a little.

Our laughter led them to think that wasn’t cool, so it was switched to Saturday night at 5pm. They still picked hamburgers, but wanted chicken.

{Beef is pretty expensive and not that favored by Burmese, so I asked if they wanted some beef and some pork. They all made faces of disgust–“Not beef! We like chicken.” Right. Chicken hamburgers, coming right up.}

They invited a collection of friends and family, including two toddlers…so it wasn’t we expected by any means. But, hey, we had chicken hamburgers and sodas and cake and popcorn. We watched Spiderman. And Mwei Mwei fell asleep, so… 🤷🏼‍♀️

_________________________

We gifted her a set of nail polish and nail care kit for her birthday. She loved it. She came the next day with her nails all done and I snapped this photo.

I don’t want to forget where we’ve come.

I don’t want to forget how her demeanor has changed since we sat with her in the ice cream shop last January. I don’t want to forget the day I had to use broken Burmese to ask her if she was cutting. I don’t want to forget the scowl on her face at every math lesson, Thai class, and English class.

I don’t want to forget the day she passed her multiplication tables. I don’t want to forget the day we talked about how much we believe in her. I don’t want to forget the day she thanked us for her new Thai class and teacher. I don’t want to forget my pride for her as became an excellent teacher in the Summer Program.

I don’t want her working alongside her mom, chatting and laughing, to become so normal that I don’t give thanks for the gift it is. It wasn’t there a year ago, and it’s a beautiful, beautiful growth.

So much has changed in the last year, and it’s been messy. I’m so glad she’s sixteen, because somehow that feels less ridiculous that we’re hiring her. I’m so glad we have some sustainable work solutions, because we were just pouring money into ideas.

_________________________

It still feels unfair, sometimes when I look at who we have hired: it’s uneven; it’s random. We have three ladies making bread, one lady making flower bouquets, two ladies making jewelry and sewing. We have one woman making breakfast for fifty & overseeing the community space. We have two boys running sound. Some work one day a week; some two, some five. Some have savings plans and some don’t. Some have extra education built into their hours, and some don’t.

The only pattern is that they are needs God whispered to us about. And I’m really thankful we felt the whisper for this need.

bits of the chaos.

by Filed Under: house church, kelli, onehouse, photos, playhouse 2 Comments

International Women’s Day happened–about a month ago now!–and we participated in a local event. The Reinforcers ran sound for a local band, and Flour & Flowers donated & served cinnamon rolls to the audience. Mwei Mwei also came along to practice her newly acquired photography skills.

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I’ve been {attempting} teaching Sunday school at our Burmese church once per month. It’s been a challenge, to say the least. First, attempting to teach Bible (most often presented in very high level language) in Burmese is no small feat, and I’m just not there yet. Second, the kids tend to know they can walk on me. Our neighbor kids are slightly better, but most of the other kids at church know I only understand some of what goes on!

I’m learning.

First, I’ve learned to bribe: they are each promised a small prize at the end if they are good. If they cause problems, it gets taken away. This worked wonders, and was well-worth handing out snacks and toothbrushes.

Second, I’ve simplified. Perhaps communicating how the prodigal son returning to the Lord is a parallel to us returning to our Heavenly Father was a bit ambitious. This past time I set my goal at one verse. I chose Psalm 119:105. We practiced it in English, we memorized it in Burmese; we discussed what it generally meant. We learned a song for it in English.

Then, we each got a pair of $1 flip-flops, which we decorated with the verse and it’s meaning with Sharpies.

And last, I taped paper to the floor to make a human-sized CandyLand game. Each square was either a color, ABC, ကခဂ, or 🎵. They drew and went to the square, where they either had to say the color, the verse in English, the verse in Burmese, or sing the song.

They left with a much simpler understanding, but I also felt like I could successfully communicate it all! I felt like they learned more overall, kept their attention, and for a group of lower-income kids, they went home with new shoes, snacks & toothbrushes.

We also were able to finally get in touch with a couple in Burma who recently translated the Children’s Storybook Bible into colloquial Burmese!

This is an incredible resource, and I’m so excited to use it, both for our summer program & for Sunday school. It should be easy to understand for even lower-education levels, and I’m just beyond excited.

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High school for the migrant schools goes up to Grade 10, at which point the students take their final matriculations. This is a weeklong exam–one subject per day, including English, Burmese, Physics, Chemistry, Biology, and Math–that is similar to an ACT or SAT for us. It’s incredibly difficult, and how they score not only determines their acceptance to college, but also decides your major for you.

No pressure or anything.

