The House Collective

bones.

by Filed Under: house church, kelli, photos, stephen 4 Comments

We moved into this neighborhood eleven years ago now. The kids that were five and six are now sixteen and seventeen. The ones we watched get married are bringing home second and third kids. The ones who had kids have grandkids.

In the short version, we worked for an organization that wanted to change the big picture, while we saw the need—and maybe our place—in the small picture right in front of us. We wanted to invest here, so we started building.

We built our relationships slowly. In another language, over some tragedies and Memory games, over meals and community meetings. It was weird and nontraditional, to say the least.

And then somewhere along the way, we wondered if we were even the right people for this anyway. We wanted to see more local leadership, and we wondered if we were just in the way. And maybe I just felt like I’d been building for years but wasn’t sure what I was looking at.

I was ready to step back: back into my passport country, back into English, back into an adoption system that would tell me the next step in the process.

But in the most unexpected way, it felt like God said we were placed. We were in position for something. I’m not speaking to philosophy or ideology here, just my own story: while we might not be local or the best for the job or the ones you’d pick out in a crowd, we were placed now. We were in position. We did know the language. We did know the families. We did know the unknowns. We’d started building something that we should continue. It felt like God just said to stay put. Keep building. Wait.

So after that visit to the States, we still went back. With mixed feelings, yes; but we did.

______________

I’ve had Ezekiel 37 on my mind for years, woven throughout this story. I’ve had different people speak to me about it; to share about our community and reference it. I memorized it earlier this year, meditating on the poetry of it.

“Oh, Lord God, you know.” (v.3)

It’s been a long decade of meditating and ruminating.

And then this year—amidst all that 2020 brought us!—there was a rattling.

It’s hard to put it into words. It was dreams, shared by a teenager in tears. It was in conversations, some very, very hard. It was in tears. It was in actual miracles. (Clearly I’m a skeptic. I’m using “actual miracles” so that I believe it, too.)

And then this.

In December, I was sitting on the steps of our church waiting for Stephen to return for the second trip home. This particular Sunday was the first of the month: we had brought bread for communion and flowers for the church from Flour & Flowers. The Reinforcers had run sound and managed the new projector recently installed. The Sunday school teachers fell through unexpectedly at the last minute. With ten or so kids from our community attending and dropping coins all over the tile floors, Stephen and I gathered all the kids outside for a pick up Sunday school lesson.

I was tired as I sat there.

“I’m getting baptized. I’m taking the class and then I’ll get baptized next month.”
“What?”
“Baptized. You know? I’m getting baptized next month. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. And this is what I’m going to do. It’s true. It’s what I believe.”

Later in the week, as we did our Honest Advent by Scott Erickson (recommended!), we read this,

“It’s a surprise that life can come through barren places.
It’s a surprise that meek nobodies partake in divine plans.”

This is how I felt in that moment. I’ve been looking at this desert for a number of years. Sometimes the endless English classes and market runs; friends telling me of the problems in their marriages and families; language learning and impromptu Sunday school in my second language: it feels like endless desert sometimes. It feels like dry bones. It feels like God is asking me, “Can these bones live?”

And often I’m replying–with a sigh or groan–“Oh, Lord God, YOU KNOW.”

Subtext: Oh, Lord God, you know if this is worth anything. Oh, Lord God, you know if we are building anything.

And then life pops up. And I’m sitting in front of a fifteen-year-old that we’ve known since he was five. He’s walked in and out of that door hundred and hundreds of times. We’ve watched his face get rounder and then thinner over and over again. We’ve had conversations about who the Buddhist god is and who our God is. We’ve watched him draw on his hands while sitting in Bible study some weeks and eagerly join the discussion in others.

And now he’s telling me he’s choosing to blaze the path in his very Buddhist family. He’s pondered it, he’s considered what he sees. And he believes.

Because there is a divine plan here, and we as nobodies get to be a part of it. We get to sit on the steps in the middle of a desert and see the the life pop through. We are watching dry bones take on sinews and flesh and breathe life, because we serve a God who does that. He is Emmanuel, here with us in the desert and among the dry bones.

Creating life.

safety.

by Filed Under: house calls, house church, housewares, kelli, on the house, photos, stephen 1 Comment

We got a new lock for our front door.

