The House Collective

the collective christmas 2018: one.

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It was our best Christmas yet, in so many ways.  

Do I say that every year? I hope so. Mostly, I think we’re just learning more and more each year; learning what to expect, learning Burmese culture, learning our best friends, learning ourselves. 

I’ll start with my favorite photo this year: just a day after we returned. I was meeting with Thida to create our Christmas plan–we certainly needed her help! And the kids wandered in to find our Christmas tree, which we’d just set up the night before. As the best tree on the block, and it draws quite a lot of awe!

We started the festivities with a movie night. On Sunday night–just a couple days after getting back into town!–we pulled out the projector, opened up some cookie tins, and blared Home Alone in our yard. We didn’t have a Burmese translation or subtitles, so we’d just shout a translation over the parts that seemed confusing. 🤷🏼‍♀️ Either way, slap-stick humor is funny in all languages.

It was the best kickoff we could have imagined! Hearing the adults and kids alike laughing their hearts out was amazing. 

My two favorite moments: About twenty seconds in, as the thief is in the house entryway, pretending to be a police officer, Thida says to those around her, “I don’t think he’s a real cop! I think he’s faking!”
Yeah, you’re going to get this just fine. ☺️

Then, Kevin uses the trick repeatedly of playing the movie in the background to scare off people at the door, “I’ll give you to the count of ten to get your ugly, yella, no-good keister off my property before I pump your guts full of lead…Keep the change ya filthy animal!” Same trick; repeatedly, folks. And they all laughed their heads off every. single. time. I loved it. 

We even had guests join us in the street. Look closely and you’ll see a grown man sitting in a stroller he pulled up as a chair. We know how to throw a party!

On Tuesday we had storytime after school. Thida read the Christmas story from the Jesus Storybook Bible, and we crafted our own nativities.

It was chaotic and lovely! The kids left with nativities and fruit.

There are reasons we don’t use glue often, though. There was also a nativity glued to our motorbike seat, and a few on our inside walls. Glue stick works better than you’d think. 🤦🏼‍♀️

The next day we sang a few carols in Burmese and played games, including a disaster of Bingo. That was the low point and I might be permanently finished with the game…but “pass the present” and a few other simple games were a big hit! Either way, beyond the singing, it was far too chaotic for photos. We all survived!

And then we were off to the market to kick off our Collective Christmas Meal!

big eyes.

by Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse 1 Comment

We were making faces for selfies and faces at each other.

As I looked at her to make a face, she suddenly stopped and stared.

“You’re eyes are so big. So, so big.”

I laughed and then continued to make a new silly face. Her eyes became serious, and she came in closer, “No. Your eyes are very big. Very big.”

And then she poked them.

not to be neglected.

by Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse, schoolhouse 2 Comments

There has been good, too; I don’t want to neglect that.

One of our lost girls is back from Burma. Most of the family is together, living back in Mae Sot. She’s boarding at our pastor’s house and attending school. We get to see her on Sundays, and that is a joy.

We saw one of Thida’s daughters off to study in Burma for a year. We sent her off with photos and all the love & encouragement we could muster. We love her to bits.

Sometimes we come home to things like this, to both horrify and humor us.

I started a toddler class with Mwei Mwei on Thursday mornings. The kids call it “school” and often come with little backpacks that are empty.

I teach them English for thirty minutes or so, and then Mwei Mwei teaches them some Burmese. We sing songs while Stephen plays the guitar. It has brought me so much laughter over the past few weeks, and I love it.

We started a new after school program for the older kids–the full story which requires another post–but it’s going really well. The kids are loving it, and it’s manageable for us, so we’re thankful.

This team found a basketball game on the computer they love (and they are learning about angles while they play!) He vocally cheers for himself when he makes a shot. 😍

We’re still celebrating birthdays, and that’s fun.

We took one of our sweet friends out to snacks and ice cream with a small group of her friends, and it really was a beautiful afternoon smack in the midst of some of the messes mentioned above. We laughed and loved it.

And we put birthday candles into chicken nuggets. 🤷🏼‍♀️

On the way, the birthday girl was laughing at Stephen & I, saying, “Kelli always says, ‘Uhhmm-hmm, uhhmm-hmm.’ Stephen always says, ‘Yep! Yep! Yep!'” Oh, they know us so well.