For the past six months, most of the students have lived in a dorm at the school, where they attend regular classes during the day and return to eat, then study together until midnight. They also study in the morning before school from 6am to 8am, on Saturday morning and on Sunday evening–with a 24 hour break on the weekend to visit their families. Every day for six months.

Our sweet little sister, Pwei Pwei, has been living at the dorm for these past six months, and we’ve only seen her occasionally. We’ve gone to visit, we delivered her Christmas present…but we’ve missed her! The day she came back from her exam she fell asleep on our floor, surrounded by fifty screaming, playing kids.

She’s now one of our teachers for the Summer Program, and we’re so glad we get to see her everyday!

________________________

Thida and I were on our weekly market & Makro trips. I was looking for ant poison because, well, I live here. She asked if I knew anything that could work for rats, as they had some at their house and she just didn’t know what to do about it. I helped her pick out some glue traps and explained how to use them.

As we unloaded things from the car, her son saw the picture of the rat on the front of the package and asked what they were. I explained they were to kill rats; and he said, “Oh! We need these!” He was relieved to know his mom had bought them.

Just two days later, she told me they worked great and she was so pleased.

“Oh, have you caught some already?” I asked.
“Yes! Ten!”

😳😱

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We came home last Wednesday to the two ladies sewing in the Housewares room, per usual; and then four kids asleep on our community floor.

I have no idea.

In general, I have a hard time understanding the fleece blankets when it’s April, and ’roundabout 100 degrees.

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With our new duplex-style living (with one house ours and one house for the community) we have a new front yard area that is kid-free. We have recently put in a little grill, an outdoor table, and a lovely hammock!

But this “kid-free zone” has a gate that a few tiny little kiddos can squeeze right under.

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I received this Facebook message from one of our community friends.

I have no idea. But, unfortunately, I’m fairly certain that’s a Bitmoji of me.

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Easter weekend arrived! We had a OneHouse for Good Friday, and it was absolutely beautiful. I love hearing worship in multiple languages, and Stephen is doing a great job of bringing people together.


 I had my first attempt at hot cross buns, too!

And at church on Easter Sunday, they had a basket of hard-boiled eggs up front! We were a bit excited, in hopes of an egg hunt for the kids. Instead, we were all handed a hard-boiled egg on our way out.

Almost as quintessential.

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Otherwise, we often have kids around us. And more often then not, they are smiling or making us smile.

So, #winning.

the music run.

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Sickness and chaos sort of won the past week or so…it happens.

Keeping The Breakfast Club, Flour & Flowers, the Reinforcers and Playhouse going through a regular week is a challenge anyway, and we’re trying to get The Summer Program started next Monday…

And then there was sickness. And there’s a few other projects we haven’t even had time to write about yet: the ladies making jewelry two days a week; the Bible school we’re working with to make reusable bags; the new migrant insurance program we’re partnering with; the Thai lessons that Mwei Mwei started; the photography lessons Stephen is teaching; the surprise iMac we were gift last week that Stephen’s setting up for the community.

Hence the radio silence.

But, we went to Bangkok last weekend! Stephen ran a 5k and I {attempted} a 10k…It was much sloppier and harder than I anticipated, but I had a fever the following three days, so 🤷🏼‍♀️

It was a Music Run, so they had speakers lining the whole path–hundreds of them. It was incredible. They played music through all the races. (We took this photo on our way to check-in. Can you see the speakers lining the whole way?)

We arrived to get our packs at 2:30pm, so we had a few hours to burn. And since it’s Bangkok and it takes a few hours to go anywhere, we just sat at the park and read our books.

We checked our bag at the check-in, but kept our books out to read until the start. Later when Stephen brought them back by the lady recognized him (probably the white guy with his book out at a race?) and said, “Ready to put your book in your bag?” 😂

We were clearly the coolest people there.

While my race was not spectacular, Stephen did pretty awesome. He finished in 31 minutes, and had two surprise obstacle courses in the middle!  He wasn’t super-thrilled about those 😂

And then we ended at a concert!

We also rounded out the weekend meeting with our caseworker, putting our best foot forward in our attempts at real adult clothes.

Here’s to hoping next year we can run with baby bunny in a jogging stroller! 😊

the book club.

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Stephen got me the best Christmas gift.

He gave me a Book Club–just for me! I got one book for Christmas, and then he picks out a new book for each month. I get to open it on the first of every month!

I don’t have to choose it; I don’t have to buy it. I don’t even have to order it and track it down.