This might not seem significant, but I love what it represents. For years we have had the same lock on our front door, and we’ve slowly been sharing keys. I’m not sure how many we’ve printed now: too many to count. Not only do all our employees have keys, but we also have provided keys to women in challenging domestic situations so that they are able to leave and find a safe place when necessary. Because of this, we also lock it from the outside every night, ensuring people can get in even if we’re asleep or away.

As we worked through our self-defense class earlier this year and dealt with a few different situations, Stephen wasn’t sure it was a great plan, though. It’s hard to flee a situation and remember to grab your key and papers; it’s also fairly easy to take a key from someone or lose it. There were times some friends didn’t have access to a key and thus didn’t come when we were away.

So Stephen started researching. As he loves technology anyway, it was a new challenge. Within a few months, he found a new lock technology that reads fingerprints, storing up to fifty. It also connects to our phones, telling us when the door is both unlocked and locked.

And so, this week we replaced the old lock with this new one, fully equipped with a number of fingers: the bread ladies, The Reinforcers, the jewelry & sewing ladies, the Sojourn Studio staff, our house manager, the girls in our self-defense class, & the two teenagers who are responsible for the community soccer ball! Stephen made sure all the fingerprints were saved and working; everyone was duly impressed.

And best of all, women can escape to our house without finding a key first. They always have their finger with them, and it’s ready and waiting. It’s also helpful that we know a bit of what’s going on when we’re away, seeing as people come and go. If anything goes wrong, we can even remote-access open it, which just blows my mind.

We were pretty excited about this for many reasons.

And then we headed off to Bangkok. It opened one night pretty late, and we wondered a bit about the kids putting the ball away so late and made a note to follow up with them. (We had told them it needed to be in by 9pm, it was a bit after that.)

But instead it was one of our staff members, a dear friend. She told us she and her son had stayed at the house two nights while we were away because of some problems with she & her husband.

And while this isn’t great to hear, it also is. It’s times like this we are thankful we are here, or at least our house is: for such a time as this! And we’re thankful for a place we can share with friends freely, for work and play and safety.

So a new lock is sort of a big deal around here.

becoming a family of three!

by Filed Under: kelli, photos, stephen 4 Comments

I can honestly say this adoption process has been
the weirdest, most confusing, most challenging thing I’ve ever done.

More weird than when we put a deceased woman into our car and drove her to the hospital because I couldn’t convince the family–either due to language or culture or grief–that she was, in fact, deceased.

More weird than when one of my neighbors tried to convince me to buy an old computer monitor and “turn it into” a television.

More weird than every day in our life of weirdness.

More confusing than living in another culture or learning two languages at the same time.

More challenging than moving overseas at age 22 as a newly-married couple. More challenging than attempting to live between two or three cultures.

We have known so little in this entire process. We have guessed so much.We have hoped so very, very much.

And oh, have we waited.

But it’s here! Or at least we think it’s here, to the best of our weird, confusing, challenging knowledge!

____________________

I haven’t known when to say what for years now.

We announced our adoption at Christmas 2016, when we were told we were on the waiting list and might receive a call at any point. That was clearly pretty far ahead of schedule.

We went back to America in the spring of 2017, with hopes that it would be our last trip, and we might meet our child that summer. That was clearly pretty far ahead of schedule, too.

And then we answered questions with very vague answers (similar to the vague answers we were receiving) for a couple years.

And then we started getting pieces of information at the end of 2018. And we weren’t sure what to tell people or when.

We heard we had been matched with a son, but we didn’t have a name or a photo or a file, or really anything that felt too official. So do we tell anyone?

We thought more information was just around the corner, so we’d wait until then to tell everyone.