Sometimes, we make cakes and attempt to decorate them with jelly filling for little at-home parties. And we laugh and love those, too.

We have this little fellow who likes to be drawn on and a babysitter that enjoys it even more.

We have this little girl, who came to the door last week to tell us she was going to get a snack with her mom. To this I asked, “And when you mom gives you your snack, what are you going to tell her?”
“Thank you.”
Her mom, in awe, “Who taught you that?!”
“Auntie Kelli.”
I mean, could I be more proud?! (Admittedly, we’ve become quite well-known for the fact we counter-culturally require thank yous and hand washing to the extreme.)

We still have Thida and her whole family. And that is such a gift.

And we’re making it together. We’re still discovering new places in Mae Sot, one of which serves up delicious soft serve (or soft sever..). They let us bring in our own little parties as you saw above, and one of the staff also works at the hotel where we swim often. So now she sees us all the time for either ice cream or a swim! At least we’re attempting to balance it out 😊

Stephen is gearing up for the OneHouse worship night this come week, and he’s managed to work with local students and worship leaders to have songs available in English, Thai, Burmese, and Karen; with a variety of musicians. It is not a small feat, but it’s really beautiful how God is pulling it together.

That could be said of a lot of things in our lives. Many little things, but no small feats. Many hard things, but many beautiful things.
None to be neglected.

when things work.

by Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse, schoolhouse 3 Comments

When we started the Summer Program this year, I had an inkling it was going to be a hit.

We knew we individually didn’t have the capacity, but we also knew the summer is wide open for the kids to sink or swim. Sinking looks like: boredom, that generally drives us crazy or ends in risky games and medical accidents. Swimming looks like: opportunities to learn and play safely that wear them out, that are organized enough to maintain parental & neighborhod sanity.

The kids were still reckless. They would come for breakfast every day, and in between a bowl of rice and whatever activity started at 8, we had screaming and wall climbing and stunts and what not.

But inevitably, by 8am, we had something to wrangle the chaos.

The four teachers we “hired” for Monday & Wednesday did absolutely amazing. They organized and taught about 40 kids from 8am to 11am. The littlest group went home then, and about 20 stayed on to study Geography & Science until 12pm.

We loved seeing the teenagers step into their roles, be challenged in their skills, and ultimately find their place. We were like proud sideline parents, and I loved it.

The teachers also helped pull off a little celebration ceremony, handing out certificates and small prizes for perfect attendance and the “best in” for each subject.

On Tuesday & Thursday we had play times. Sometimes we had our usual games and activities, but we also had friends who came with soccer games, sidewalk chalk, crafts, and relay races.

This was a relay, where the kids had to put on a swimming floatie, a pair of glasses, and a headband/crown. It was one of the funniest things we did all summer!

My sister’s also brought some fun little treasures! We did water colors one day, and they gave a drawing lesson to the teacher crew.

And water beads? So fun! The kids played in them, and the last day we also added some toys and small eggs filled with coins. They got to keep what they found and loved it! We even let the parents have a go, which left smiling parents and, uh, a few scratches! 😳

They brought a collection of egg dying kits from post-Easter sales, and Thida helped us hard boil over 150 eggs.

Adults and kids alike were pretty impressed with the dying process.

And some just wanted to eat their egg.

Mwei Mwei also kept up studying math & photography; The Reinforcers did some extra study of Burmese typing and learning Keynote.

And we just soaked up the time having fun with happy kids. It just worked! Thankful for a great community summer.

come on in.

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Life in this neighborhood is a rollercoaster.

Summertime here is from mid-March to the first of June, and it is chaotic to say the least. The kids are absolutely crazy: climbing fences and gates and trees before 7am, with so much energy and so little structure. We have kids napping on our porch; there are so many I fear aren’t fed regular meals. They’ll easily spend all day in our yard and on our porch and in our house.

Hence, the summer program. We still do Breakfast Club every weekday morning; we have two days a week of summer school classes, and two more days of play and games. We do mid-day fruit at least twice a week, plus other days of milk and packaged snacks.

Then it gets even more complicated. Many of the kids in the community live with grandparents or aunts or uncles through the school year, and their parents “call” for them over the summer. They will be sent off to Bangkok or places in Burma to stay with their parents for a few months before they return for school.

