stephen – Page 3

all things in common.

July 3, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, housewares, kelli, stephen 1 Comment

Thida and her family are such dear friends of ours. She reminds me regularly that I need to open a restaurant to sell bread, cakes, and all the meals they’ve ever tasted. She says she’ll be the kitchen manager and it will be so successful. She even tells me often that they’ll move their whole family to Burma with us if we’d prefer to open a business there!

Her husband built them a beautiful new house about three months–it sits back across a river, so you cross a handmade bamboo bridge to get into a shaded piece of ground, surrounded by trees. The house is beautiful, with three small rooms, a living area, and a kitchen. It’s the most elaborate shack I’ve encountered, with a collection of materials pieced creatively together. After building, they didn’t have electricity at their house, but would have to pay to have the government wire it out to them, particularly being Burmese. So they waited a few months without electricity, coming to our house each afternoon with a selection of flashlights and phones to recharge for their family of 12.

And just weeks ago, they got electricity to their new place. They they bought a refrigerator.

This is where she came to me: they had bought a large fridge for about $75, used from somewhere. She said her husband had told her last night: Stephen & Kelli use their fridge much more, making bread & cakes and such; and they have a smaller fridge. Why don’t we just trade? They could use the big fridge and we would be fine with the small one.

This pretty much melted my heart. For her family of twelve, she wants to trade me for my 4 foot fridge, so that we can have a larger one for all our baking? The sweetest.

At this point, we’ve declined–I feel like I could just go buy one out of savings, but we’re making do! It doesn’t feel like a necessity yet. And she does have a family of 12!

And more than anything, I’m just honored that we do life together, with a willingness to swap appliances. She has been such a picture of Christ to me, even as I don’t know exactly where she’d say she is on her faith journey. We’re just having lots of conversations, and ultimately, I think she grasps the idea the church and the love of Jesus more than many of us.

“And all who believed were together and had all things in common. And they were selling their possessions and belongings and distributing the proceeds to all, as any had need.”
Acts 2:44-45

renovations.

June 5, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, photos, stephen 1 Comment

This is what I wrote my friend recently about our “house renovations” and on doing such things in Thailand:

Renovations in general are horrible in this country. Imagine how long it should take you, and then double it. And have something go horribly wrong, and try to fix it in another language. And then add three more days.

And as it turns out, that was an understatement.

Upon returning to Mae Sot, we knew we had a small window of time to get things settled and move into the house next door. We had about a month before we had to be back in Bangkok for our adoption class, at which point we wanted to have our updated photos taken to give to our caseworker.

We put a door between our two houses, which was estimated to take a day. It took 3 1/2 days. They scored & cut a beautiful hole in the wall–perfect lines and beautiful. They fit the door frame into the wall: beautiful.

And then they put the door in, measured to fit the frame and made by the same company. No go. The door didn’t fit. They had to trim the door on top & bottom, and in removing the frame again, two large chunks of concrete fell from their gorgeous hole.

So we patched it up and tried options B, C, & D. Fast forward three days–and hey, we have a door! And it looks good. And most thankfully, we’re still friends with Matt.

We then started to paint our new house: the first room (for baby bunny!) went perfectly. Two coats, and beautiful.

The second room (our bedroom): While we’ve been gone, fire ants built a nest in our air con, so when I turned it on while painting–trying to survive the 100 degree temps–I suddenly felt bites all over my neck and shoulders. Fire ants invaded the room, falling from the aircon and pouring out in every direction. We decided to sweat it out while painting and call the air con guy to come clean it.

And then it took five coats to get it even. Five coats of paint in 100 degree temperatures.

And then last: the studio & main living area & kitchen-will-be-laundry room. We called a friend for help. And as it turns out, she painted houses for a summer job years ago, and is amazing at it. So while I did about 20% of the room, she NAILED it. That was God’s little gift to keep us afloat.

Then we were just days away from moving our bedroom over to the new place. As we sat in bed watching a show, there was a distinct scratching noise under the bed. Very distinct, and very alive. We were pretty sure it was a mouse or rat scratching the plastic bag that holds our Christmas tree.