But it was two months more months of silence. And then a call that went something like this:
Caseworker: Hi, this is _____. Do you remember me?
(Insert emotions of ?!?!?! We wait to hear from you EVERY DAY! YES, WE REMEMBER YOU.)
Stephen: Yes, I remember you..
Caseworker: Can you send me your new passport and work permit and visa papers?
Stephen: Yes, we can email you that.
Caseworker: He looks just like you! (And then other things not understood…)
Stephen: …Who? Who looks like me?
Caseworker: Did you see the photo? I open the photo and he looks just like you and your wife!
Stephen: Who?
Caseworker: The little boy. You have not seen the photo?
Stephen: No. we didn’t get a photo. Did you send a photo?
Caseworker: Congratulations! I’m so excited! I want to tell you congratulations!
Stephen: Uh, thank you…yes…you say congratulations…for what? Are we…moving forward?
Caseworker: He looks just like you! Ok, bye. Send the work permit and visa.

(Just for the record, we have now seen a photo. Most people who have seen it agree he doesn’t look too much like either of us. Which we are okay with… which is why we started the adoption process in a foreign country in the first place.)

But after this call, again: do we tell people? What do we tell them?
There is a boy…he might be ours? He might look like us?

And then a file, finally. With a photo and a name, but still not a lot of specifics: What is next? Can we share this? Is he really ours, or is this a suggestion?

And then it just all started rolling forward.
Can you send a final yes? YES!
Can you send him a book of photos of you and your home? YES!
Can you come meet him next week? YES!

  • (Here we are sending off our photo book and a short video!)

And if things go as we understand from a jumbled phone call, we’ll be meeting our son this week, and hopefully bringing him home to Mae Sot about a week after that!

While we still aren’t very sure of much, we feel it’s all certain enough to tell you: We’re going to have a son!

We have so many questions, partially because we’ve never been parents nor adopted before; but primarily because communication is extremely limited. We are very unsure of how these next two weeks will go. We are making plans to be in Bangkok for…awhile. Our neighbors are graciously rolling with it, too!

We still aren’t sure if we can share photos or names or information, so we’re just passing on that he’s adorable! He’s just under two and half years old.

Our friends are excited to meet him. We’ve been telling the neighbor children that we’ll have a son soon, and that he won’t know Burmese but they’ll have to teach him! They are excited, telling their parents about their new friend.

And we can’t wait. We can hardly believe it.

And maybe we’re a little scared to believe it, to get too excited; considering all the weird, confusing challenges this process has held.

Our current plan: we leave on Sunday! We meet him Thursday! We wait for approval, and then we take him back to our home, with neighbors thrilled to meet him, to a room that’s been awaiting him for months and months.

And we become a family of three 😍

the reinforcers: new staff!

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Over two years ago, Stephen began working with two teenage guys, training them weekly in sound reinforcement. We soon found out it was important they learned some other skills, and it just became an apprenticeship. Stephen taught them a variety of things from soldering cables to wrapping cables, from saving files to typing in Burmese, from how starting up a computer to using iCloud. He taught them how to set up speakers and ground a system if you’re getting shocked. He taught them how to run a projector and even to appreciate coffee on long production days!

After just over a year of training, one of The Reinforcers graduated and needed to move on to a full time job. His job in town is every day until six, so he wasn’t able to to work with Stephen anymore. We were down to just one Reinforcer.

We have been looking and considering who we might add into the mix. For this year, we didn’t feel an urgency, and more importantly, didn’t see too many options due to age, maturity, and other factors. Stephen instead focused on Pyint Soe, strengthening the relationship, expanding his skills, and investing in his future.

This year, he’ll be heading into tenth grade, which is the final year of school here. It’s an intense year as the students prepare for Myanmar’s final exam–a six-subject test spread over six full days, with a pass rate of around 30%. Students often have extracurricular study early in the morning and late into the evenings, sometimes over the weekend.

We still aren’t sure how this will play out for Pyint Soe, and we’ll do our best to continue investing in him in the coming year and hopefully further. But it did become clear over this summer that we needed to have another trainee moving in. And thanks to a few projects Stephen has taken on, he’s been able to train Pyint Soe further and cover two weekly salaries!

Enter La Pyint. This is Pyint Soe’s younger brother. {Let me interject here to say this community turns out to be just a few big families. Everyone is everyone’s brother and cousin and auntie.} We’ve known La Pyint since he was six. Now, at fifteen, we both felt like he was at a great place to move into the role. He’s shown so much consistency in the past year, coming to cajon lessons weekly and English lessons once or twice a week. He’s also been increasingly interested in computers and music both.

And since they get along quite well, they were both excited for the collaboration!