It’s also common for kids to live in Burma with grandparents while the parents work in Mae Sot. The parents, likewise, “call” for their kids over the holidays, so we have a whole new slew of kids in our neighborhood that we don’t know, but their parents know us, and they are here just for a few months.

And there is yet another group that lives here with their immediate family, but goes off to visit aunts, uncles, and cousins in Burma for the holiday.

It’s a very big, very convoluted switcheroo.

So while we still have The Breakfast Club, we added about fifteen kids and lost about twenty, presumably both temporarily. And while we have the summer program, some of the kids don’t know the routines: what our rules are, the fact that we speak Burmese (but not perfectly; no, I didn’t get that spiel…). It’s a big learning curve for all of us.

And it’s messy.

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This little boy, he left us in early December, just a few days before his birthday. We had a cake early and said our goodbyes as he moved back to Burma with his dad. Then he came back, just two weeks later. He didn’t like it, and came back to live with his mom, older sister, and younger brother.

He and his sister left again at the end of March, to leave over the summer. They said they’d be back for school in June. We gave them hugs and said goodbyes; just a few months, right?

The little brother followed just a few weeks after. I asked Thida last week, and she’s talking now about how they might stay. It is going well with their dad and grandmother–maybe the mother was the problem, and she’s still here in Mae Sot.  Now they might start school in Burma this year.

That might be the last of their living in our community; I don’t even know yet. And I won’t even pretend I can swallow that. We’ve been snapping photos together for over seven years. To say we love them is the understatement of our lives here.

______________

This little boy: he left us last year.

His parents got in a fight and split; he was left with a grandfather and an aunt. He was then called to Bangkok by his grandmother and yet another aunt; we said our goodbyes and hoped it might be better for his messy little life.

Then he came back, a few months later. His parents are back under the same roof. They are expecting again, and I’m just not even sure what to think.

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This is a family of first-borns, amazingly enough.

Three are first-borns in their individual families, but all sent to live with their grandparents here in Mae Sot. The littlest is a youngest child in every way you could imagine! They are two more cousins & brothers that have joined at different times and then been sent back, just to really confuse it all. But these four have stayed, and made a second little family of over-achievers.

Over the summer, the oldest got a job, which we hope is just for the summer. Reality? With her switch to Thai school last year she was put back into first grade. And money in the pocket is more generally more tempting than the promise of money through education. I’m nervous she might be a nanny forever.

The older boy was called by his parents to go to Bangkok, as was the littlest little guy.

This leaves one. Left behind, not called by his parents; and now having a few breakdowns as of late.

______________

This girl is one of Thida’s, and we love her!

She left to go to visit an aunt for the summer, and I was so sad to not have her in the summer program. Her smile can light up a place, and a she’s a natural leader.

Thida casually mentioned she called to ask after her daughter, and they said she was in Yangon. Thida laughed about all the fun she was going to have.

I have been praying all week for her. It terrifies me to have her traveling on her own, generally a paperless young teenage girl, in a world and region where human trafficking is rampant.

______________

One of our Breakfast Club families is in a hard season: in the past six months they have moved into a field, living in a shanty hut with no water or electricity. They are unable to afford the insurance program we are offering and supplementing; and it’s putting us in a challenging position.

Her baby was due for vaccinations last week, and while we are no longer driving out to the clinic, I did agree to drive her to a free vaccination clinic in the market. As she got in the car, Thida asked her if her husband was working that day. She said no, as her husband was hungover from yesterday and unable to work.

Thida later told me this is her second husband, and shared their sad story. Apparently their are two more kids in Burma, and it’s just messy.  We talked about how we just aren’t sure how to help, because if we help with one thing, it will just be another.

______________

This little boy moved to Bangkok to join his mom and dad, aunts, uncles, and cousins in Bangkok last year.

We have visited him there, and while we missed him terribly, we were hopeful.

But his grandmother & primary caregiver didn’t like Bangkok–not enough people to talk to during the day–and wanted to move back to Mae Sot with him. This week, we helped move them in a shanty room off the main road, amidst a rough crowd.

______________

One of the bread ladies is unexpectedly pregnant again, struggling with morning sickness with a toddler and unsure about the coming season. This week she said her husband’s boss left town–he had a great job installing windows, and the boss owed him a month’s salary when he left.