And since I don’t like decisions, I don’t like spending money, and I don’t like finding English books and getting them here: #thebestgift.

And he’s the BEST picker.

When I opened this one, he said: “An autobiography, a refugee, politics, the first woman to be Secretary of State. It just seemed to fit you perfectly.” 😍

My next one (when I finish this 600 pager!) is a oral history of migrant workers in California. The two before that were by the newest to my favorite-author-list, Fredrik Backman.

Such a great gift! And the best book club for an introvert 😊

another home.

by Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos, stephen 1 Comment

You never really know how the cookie will crumble, and we have the privilege of being reminded of that daily.

We’ve been discussing a trip to Burma: we wanted to see the towns and villages many of our neighbors come from. We have the knowledge that as soon as we are placed for our adoption, we’ll be “stuck” in Thailand for at least six months; and we learned just recently that we also have another visa run we need to make in May…it’s a long story. But visas often crumble a different way than you think 😉

It was mid-February when we realized the easiest time for us to go to these towns and villages was on our current visa, which needed on February 22. That gave us a four-day window between a Reinforcers gig and our visa expiring.

So we applied for our visas to Burma, and they fell into place. So we went.

Some friends wanted to go that week, too, so we explained we could all go together, but we just couldn’t shift our dates at all because of visas. They seemed game, so we all crossed the border after church on Sunday and grabbed a car to take us to their village. It was Stephen & I, our bread baker Nyein Nyein and her husband Kyaw Htet, and their two-year-old Sai Bo Bo.

It’s kind of an event to go to Burma to see family, so Sai Bo Bo was all jazzed up in his best clothes.

In short, many of our neighbors and closest friends–maybe 75%?–are from this one particular town and surrounding areas. And one village just outside is where one bread lady is from, the flower lady and one Reinforcer, Thida–as you can see, a lot of families came from this little fishing village.

That evening we just stopped by, but we did get to see Nyein Nyein’s family. They used to live in Mae Sot and moved back about three years ago, so we knew them all. It was so fun to see the girls grown!

Unfortunately we can’t stay with friends in Burma: we have to stay at foreigner-registered hotels. Their village didn’t even have a store, so no hotels there. We went about thirty minutes further into Thaton, where there is one foreigner-registered hotel, and stayed there. We spent the next two days exploring Thaton while Nyein Nyein spent time with her family.

We spent the majority of our time biking around the city, our favorite way to see a place. It’s just fast enough to see a lot of it, but slow enough to actually see it. And you get exercise while you go! We biked just over 42 kilometers in two days and got to see so much of the city. We actually went about 5 kilometers out of the city in all directions, so…it’s a small town 😊

And it’s a beautiful town.

Our favorite building.

I think I will always love Burmese markets in particular.

We also climbed the local mountain, which is also a temple. Most of Burma & Thailand, at least from our experience, loves to build a temple on top of every mountain. And they love to make concrete steps that go all the way to the top. As a Westerner that prefers sloping, swerving hikes on real dirt and rocks, it isn’t my favorite. But it’s growing on me. I’m learning to love the views out rather than the feel beneath my feet.

So we climbed 903 steps.

My favorite part was near the top, when I was sitting to have a snack and water. A little boy came up to where he could see me over the steps and immediately turned around and shouted, in Burmese, at the top of his lungs, “Brother! Sister! There’s a white woman up here eating a snack!” I smiled and said hi, and asked why he wasn’t at school today. Instead of answering, he turned back around and shouted, “And she speaks Burmese!” 😂

By far the most fun part of the trip was just how natural it felt. We knew the language to get around, to get directions, to order. It was so simple compared to Mae Sot, where we are constantly switching languages or smashing them together.

We also knew the culture in a way we don’t usually. Mae Sot is such an extreme melting pot, and while we’ve learned the culture of this town specifically, we often feel at a loss when we are in a large Thai city or even meeting with our adoption caseworker. But the culture we know best–right in the neighborhood around us–just exploded into this town, and it felt oddly familiar. Yet another home.

On Wednesday, we went back through Thaton and visited Nyein Nyein’s family again before heading back to Mae Sot.

Nyein Nyein’s little brother and two little sisters spent so much time at our house growing up. Now they are attending school in Burma, and it was so lovely to see them.

Part of the village many of our friends are from. It’s right on the river, and they say every family has a boat. Fishing and shrimping (?) are the two primary livelihoods.

And they took us to the temple. It’s kind of the only thing to do in most towns, but especially villages of this size. They also fed us shrimp, because that’s the village!

