playhouse – Page 8

a recap, for when life comes at you fast.

June 4, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

Things have just gone so fast in the community recently. We are nearing the end of a three-month summer…I don’t really know how to describe it, except to just say that our yard & house are the daycare plan, and it’s exhausting. There are so many kids around our house, all day and every day.

But they started school on Tuesday, and we are kind of excited about that.

We can now go outside in the morning and catch smiles and goodbyes, and then enjoy a semi-quiet day, with adults or just two or three children outside . Our evenings are then more community-centered, where we have the energy still left in us to play with the kids and talk with the adults.

The summer chaos and summer heat has been tiring, but we have had a lot of little things that have gone well.

Tea shop visits have been going so well recently. We have a small, constant group we take each week and get to talk with. It is so fun to see these relationships growing. A few weeks back, one of the girls’ zippers split on her side, and she was quite embarrassed. We came up with a quick solution and she wore my purse to sit right on top of the split. It was so cute to see everyone work together, to see the growth of relationships, and just to see trust grow. It amazes me how much time it takes to really know someone and call them friends, particularly with language limitations and challenges; it takes living life together. It takes week after week of little conversations, little memories, and getting to know their quirks and habits.

Two of the girls also came over last Friday to bake dozens of cookies for the team we met in Bangkok. It was fun to see them make themselves at home in the kitchen, and we are dreaming of ways to expand this..

This little guy, Lay Ta Oo, is still around and still absolutely adorable. He loves Stephen and really wants to be just like him—he tries to play instruments, to wear his hat, and really do anything he sees Stephen doing!

Zen Yaw is nearing two, and has really taken to us recently. He learned to say Stephen’s name since we got back from America, and it might be my favorite thing to hear. He loves to call our names and lights up just to have us respond. And since we can understand his level of Burmese, we have great little conversations.

He also heard Stephen practicing songs for church the other day and kept calling and calling his name. I took him in to listen, to which he tried to “la-la-la” along and clapped. It so fun to see him grow & learn.

On a semi-related note, Stephen was asked by someone at Burmese church on Sunday if they could come visit our orphanage. When Stephen looked confused, she said someone else told her we have an orphanage. This kind of made us laugh.

Last week, a young couple, Kyaw Htet & Nyein Nyein, came to bring us a gift. It is probably one of the sweetest gifts we have received from the community! Kyaw Htet works in construction, but mostly does windows and doors; he has actually fixed our windows and doors from child-destruction before! With broken pieces of windows he presumably found from work, he made me a vase!

They know I love flowers and buy them from Daw Ma Oo each Friday, so this was a really sweet, thoughtful gift. I’m not sure I can even explain how much it means to me! We really love this couple, and are really excited they’ll be welcoming their first little babe this winter.

We had our first Bingo night a few weekends ago, and it was such a success!

We hosted it with a small team in town to see how it went…we weren’t sure how much chaos there would be. We had the kids outside playing Bingo with basic English words and playing for snacks, pencils, erasers, and pencil sharpeners.We invited the adults inside the house to play with traditional Bingo cards, since this would not require literacy and was easy to translate into multiple languages since we know our numbers in English, Burmese, Karen, & Thai! It felt the most inclusive. We also had somewhat practical prizes mixed in: snacks, toothpaste, toothbrushes, laundry detergent, soap, baby powder, and dish soap.

They were so excited for the hygiene prizes! It was fun to see everyone get so excited and have fun together. We have a lot of difficulty getting men to participate in activities, but we had a mixed group, which we were so excited about. We hope this is the beginning of a very fun, participatory community activity!

And my last, perhaps weirdest little anecdote, is on hair color. The kids love to color. The love the princess coloring books and often color them to be Caucasian or light-skinned, with blonde or brown hair, even if it’s a generic princess (not Cinderella, for example, who they might be coloring as she is in the movie). It saddens me that they usually don’t color to fit their own beauty. One week during the sermon at church, I gave the kids coloring pages of a little girl praying. Each one color her hair black!

I was really excited, and I can’t even tell you why. Is it because they could actually see themselves as a little girl praying, rather than as an elaborate princess which feels too distant from their lives? Did all of my coloring girls with brown skin and black hair finally convince them that is beautiful? I have no idea, but it gave me great joy. I hope they can see themselves as beautiful, just as God made them!

And so that’s a wrap: it feels like the past couple weeks have really turned a corner into goodness and seeing growth in relationships. Praying that continues and blossoms!

cooking with chaos.

April 18, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

Yesterday afternoon was rich in many ways, and they all have names and faces and personalities.

It started with making bread for dinner with friends tonight.

While the bread rose, I decided I’d make granola bars, too. And maybe blueberry muffins? They sounded good.

Then a few kids joined. They came first with puzzles, sprawling on the kitchen floor while I cooked. They proudly posed with a finished puzzle, and then they all dropped it in excitement to come see the photo…and they were back to square one.