So, at 10:30pm, just a couple days before we’d be cleaning it all out anyway, we unloaded everything from under our bed. And guys, that’s like our attic. It is our only storage space in the entire house, so that has all our Christmas decor, suitcases, camping gear…it all came out. Dusty and everything.

And no creature to be found. But he was still scratching.

Now Stephen laid down on the floor and started looking closer with a flashlight. There was definitely something alive, but stuck behind our bamboo headboard. Evidently stuck, because he wasn’t coming out. And with the shadow he was making, it appeared more stick-like than we anticipated.

We started to wonder if it was a snake? But how was it scratching against something?

We dug closer, and in the end found the world’s biggest (and dumbest) dragonfly. A dragonfly. About 4″ long, it was stuck behind our headboard and frantically flailing it’s wings, thus sounding like scratching against the bamboo.

I guess I’m glad it wasn’t a mouse|rat|snake.

And I guess it did push us to move things and get them sorted sooner, since now the entire contents of our house were scattered around the community space.

For yet another two weeks, we spent all day every day working around the house: starting about 6am and working to 3:30pm, when we shoved everything into side rooms so that the kids could come to play. And then we’d pull it all back out at 6pm and work until late in the evening.

And then we had bread days strewn in there, when we’d try to move everything aside to make piles of bread and have toddlers running around the house all day.

I don’t even have the words for the chaos.

In the end, we have moved into the new side of the house! We put in additional electrical outlets for Stephen’s studio and the kitchen area. We built shelving for the laundry room & bathroom, all of our books and games, and for Stephen’s recording & music gear. We have a little room set up for when baby bunny joins us.

We also rearranged the community side and absolutely love it. There is so much more space for people to come in! We have a room for the babies and toddlers, complete with soft flooring and baby-safe toys. We have an area of toys for the younger kids (trains, cars, and simple puzzles), and still another area for the older kids (coloring, board games, & difficult puzzles). We have computer tables set up and a larger sitting area for parents within view of the littles. We are currently working on one more technology area–we have a simple computer set up to play extremely simple video games (Tetris, Mario, and other free games from the 80s) that the older kids love. We’re also trying to get our old iPad set up to play a few simple English games. Both give the kids some fun and help them learn basic technology.

And my favorite: the reading nook. I love that the kids love books!

The kitchen is also re-designed with bread in mind. I have separated out my ingredients into what the bakers use and what they don’t, making it easier to know where things are and help them take responsibility for cleaning their area. We have also set up a Housewares room–the Warehouse, if you will–that has a shelf of all bread ingredients. This will help us to very quickly see what we need each week and give them more responsibility in it all. The other side of the shelf is for sewing projects, as this is now the sewing room, too! It’s so nice to have the sewing machine in a closed room while kids are in and out of the house. Lastly, this room will be the storehouse for The Breakfast Club, too, including dishes and bulk foods.

So, despite the work that took us all of four weeks and a whole lot of chaos to accomplish, we love it. And then we left the next day for Bangkok. We’re already looking forward to being home to enjoy it all!

hello, central arkansas!

February 1, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, stephen Leave a Comment

We’re stateside! We’ll be traveling around for the next few months, as well as taking time with our families.

Particularly for those in the central Arkansas area, we’re trying to make it easy to see you. We’d love to be able to share photos of our neighbors, chat about some exciting things around the corner, and perhaps even sample some Flour & Flowers bread! There are three locations in three cities on three dates–a little bit of choose your own adventure 😀

let’s sukhumvit that situation.

January 31, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, stephen Leave a Comment

Alternate title–Ready or not: Part 3. {Not ready.}

While we were in Bangkok, we stood at the Sukhumvit station waiting for the train to arrive. Stephen stared at the sign and asked, “Y’know in English how you can ‘sukhumvit’ a situation? Like to go around or avoid something? Is that the exact same word, or how is it spelled different?”

I was silent for a bit. I had no idea.