Now, they’ll both be attending church with us weekly, continuing to learn and manage the sound system & PowerPoint. They also train one night per week on basic computer skills & typing in Burmese. Currently, Pyint Soe has another day or two a week he works on recording projects with Stephen, which we hope to bring La Pyint into with time.

Both of them are taking intensive English classes with me over the summer, and La Pyint will continue to cajon. Stephen hopes to meet with them monthly for focused mentoring when the school year begins.

And we love them. They are like brothers to us: making us laugh, teasing us, & teaching us. We are getting to know them more and more with each week, and we love that.

And while I was initially skeptical of the name, it’s grown on me. We are loving The Reinforcers and all it’s growing to become! It’s still serving to invest in teenage guys in our community, and perhaps doing so more than we even hoped. We are thrilled that one young man was able to finish high school, and that we have another preparing to graduate in just under a year. We are really hopeful for what the boys are seeing & absorbing; we are hopeful for their futures.

Meet The 2019 Reinforcers.

ed sheeran.

by Filed Under: housewares, kelli, stephen 2 Comments

Zu Zu has become a sweet friend. She works with an organization in town called Global Child Advocates, who runs Sojourn Studios, which now hires three women in our community to make beautiful ceramic jewelry.

Last year Zu Zu began to help with Sojourn Studios. About twice a week she comes to our house to check in on the jewelry and the ladies; to give them additional instruction. She helps lead a bible study over tea twice a month.

She is always smiling, frequently laughing, and often encouraging. #agoodfriendtohave

Last week, as we were in the car returning from a training we attended together, she told me this story:

“Before I met your husband, when I had never met him, I thought he was Ed Sheeran.
I went to the office, and he was there. He came to see Kris, and they were talking together.
I asked my friend Ivy, ‘Ivy! Ed Sheeran is here! Why did no one tell me Ed Sheeran is in Mae Sot? That he came to our office?’ And Ivy said that she didn’t think it was Ed Sheeran, but that it was just Kris’ friend.
But I still thought it was Ed Sheeran, so I went to another friend and another, to everyone in the office and asked them why Ed Sheeran was in town and why no one told me! They all said it was just Kris’ friend. But I thought he looked just like Ed Sheeran!
Then I started working for Sojourn and I came to your house. And he is your husband, Stephen!”

This is when the friend sitting next to her piped in, “Ed Sheeran I love so much!” Then they all started singing. Y’know, Ed Sheeran.

languages schlanguages: still.

by Filed Under: kelli, schoolhouse, stephen 1 Comment

We are still learning Burmese.

STILL.

Language is an emotional rollercoaster. I want it so badly. I can’t seem to grasp it some days, and it can make me angry or defeated or heartbroken. Other days it can make me feel like I’m on top of the world and can conquer anything. My brain can make sense of that today, and it couldn’t before? BOOM. I’ve got this.

Every thing you learn new, you realize the hundred more you can’t quite yet say. You see the ten mistakes you made in three sentences while you were just trying to say something simple. Or you realize the tiny portion of the song on the radio you can actually grasp. But then you chat with a friend and time goes by, and you hardly notice.

It’s so natural. And then all of the sudden its just so impossible. 

I’m the most disorganized learner when it comes to language. I don’t have a record of notes. I have notebooks here and there, often unfinished, sometimes with loose themes at the beginning. (The themes are always lost by the end.)

Stephen is the most organized, driven learner I’ve ever encountered. He has found system after system to break himself down, conquer every weakness, and tackle every challenge. He has the biggest file of notes, all sorted perfectly. He has apps, audio files, books. (I will note, I have all these things. I just couldn’t find them at this very moment. Or the next few.)

Last week, we started lessons with a new teacher. Our teacher of five or six years recently returned to Burma (but showed up in my dream last night!).

Honestly, our new class was pretty discouraging. I could try to explain why, but I’ll just say she was very unimpressed. I just left broken, wondering if I’m saying any of the things I mean to and if we’re accomplishing near what I thought we were. I was in tears and wanted to throw in the towel.

The next day we had a bible study over tea with the jewelry ladies, and I followed along. I felt like I knew what we were talking about, could comment and join. We shared stories and perspectives. At the end, two of the Burmese ladies said I really knew a lot and was doing very well.