Later an older sister joined, who really loves cooking with me. We took off with the muffins.

The littlest wanted a train track set up, so we put that between the washer and oven with a few warnings of “hot, hot” and “don’t touch.”

Kids came and went, mixing and sharing jobs and toys, as we chopped vegetables and made pumpkin salsa. We made granola bars, while I explained what peanut butter was–they thought it was chocolate– and showed them how to chop peanuts in the blender. We tried chocolate chips–well received, of course–and I stopped them from sticking the granola bar spoon into the salsa.

Lay Tah Oo & Jor Gee asked if they could practice writing their alphabet, which I cheered over and obliged! They sprawled out on the floor to trace dotted letters.

We played a game that practices colors; one they absolutely love. I practiced my Burmese colors yet again and continued to stir the salsa.

The loved the hand blender as they pureed the salsa. I later cleaned blueberry muffin batter and salsa off the back wall from the hand blender experiments.

While we stirred granola bars, the kids admired photos on the wall. They noted Stephen and I being younger and newly married. They mumbled something about Jesus, and finally said something along the lines of Stephen and I and Jesus. I told them that we did love Jesus, but I was a little confused. They kept pointing to our smiles in the pictures, so I thought maybe the words for Jesus and…something else…were similar?

After some attempted dialogue, I determined that they think Stephen looks like Jesus! So adorable. They talked about their “Jesus books” and how Stephen & Jesus’ beards are the same. It was pretty adorable. And kind of made me want to give them a picture of an Asian Jesus.

They were very impressed with the cupcake liners and asked if they could each have one to take home. Honestly, I bought them in bulk about two years ago–some three hundred of them for $4?–and they are horrible. They are cheaply made, tearing when you try to peel them off and sticking to whatever you put in them. {Read: I should have known better.} Seeing their excitement over something I have been trying to use up for years, I started handing out muffin cups by the dozens.

By the end they had “washed” a number of dishes to help. They tried the sugar-topped blueberry muffins and gave raving reviews while they learned “blooo-berrrry” and gave the salsa a few disgusted faces as they headed out the door.

About an hour later, I was showered and ready for our guests to come. Yedi called me outside, where she had prepared a “spread” from the day’s compost, arranged conveniently in muffin cups.

She explained, in these words exactly: “Kelli…cook…Yedi…eye…Yedi…cook…same same!” So she watched me, and then made the same thing 🙂

This is beautiful place. These are such beautiful children and families. Some days I just don’t want to forgot how much joy they bring me in the simplest summer afternoon of cooking.

as of late: highs & lows.

April 16, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos, playhouse Leave a Comment

The world of social media overwhelms me. I have been reminded recently that I can put out there what I choose, and that is all you see.

I want to be honest; I want it to be a true picture of me and of our lives here.
But I also want you to still believe in us, to still hope with us.

So the days when I don’t believe in myself or when I feel hope wearing thin, I don’t know how to present an honest picture. How do I really paint a picture of our day to day?

Well, I don’t. I remain silent while I determine how to hope again, how to be honest, and how to put our lives into words.

So here are some highs and lows—mostly highs I want to remember!—as we try to get ourselves back into sync with chaos. It isn’t the whole picture, but it is a glimpse into the community around us.

_________________

High: This little buddy comes every day to get our recycling and will stay to color, do a puzzle, or play a game if there’s time. He has also picked up some of my habits, and now blows me a kiss and yells, “Bye, buddy!” to me as he leaves. It can pretty much melt my heart any day.

High: It is always fun to have kids come to your door to sell you unidentifiable food items from the ground right in front of your door. Thankfully, there are also kids inside of the house, so I can purchase 80 cents worth of “sausages” and then serve them to the guests!

Low: Our little bunny Kayak went to a new owner. He wasn’t doing too well, and it was kind of a sad day.

High: While delivering flowers last week, I asked Daw Ma Oo where she has the best business: in the Burmese day market, the Friday|Saturday night market, or the Sunday night market? She said it was in our car—that is her best business! It was fun to hear that little things can make a difference in someone’s life.

High: After flower deliveries, I went to the tea shop with Daw Ma Oo and her nine-year-old son, David. First, he chastised me for ordering hot tea while it was hot outside and forced me to drink a little of his cold green Fanta. He then told me that my skin was “white, white,” his was “black, black” and his mom’s was “light black.” As I was repeating it to show my understanding, he then decided to let me know he wasn’t really black, and taught me that the speaker next to us was actually black…It was pretty hilarious.

Low: We lost one of the women at the market on Sunday.

High: I did find her eventually. She had a cart hired to take her home (since she couldn’t find us either!), so instead we took the cart to get both of us and all of her purchases— kilos upon kilos of {smelly} fish and {smelly} fish products—back to the car. This cart ride was amazing! It was my favorite market experience yet. You are on the front of a cart attached to a motorbike; the drivers zooms in and out around the market, honking at everyone. It was a great perspective of one of my favorite places in town.