Really, we loved the whole trip. We continue to be amazed as God shows us the pieces of the stories we know: learning more about each family, their history, their path to Mae Sot; the path of us becoming friends in the most unlikely ways. And also just how he keeps redeeming each individual relationship.

And somehow, how he’s made another home for us around the world.

all in a week.

by Filed Under: house calls, house church, housewares, kelli, onehouse, photos, playhouse, stephen 1 Comment

Whoa, what a week.

We took this crew to church on Sunday, including the marijuana hat. And snail hat was left behind.

The left hat caused me to write down this note to myself (hat@church), which I later came back to wondering why I was reminding myself to hate church. 😂

Sunday ended in a large community fight, involving a beer bottle being thrown at one woman’s head and a sword being drawn. We went to the hospital for emergencies twice on Monday night, and the teenage girl who came with us to help was locked out of her hut, because I mistakenly said I’d bring her back in the morning for school when I tried to assure her dad she wouldn’t stay at the hospital but be able to go to school in the morning. She ended up watching some Avengers with us over popcorn and sleeping at our house.

Stephen is teaching The Reinforcers to type in Burmese, and they are working on typing up all our songs for church so they can run them on the projector in coming months. I’m super impressed with all of them, but particularly the husband who can teach them how to type their language and provide them with so many new opportunities.

Wednesday we did a special Valentine’s Flour & Flowers delivery!

And had a flat tire.

And made little gifties for the kids: red off-brand Pocky sticks and pink strawberry yogurt drink. (Do you guys even have on-brand Pocky sticks?) I know you’re jealous.

This was confiscated from an eight-year-old, six-year-old and three-year-old playing with it at our house.

Girls are becoming teenagers and spent their week whispering about boys and things behind curtains. It’s adorable.

Stephen sent this to our little friend in Bangkok, who writes us on Facebook all day every day, and we mostly send photos, emojis, and stickers back and forth. My husband is awesome.

This girl can multiply! After bribes and weeks of practice, she’s got it, and I’m beyond proud. We’re moving on to division!

Stephen made a trip to the border to pick up our Burmese teacher’s wife returning from Burma. And he took this great picture with a great friend.

We did our Friday laundry load of towels and rugs, which is my favorite load of the week. I love what it represents: the feet wiped on the rug on the way in, the bread loaves baked, the breakfasts served, the hands washed before playing computer. It represents a full, active community space that requires so many towels.

We got matching button-up shirts for The Reinforcers that will soon be logo-ed, and we made badges with their names. They’re official! We announced it to the Mae Sot community last week.

And they had two gigs this Saturday! They started at 7am, doing an amazing job at a celebration for a local non-profit. There were over 800 migrant students present at the local university stadium. In the evening they ran sound for a worship night for another local ministry.

Somewhere in there we also had two significant meetings this week, working on two new and very promising connections for the two ladies sewing in our home! We’ll share more info soon, but for now, we are so thankful to see prayers answered and God providing work for them.

We also applied for and received a visa for Burma, and we leave tomorrow afternoon with one of the bread ladies and her little family.

We’re never bored, friends. We are never bored. 😊

a dichotomy.

by Filed Under: house calls, kelli, on the house, photos, playhouse 1 Comment

While playing a game at Storytime on Tuesday, he was jumping up on me, asking me repeatedly to be held. I did, as long as I could, but he’s seven and lanky. Hardly someone I can hold for too long.

I held him through the story, working hard to keep him focused.

Wednesday found us struggling during Playhouse, as he asked me 101 times for a Superman coloring page. He was throwing things, breaking things, and fighting everyone. We reviewed our house rules.

And then Thursday, when Thida was nearly to tears recounting what he’d said that morning.

He said he likes it at our house because we love him, but his parents don’t love him. They only hit him.

__________________

I can’t speak to their feelings, nor can I imagine a mother not loving her own child, but it’s true that they hit him often. It’s true that they don’t love in an obvious way.

It’s also true that we do very much love him. I can speak to my own feelings, and he’s very close to my heart.

He’s seven, and quite a mess, as his life has been. He’s had significant adults in and out of his life, moving between prison sentences and questionable lines of work.

He only knows life with violence. We are reviewing, nearly every day right now, that when he’s at our house:

We play. Together.
We don’t fight.
We don’t bite.
We don’t kick.
We don’t hit. 
If we are angry, we use our words.

__________________

This week there was drama about why he isn’t in school–school our community fund paid for him to attend at the beginning of the year. Thida had provided her son’s old uniforms and we got him a bag; we even started sending breakfast extras for lunch. He was sent to Bangkok in the middle of the year and then returned, like something purchased from Target.