“Sukhumvit…suk-hum-vit. I think it’s the same word. But it sounds really Thai. ‘Sukhumvit that…’? I ‘sukhumvitted’ that situation? That doesn’t sound right.”

Umm, we couldn’t figure it out. So we pulled out our phone & dictionary. Not the Burmese dictionary that we use all the time; the English one. It was a new low.

We couldn’t even figure out how to look it up, because as all of you know—it’s not even close. Searching “sukhumvit” gets you nowhere near what we were looking for.

We ended up searching synonyms for avoid and finally found circumvent.

Oh, golly. We might need to get word of the day toilet paper to keep up our English skills!

one thousand.

January 11, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, photos, stephen 1 Comment

This is the one thousandth post to this blog.

If I wrote 100 words per post, that’s 100,000 words.

And since I am not known for my brevity: if each post contains an average of 500 words, that’s 500,000 words. All since we began to move our lives to this little border town six years ago this month.

And what a better way to celebrate the one-thousandth post than to say this: We’re adopting!

It’s true. We’re hoping to welcome a little one into our home this year! We started the process here in Thailand in early 2016, and we’ve just been playing it by ear. We’ve completed all the medical exams, background checks, home studies, and nearly all the paperwork. There are just a few details to fall into place before we are officially on the waiting list!

And they gave us the oh-so-helpful information that on the list we could be waiting a few days or up to three years. So, hey!

Once we are placed, we’re required to stay in-country for about two years as everything is finalized.

And beyond that, we don’t know much. We are so excited that God opened our eyes to this opportunity, which we had no idea of just over a year ago. After years of talking about adoption, we’re able to actually take steps and see things forming, which is an incredible answer to prayer.

In a season where so much hope is required, here’s to hoping for one more little gift!

another epic christmas: part 4.

January 3, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli, photos, stephen 1 Comment

We had just one more epic celebration before calling it for this year. Our Burmese church, Light of Love, hosts a huge Christmas event each year. It was delayed a bit this year, and actually ended up on New Year’s Eve.

We represented our neighborhood well: 46 friends came with us! We squeezed into three car loads, leaving some of us there quite early. Thankfully, we still have a selfie stick to utilize.

Taking 46 people also involved a checklist on our phones of who came with us to ensure everyone made it back!

Our church is located just across the street from a huge factory, and it meets on Sunday evenings, the one time each week when the factories are closed. It serves communities just like ours, which is really fun to see and be a part of.

The Christmas party brings hundreds of people each year, where they welcome everybody in, sing songs, share the gospel, and then have a huge raffle. The raffle is a big hit, giving away everything from plastic bins and baskets to a rice cooker and bicycle.

Because it’s a very poor community, “raffle” means something totally different. It’s not one or two items–it’s nearer to one hundred. And it’s not a stack of plastic bowls, it’s raffling off each and every plastic bowl. Because of the excitement, sometimes they won’t just call a number, but call it like this:

The first number is…it’s not 2! It’s not 6! It’s 4! And the third number is…5! And the middle number is…What do you think the middle number is? What do you want the middle number to be? It’s 3! 4-3-5! 4-3-5! 435!

Then you have to wait for 435 to make his way through a crowd of hundreds of people to claim his plastic bowl. So while our neighbors were just jumping in their seats to win, Stephen and I were texting back and forth about how this was going to take absolutely forever.

It did.

We did get called on stage to help in calling raffle numbers! Believe me, I did not dilly-dally around. We called those numbers directly. 257 is 257, because it’s simpler in Burmese and because I kind of wanted to go home.

In the end, we managed to take home a small collection of plastic items in the community, including a plastic tray for Stephen! He was cheered the whole way down to the front. I also managed to call the rice cooker on my own ticket 😬 Whoops! Thankfully a neighbor was holding it and came to claim it!