High: We got to attend a birthday party for this beautiful little girl. Both of her parents are in Burma, but the family she lives with threw her a birthday party, and she was pretty excited to have us there. It was sweet.

High: At the market on Sunday, some of the girls bought Stephen and I visors. We came across a man selling visors for just 30 cents, and they were excited. It looks like they are actually from a hat factory around here that made some mistakes…so a worker saw an episode of Saved By The Bell and realized they just cut them off and made them into visors!? Mine has an off-center “K” on it.

High: It was Songkran this week—Thailand’s country-wide water fight! We had a great time on Monday morning out with the kids and community; throwing water and laughing in our newly acquired visors.

Low: While attempting to get a teenager soaked, said teenager ducked and Stephen smacked an elderly woman in the face with water. Whoops! This is actually even more rude in the culture here, but would probably be rude anywhere. He felt horrible…

Low: After just Monday morning of playing in the water, I was down for the count and spent the rest of Songkran sick in bed.

High: I got to listen to Stephen shouting with the kids from my bedroom. So cute.

So now we’re here: I’m on the up and up, and we’ve survived another Songkran.
I can’t always determine how to present the whole picture, but I can show you the things that keep us going while we pray for more joys, more hope, and more stories of His goodness!

small things, great love.

January 2, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, housewares, kelli, playhouse 2 Comments

Today, like every other Friday, I woke up and went to deliver flowers with a friend. Instead of it being with San Aye, who has been delivering flowers for the past six months, it was with her mother-in-law, Daw Ma Oo.

Because in short, life is messy. San Aye had been helping Daw Ma Oo with her flower business; Daw Ma Oo went to the market each day and San Aye sold locally and made deliveries on Fridays. But as family dynamics shifted and life stories unfolded, we learned this wasn’t the best for everyone.

San Aye now has a little restaurant stand outside of her house. She sells a variety of pork and tofu items, and we can always swing by for a little snack and chatting with friends.

Daw Ma Oo now sells flowers each week. We load up flowers into Zuk and drive off to a number of houses around Mae Sot, allowing her to sell nearly double her regular sales in just a couple hours.

On the way to our first flower delivery, we stopped at the hospital. Because like so many other days, someone is sick and needs to see a doctor and get some medicine.

And then today, five girls sat outside of our door playing Memory and four toddlers ran in and out of the house. I gave one of the little guys a hug, because he just always wants one.

He was actually offered to us last week to adopt, by his grandmother who he lives with, because life is complicated, and families are complicated. For now, he’s not really adoptable, and it really isn’t a healthy solution. But we can encourage them, help them, give him hugs and tell him he’s special whenever we get the chance.

One of the more well-known quotes of Mother Teresa is, “Don’t look for big things, just do small things with great love…The smaller the thing, the greater must be our love.”

This is what I was thinking about as I drove this morning. I know delivering flowers is a small thing, as well as a ride to the hospital and $3 Christmas present.

How do I love well in these moments? It usually involves a smile. It usually involves a hug or a high five or a touch on the arm. It usually involves just seeing the person in front of me as a story: a family, a home, laughter and tears, with a past and a future.

You see, we are doing a lot of very little things.

We are working in a very small community in a big border town. We are working on just a few streets with some families. We are impacting these homes in very little ways.

They are still in poverty, they are still paperless, they still have big questions. There are still systemic problems that place them into widespread statistics.

Some days I’m sure this is where we are supposed to be. I can’t imagine anything different, really. I see change coming. I am hopeful that maybe, just maybe, we are planting seeds and watering them. I am hopeful that maybe, just maybe, God is making them grow.

Other times, I wonder if what I do truly means anything. Does it matter if we deliver flowers again? Am I helping by simply driving someone to the hospital? Does it matter that we celebrate Christmas and wrap a bajillion Christmas gifts and share the Christmas story, and then someone invites us to the temple the next day?

And as we look ahead to a very near trip back to the States, I wonder if I should keep flying back and forth. Should churches and individuals keep sacrificing and giving to us, month after month and year after year, to make this possible?

It is so many little things: a ride to the hospital, an English class, a piece of candy, a smile and greeting. Or perhaps answering the door for the umpteenth time for a little girl to give me a flower.
And then come back for a high five.
And then decide she would like a glass of water.
{This was my last thirty minutes.}

Are these little things worth it?

I’m not sure it’s mine to say. I think it is mine to do small things in great love, to plant the tiniest little mustard seeds and water them. I think it is mine to pray for big things, to pray without ceasing, to wait faithfully for when the Son of Man comes. I think it is mine to hope, hope, hope.

Sin & err
Fear & hurt
Tears, questions
Nothing left
But a kiss on the forehead
Hope for tomorrow
Peace for today
Love for the moment