This happened last month to another bread ladies’ husband. A month’s salary owed, and the boss skips town.

______________

The Breakfast Club is no easy task. Creating a summer curriculum for forty kids in your house in 100 degree weather sans air con is not to be taken lightly. Sharing your kitchen with a breakfast service and bread business is challenging.

The hard part, though: It isn’t serving breakfast to 50 kids before 8am. It isn’t even the hot, sweaty kids shouting out their ABCs.

It is opening up your door to fifty kids with broken families, painful stories, instability; and saying,
Yeah, COME ON IN, with all that baggage.
Every day before 8am.

summer program 2018.

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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.

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.

________________________

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

So, #winning.

on having children.

by Filed Under: kelli, playhouse 2 Comments

For many months now, we’ve been waiting for our adoption process to go through here in Thailand. We pulled together our paperwork in record time according to our caseworker, and then we waited.

We waited for the home study.
We waited for the required class to be offered once a year with limited spots.
We waited on the waiting list.

We’re still waiting on the waiting list, which at times feels both infinite and imaginary.

And while waiting, we’ve had our share of setbacks, namely in that we are on our fifth caseworker in the process. There are only six or seven in Thailand, for the whole country to allow for adoption to both locals and expatriates, so…the task is daunting. The turn over is high.

Meanwhile, we wait.

________________

“’Do you have any children yourself?’
He shakes his head. Looks out the window as you do if you don’t have any children, yet in spite of it all have a whole village full of children.”

I read this quote recently in Britt-Marie Was Here by Fredrik Backman. It captures my life so well.

I can’t even begin to guess how many times we’ve been asked if we have children and why not. I couldn’t even count in how many languages this has been asked!

I know, there is a general path, and we’ve stepped off it. I know that in that sense, it’s a reasonable question to be asked regularly.

In other ways, I do the looking out the window so often. I am so often at a loss of how to answer a question so common.

I have a whole village of children, and yet none. The story is so long, and yet not even begun.

________________

Last week during Playhouse, Stephen and I were on the porch with Thida, and two other moms who bake bread, while the kids played in and around the house. One of the little girls was trying on other kids’ shoes—a favorite activity for her!—and I was teasing her, Are those your shoes?

I used a more polite version of “you,” the one I commonly use with our neighbor friends to show respect to them, but a too formal for a little girl. I corrected myself with a more colloquial form, and then asked the mothers if that was correct.

They said no, I should call her daughter, and we should call all the kids daughter & son. I have been told this before—it’s quite common to use daughter, son, younger sister, younger brother, older brother, older sister, auntie, and uncle to call others according to their age in relation to yours. This is complicated for a few reasons: a) you are judging others age in relation to yours, in Asia, and I never know to guess high or low or if I’m accurate; and people can get offended if you call them older or younger than they are; b) this means that people’s names change depending on who is calling them, and that can just be very, very confusing for a second language learner trying to remember complicated names by the hundreds; c) lastly, it feels personal to a Western mind. It feels so personal; it feels invasive. Particularly with the kids, if we are the ones the kids come play with, we feed them breakfast, we give them gifts at Christmas, we know them in a very personal way for the culture; if the parents are offering them to us as own on a regular basis—we don’t want to step on toes. Calling them son or daughter, in cases where we don’t want to overstep our bounds, seems too close.

With all that background: back to Playhouse. I explained this to these ladies, all of whom we love and know so well, She isn’t my daughter—she’s yours! He isn’t my son—he’s your son! I feel shy to call them that. 

To which one of the mom’s said, “But I am Sai Bo Bo’s first mother. I’m Mother 1. You are Mother 2! [My husband] is Father 1; Stephen is Father 2! For Win Mo, Pwe Pyu Hey Mother 1, and you are Mother 2. Yint Twe is Father 1, and Stephen is Father 2!”
Thida agreed, repeating the grammar lesson, “Yes! You should call all the children son and daughter. You are Mother 2 and Father 2 to all of them!” Then she looked into the house, to kids scattered everywhere over activities and games, “…Oh, mother and father to so many.”

________________

Do we have any children ourselves?

No, not yet.

And yes: a house full, our hands full, and hearts fuller.

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.