Really, it was fun to see a very Burmese version of Christmas–exactly what the neighbors know and can relate to. And for us, we both left with the same thought: perhaps we’re not too far from normal. Sometimes it feels like our neighborhood is ridiculous–with the stabbings and domestic disputes; when our Christmas meal involves a drunken brawl? You start to wonder where you’ve gone wrong. You start to wonder if you’re just horrible at this.

But at this church Christmas, they had much the same. People got grabby for things. They crowded their way to the front. The pastor’s wife had to pause and ask everyone to calm down, to sit down, to listen and enjoy it without getting carried away. There was a huge crowd of drunken guests in the back, and it even involved a riot that broke into the nearby sewing factory, requiring a visit from the police and military.

So, y’know–we left feeling like we might not be so crazy. And on that note, we called it a wrap for our Epic Christmas 2016 😀

another epic christmas: part 3.

January 2, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli, on the house, onehouse, photos, stephen 2 Comments

{Whew, part 1 & 2 were all in one day. Epic might not be a strong enough word!}

On Friday, 23 December, we had our usual Flour & Flowers day. We did make it a little extra-epic by adding a special cinnamon roll week, so that customers could order cinnamon rolls to have Christmas Eve or Christmas morning with their families. This was a HUGE hit, and we sold 24 pans of cinnamon rolls with cream cheese icing!

We also gave out Christmas cookies to all of our customers that week to say thank you for their kindness and support.

And then it was just a huge week all around! We baked from 6am to 1:30pm, and then came back together about 2:30 to load up the car. We also had some special Christmas gifts for the Flour & Flower ladies.

For the bakers, we had some coordinating aprons made for them. For the woman who delivers flowers, we bought her a new bag. It was quite similar to her favorite, but in a nice leather and much higher quality. She was thrilled, and loaded it up right then to take with us.

And then we snapped a photo of all of us. So thankful we get to continue building relationships with all these women & help each of their families.

On Christmas Eve, amidst packing more and more presents, we also had OneHouse worship that evening. This month we met out at a friend’s house for a candlelight service in the rice fields. It was beautiful with just starlight and candlelight.

We let some of the neighbors come along, and we had the carols & Scriptures available in English, Burmese & Thai. {So much work for Stephen! He’s got some amazing projects going with worship music in multiple languages. It’s slow-going and usually in the background of medical emergencies and chaos, but it’s incredible. It’s so unifying to hear the same song sung in many languages.}

The kids did so well and made us proud. They sang along as best they could, and sang so loudly when we got to Hark! The Herald Angels Sing and Joy to the World, which they had sung for their parents on Thursday.

We also had zero fire emergencies in our crew, which is notable! I was holding Zen Yaw, and trying to help him keep his candle upright and lit. When the wind would blow, I’d use my hand to protect his flame. After a few times, he learned what I was doing and he’d do the same for my candle. So adorable. 😍 He’s been doing so good recently at sitting through church, and comes with us usually. Most every day he comes by the house and asks if we’re going to church today. Honestly, I think it’s because he knows he’ll be held for a couple of hours, but I’m okay with that!

For Christmas Day, we celebrated on our own for most of the morning.

We had a number of gifts from the community to open, which included:

A shirt (Smile Star), perfume (or cologne? It’s hard to say), a blue fuzzy scrunchi, a school notebook, and two handmade scarves (with yarn we’d been giving out in the community). I also feel like you need a close up of the description on the perfume/cologne:

Tempting, eh? 😂

I was also given a beautiful sarong, too, but it was already worn and in the wash!

For the afternoon and evening on Christmas, we went to the Fetter’s house, who graciously let us pretend to be a part of their family! Their two oldest girls are visiting from university over the holidays, and it was just so fun to have their whole family together again, and us pretending to be a part of it!

We also got to put Stephen’s new selfie-stick to good use! #coolestgadgetever

It was a quiet Christmas with no hospital visits, only a few wounds to change or bandage, and overall, fairly peaceful. That was a huge gift.

And that is precisely why we decided to give out gifts on the 26th. It is a bit overwhelming to hand out gifts to over 300 people, and that is also why we don’t have many photos of this. Once you come out with bags in hand, it’s herds and crowds and chaos.