Rollercoaster, you see?

Language is also a bit like a Magic Eye. Remember Magic Eye? Sometimes you look at it, and you see chaos: tiny little images, swirls. Nothing of significance. Overwhelming. Often frustrating.

But if you wait long enough, look hard enough, and give yourself a significant headache: you see something really beautiful.

(This is such a good analogy, I can’t even handle it. Wait, look, pounding headache; and there it is.)

But the cool thing about both language and Magic Eye is that you can also un-see it. (Not many things in life are like that; too many of us know.) I can step back from Burmese; I can choose to listen or not. I can choose to see swirls or statements.

And we’re still choosing every day, to study. Stephen still has his notes perfectly sorted, and I still have a few random pieces of paper on my desk of the new words Thida & my new teacher taught me this week.

Still.

our favorites: schoolhouse.

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Stephen comes up with the best ideas. A few months ago, I mentioned we started something new through Stephen’s great idea and a grant from Kingdom Mission Fund.

It’s easily a favorite these days.

Currently, we have ten students and four adults learning English. We have four students learning guitar and one more learning cajon. (Even more incredibly, thanks to the help of some friends in Mae Sot and Stephen pre-organizing all the curriculum, all these are continuing to study while we’re away!)

There are lots of reasons to love schoolhouse.

First, we love seeing the kids and adults succeed; to be so proud of themselves. It’s fun to work with them on it, helping them learn and answering questions.

For English, Rosetta Stone is a pretty incredible program. I’m so thankful it allows me to be everything other than a teacher in these classes! Sometimes I watch kids; sometimes I help with pronunciation. Stephen is often the technology specialist: helping them understand the warnings that open, or why the microphone doesn’t work.

One day Stephen had run to the hospital while I oversaw two boys’ English lessons. One of them was having a hard time with Rosetta Stone understanding him, so I was trying to help as he would repeat, “It is a car. It is a car. It…is…a….car. IT IS A CAR. IT IS A CAR.” Then he switched to Burmese. “IT ISN’T WORKING BECAUSE STEPHEN ISN’T HERE.”

So at least we all know what our roles are 😁

And while Rosetta Stone is amazing, it’s very gracious with pronunciation. VERY. Sometimes I can’t tell what they were supposed to be saying!

For guitar, we have an app that teaches them a chord, and then has them play it with a song. They have to hit it on beat and get the chord correct. (Not that surprising for the idea of learning guitar.)

And then for cajon, Stephen has a separate lesson with this student every Friday. They have been working their way through a video course, and he’s getting pretty good!

I think our favorite part of Schoolhouse are the one-on-one opportunities it gives us. As the community keeps growing, it’s hard to stay connected to those we know best and have known the longest. Sometimes they are actually more stable now than they were; while the more unstable families ask for assistance and take more time. These classes have really allowed us to pick and choose some individuals we can invest in, hopefully with long-term impact on their language and music skills, learning opportunities, and mentorship.

We continue to ruminate on to Jared Diamond’s words, “I have heard many anecdotal stories, among my own friends, of children who were raised by difficult parents but who nevertheless became socially and cognitively competent adults, and who told me that what had saved their sanity was regular contact with a supportive adult other than their parents, even if that adult was just a piano teacher whom they saw once a week for a piano lesson.” (The World Until Yesterday, p.190) Here’s to hoping these lessons are just that–in difficult home situations, amidst the challenges of poverty–one hour a week with a friend willing to stumble over languages, laugh, and learn new skills together.

what’s to come.

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

We’re still alive over here.

While some days that is just barely true, it’s true all the same; and a gift not to be taken lightly.

Last week was a deluge. And now, sitting miles away on a couch in the countryside of France, I can tell you: we barely made it here. In the seven days before we flew out, we made five trips to the emergency room for friends. Two new babies were born. There were some truly scary situations where I thought we might lose dear friends.

There was also our last Flour & Flowers week before this time away. The Mae Sot community loves these bread products more than we realized, and they ordered with gusto! This past Friday the ladies baked and sold 65 loaves of bread, 330 tortillas, and 180 cinnamon rolls. That’s incredible, for three women with two ovens and a tiny little kitchen on the Thai-Burma border.