Meanwhile, his aunt is asking to join our literacy class–which we’d love for her to. But it’s also heartbreaking. She’s 19 now, and was taken out of school since we got here. We did everything we could to keep her in school, and it didn’t work. She was sent to Bangkok to work, and is now back, raising a baby on her own in the same broken environment as her nephew, and asking for literacy classes.

__________________

And then last night found us with his mom on our floor, in a panic attack, after her drunken family members created a brawl outside.

Stephen went back to the house to ask after their son, and they said he was sleeping. He was doubtful the child slept through all the shouting and fighting, and peeked in on him. He was wide awake.

“Do you want to come to our house? Are you scared?”
“Yes.”

We learned his mom is pregnant with another little baby, and now we’ll be taking her to clinic this week. We work hard to create a culture of celebrating pregnancy in the neighborhood, so I told her I was happy for her.

It was automatic; instantaneous as I feared she was considering abortion.

It was a lie.

__________________

It’s moved so quickly this week, from one mess to another.

It’s hard to reconcile it all in my mind. It’s hard to reconcile waiting on adoption, when we’re offered kids here that we already love. It’s hard to want to keep families together when they are so broken. It’s hard to send a child home into ugly chaos. It’s hard to see smiles as he fights through. It’s hard to know she’s bringing another little baby into this. It’s hard to fight for education when the brokenness is so much deeper. Its hard to hold a seven-year-old.

It’s hard to comprehend that his story, at age seven, involves drugs and trafficking and prison sentences and sexual encounters and drunkenness and stabbings and swords. But also a place across the street where he colors pictures of Superman, climbs on his auntie & uncle, plays with an iPad, and eats breakfast every morning.

Perhaps the dichotomy is overwhelming for him, too.

our biggest fan.

by Filed Under: house calls, housewares, kelli, photos 1 Comment

A few months ago, Thida found out she had a cyst in her uterus. I don’t know what the standard is stateside, but she was told to wait three months and come back for a followup. At that point they said it would either be smaller or have disappeared, and thus be nothing to worry about; or it would be larger and likely cancerous.

She was nervous, for obvious reasons.

Meanwhile, she’s one of my best friends here. We talk all the time, about so much these days. We’re often chatting about faith–what Stephen & I are praying for in the community, some of the challenges of living here, some of the challenges of working in the community. We’ve talked about the church giving money and how things like The Breakfast Club happen.

She told me recently that her nine-year-old son, Jor Gee, wants to be a pastor, just like our pastor Ah Tee, and he asked her if that would make her proud of him. She said yes, she’d love that. He’s one of the sweetest kids and is always looking out for the younger kids, the one who doesn’t have a snack, and anyone underprivileged. He’s always helping out.

Oh, and he’s always copying Stephen, because he’s his hero. Just recently Thida said he’s been praying for Stephen & I to have lots of money, and she asked him why (i.e. why pray for them to have money rather than our family?!). He said, “Stephen and Kelli give money away to all the Burmese people, so it’s better if they have a lot.” 😭

Thida and I have been talking through all these things–what the future holds for her kids; why we gave her daughter Mwei Mwei a job; why her oldest daughter hasn’t had kids yet.

She’ll teach me new recipes when I ask and helps me learn new words in the market. If anyone asks about me speaking Burmese (nearly every week) she uses it as a moment to brag on us. She tells random folks how great we are.

She’s probably our biggest fan around here, and we’re definitely hers. She’s one of our best gifts over the past year in particular.

So when she’s had this concern, I’ve been praying. And as we drove to the hospital on Wednesday, I asked her if I could pray with her. She seemed grateful, and said she was so scared. I prayed while I drove, and honestly, it was adorable how she folded up her hands so tight and placed them right in front of her face. It was like a Precious Moments kid. (Did anyone else’s grandma take them to the Precious Moments chapel as a kid? Anyone?)

And guys, when I saw her that afternoon at Playhouse, she was giddy. It’s gone, and she was just thrilled. She said thank you for praying. She said it was because we had been praying.

Honestly? I don’t know what God is doing in her; in that family. I have no idea how they view this faith thing.

Honestly? I don’t know why he answered that prayer so apparently, and not others. We’ve been praying for Aung Moe to have his vision back for years; or even just a plan for him. We’ve been praying for Daw Ma Oo for nearly a year, and while she’s improving, she’s back in Burma for another round of treatment and followup.

Honestly? We love that family so, so much. And I’m so thankful that God answered such a big prayer for her!