But we survived another year!

And gifts this year were so much fun. It gets more and more fun each year as we know people better. We were brave enough to buy clothes and shoes this year, feeling like we could even guess sizes pretty well.

Six years in, I also realized why I like Christmas gifts in the community so much: it’s one chance to give so freely, and no one asks again. For so much of the year we are surrounded by poverty: kids without shoes, clothes with gaping holes, kids playing with broken toys. We watch our neighbors join us for church in clothes that no longer fit: I saw one man with us wearing pants that were well past fitting–he just had them open in the front, tied with a belt/string, and then pulled his shirt down over it. I see our neighbors embarrassed when they aren’t dressed as well as others. I see kids off to school barefoot.

And yet every decision has to be weighed–if I give them a new shirt, how many more will come? If we buy him shoes, how many more will we need?

But Christmas is different. For the neighbors, it’s this crazy American holiday where people give gifts! Its the one day we get away with just giving ridiculously.

“Ridiculously”–We usually have a budget of 100 baht per person, or $3. This year, I sent Stephen a text from the market: Is our budget still 100/person? I think it should be 200…All the good stuff is expensive. To which he replied, Yes to 250 per person!

So we were a little more flexible for our closest friends this year. Each person got a loose budget of a couple hundred baht, plus soap, toothbrushes, and toothpaste. For the families we don’t know well, we have “family presents”– a nice blanket, baby powder, soap, toothpaste, & toothbrushes. We found some incredible deals this year, which made it so fun. We found some football jerseys for just $1 each, and kids’ fleece pants for just 80 cents! I found women’s sarongs for just $2! We found some footballs for about $5, so we gave those to a few of the older boys, particularly after watching them play football in the street with a shoe and a bowl over the past few weeks. We found stuffed animals, simple jewelry, small purses, and superhero figurines for the kids; watches, shoes, and longyis for the men; sarongs, shirts, and shoes for the women.

We also included special gifts for the youth that have been joining us at church each week–we got the girls new dresses and the boys button-up shirts. For the three families that don’t have electricity, we got them rechargeable lanterns, and let them know they can send them with their kids to recharge them at our house while the kids play in the afternoon.

Like I said, Christmas is such a great opportunity to fill the needs you’ve been seeing for months, and you finally get to try to alleviate them, if even for a moment.

This year, we packed up all the gifts at a friend’s house down the road, where we “rented” their guest room for the month. It gave us a secret place to wrap presents and store them, which was beyond helpful!

On the 26th, we loaded up the car for one “area” of the neighborhood at a time. Our car would look like this:

We’d deliver them all, and then re-fill! It took about 5 carloads and three hours.

It was so fun to see the kids delighted–trying on new clothes, oohing and aahing over each new item they pulled out of their bag. Two of the kids came by the house later and I asked if they were happy, to which the older girl said, No, I’m VERY happy! 😍

Here’s ZuZu in her new kitty cat pants, and Win Moe in her cozy little outfit (with ears!).

And then we headed out of town! It can get a little crazy, so we had things packed up to camp and left for a few days in the mountains. It was very cold and we were very tired, so we spent three days mostly sleeping and reading. Here we are very happy and rested, but perhaps still sleeping a little.

You’d think that by the 31st “Christmas” would be be coming to close, but not yet. This part of the world just loves celebrations. Part 4 still to come 😀

another epic christmas: part 2.

January 2, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos, stephen 1 Comment

On Thursday evening, we had a community Christmas, starting with a skit from the kids!

We had practiced Joy to the World & Hark! The Herald Angels Sing in Burmese the day before during Open House, but we only practiced the skit that day. It was utter chaos, but thankfully we had the help of a translator, as “shepherds” and “wisemen” aren’t really in my Burmese vernacular.

We had four kids each reading a part of the Christmas story from the Bible, all in literary Burmese. They were so brave to read it right into a microphone! We picked some of the best students for these roles.