So incredible, in fact, that one of the ladies went into labor that evening! She was a month early, so when we got the call at 3am, I asked multiple times, “Now?! She is in labor now?!”  After my panic and worry that we hadn’t given her enough breaks or we had pushed her to pre-term labor; the baby arrived safe and healthy. She is a beautiful little girl.

And her sister-in-law told us, “I told her she did a great job going into labor before you left!”

There were also the plans to be set up while we are away: jewelry and sewing projects that will continue; friends that will step in to help the kids and adults continue English, guitar, and cajon lessons; The Reinforcer that will continue some sound editing projects; and our house continuing to be open for Playhouse three days a week. Our blind friend, Aung Moe, must still eat; and the insurance program still needs premiums paid every month.

Oh, and when you travel, you must pack bags–which thankfully managed to happen the day we left.

_________________

I suppose I should back up and explain. I’ve been out of words for awhile now. They just don’t seem to come like they used to, so I stopped writing.

We’ve just left our little community for two months away.  We are visiting family in the States, with the intrepid hope that this might be our last opportunity to visit before we are placed soon for our adoption.  And we’re taking some time in France, where we are anticipating space to pray, think, and dream for the future, with some healing and rest mixed in.

We still love this community, and we hope that somehow, by sheer miracles, we will see change come: changes in patterns, changes in futures, changes in systems, changes of heart.

We also hope that we can have the stamina to keep going when we feel this worn out.

Here is a short video Stephen put together of the different happenings around our home and what we envision for this time away.

____________________

Recently I’ve struggled so much to write. The stories, they are too close; they are too much a part of me, a part of us. Sometimes I’m not sure how to even tell them, while respecting my dearest friends or even myself.

So as the silence reveals, I bailed on the words and the stories; particularly the ones that hurt so much to tell.

But there are still so many, that are good and fun and joyous. And Mway Mway has been capturing photos recently, and I’m loving it. They are beautiful glimpses into some of our favorite people and favorite spaces.

Thus, in a new twist for this writing space, I’m launching a mini-series, if you will. “Our Favorites”–a few of our favorite things as we step back and look over the photographs of the life we live.

Stay tuned.

a long time coming.

by Filed Under: kelli, onehouse, photos, stephen 2 Comments

Sometimes dreams take a long time in coming.

Years ago Stephen wanted to work toward unifying the multilingual Church that surrounds us. There are so many different languages and backgrounds, but he wanted to have worship songs available in different languages in a way that it would be easy for everyone to sing together in the language of their choice. Ultimately, he hopes to have resources like this available to churches around this region, including recordings in difficult languages, translated chord charts, and more.

To start, it was a worship night, that has taken on different looks in different seasons of our life and of the Mae Sot community.

This month, Stephen worked really hard to gather together young leaders from the Karen, Burmese, and Thai community around us. They worked together to gather what songs are already translated and have the information available. They practiced to sing together, with different verses being led in different languages.

We also partnered with multiple para-church organizations in town to have a big enough space in the rain and to have a full band.  It was a group effort to say the least, and that made it more amazing to see it happen last night.

Fifty or sixty people came, from different countries, backgrounds, statuses and ages. We all sang together in four languages.

It was beyond beautiful, and a really lovely step into this dream.

The Reinforcers were both scheduled to run sound, but only one was able to come due to a family situation. Because of the system Stephen chose for them, The Reinforcers are able to run it all from an iPad, which allowed him to sit in the audience with friends and sing along while he ran sound for the whole event. And while I don’t really know how to describe it to you–because you have to know him, to know his story, to know how much we pray for him and love him–but to see him using a new skill confidently among his peers, while singing along in Burmese and English; to see him really enjoying himself at a “church event”–it was a great opportunity. Sometimes church here can be very structured, for lack of a better word, and we want so badly to show this community how loving Jesus can be fun and natural and a part of your life; not just a boring sermon on Sunday.

We also had three teenage girls from the community join, able to sing alongside Christians from their school and in their own language, right alongside us.

It was a culmination of a lot of good things, and we are just celebrating that we got to be a part of it!

another home.

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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.