Mary was pretty easy to choose, as sweet Yaminoo always has her new baby brother on her shoulder. Since he doesn’t let any one else hold him, they made the perfect little Jesus & Mary duo. (After which the kids are still calling him Jesus!)

From there we assigned out as many parts as we could, and after one run-through, we handed out costumes!

The kids loved the costumes, and I think it made it feel real for them. As the parents all gathered outside of our gate at 6pm, all the kids suddenly felt nervous and got stage-fright! It was so cute to see them take it seriously and feel like it was so “official.”

We opened up the gate to the largest crowd we’ve ever had for Christmas!

The kids did a great job, reading and following along, making the parents laugh and keeping their attention. Stephen led us in Hark! The Herald Angels Sing while the angels were visiting the shepherds, and then we all sang Joy to the World at the end. The whole skit was probably my favorite part of Christmas this year.

We followed this with a few words of why we celebrate Christmas, why we live here, and how much we love Jesus and all of them. It was getting quite dark by this point, though!

And then we went for the meal. It’s always crazy, and this year didn’t disappoint. There was even a brawl between a few intoxicated men, so it’s never dull. Thankfully, we saved the kids from the stampede, and we had more than enough food for everyone. So I guess we’ll call that a win?

The whole community helped to clean up everything and left the house swept and mopped, which is so kind. It was a pretty amazing group effort, but I’m pretty sure we still fell asleep by 9:30pm!

another epic christmas: part 1.

January 2, 2017 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos, stephen 1 Comment

We can’t really find a way to make our neighborhood Christmas less epic. There is just something about it being three or four hundred people that just inevitably makes it an epic undertaking!

This year was great, though–it felt even more like a group effort; like we were throwing a party together rather than two of us hosting three hundred people.

We kicked off Christmas week with a Bingo night, which was a huge hit. I’m telling you, crowds will come for miles to play Bingo–and they did! I ended up calling from the table, and Stephen & I had to take turns because we kept losing our voices shouting the numbers!

On Thursday, we started at the market at 7am. Thida & I went after food for 300 people. For just $225, we managed to provide for 400 people in the end! We bought 40 kilos of noodles–40 kilos of dry noodles.

Which, once you start to boil them, turns into a whole, whole lot of noodles.

They then added in a whole host of chopped veggies and chicken.

I was so proud that Thida bought so many veggies to mix in! This is probably the most well-balanced meal we’ve ever served, as well as fulfilling for everyone. And it served 400 people!

They then boiled over 300 eggs for extra protein.

While all this was being chopped, boiled, and stir-fried outside, we had more going on inside.

First, we had the Flour & Flower ladies making cookies as thank you gifts for our customers. We made four batches of snickerdoodles and four batches of gingerbread cut-outs.

These all were packaged up for the next day, when we’d include them with bread & flower deliveries.

We also had San Aye sewing, because it was a Thursday.

And we had hosts of kids playing outside. And posing for jumping photos!

Then we had some kids inside, playing with their youngest siblings and the Flour & Flower babies. Here each eleven-year-old had their own babe that they were rocking and singing to sleep! 😍

Then the food prep moved it’s way inside, where the noodles were packaged into individual containers and put into bags. In addition to noodles, each person received a hard-boiled egg, a few pieces of fruit, and a small bag of cookies. We had all these packaged and in piles around the house, so that they could be handed out that evening.

Around 3pm, Stephen and I slipped away to have lunch before the chaos truly started. Sometimes we go through life looking as though we have a newborn. Really, we just have a big community!

{Part 2 of our epic Christmas in this lovely community to come.}

on sabbath.

December 12, 2016 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, stephen Leave a Comment

So we try to take a Sabbath every Monday.

We do our best to say no to all requests in the community, particularly if they are not urgent. However, there are always things that come up. Last week, there was Chit Oo, who really needed to be admitted to the hospital as soon as possible, as he was at risk of dying. His phone had been disconnected and I could not find him for every effort over the weekend. Of course he showed up on our doorstep on Monday morning.

This week I need to take San Aye to the first training for her new job. And since we’ve been working with her to get this job for weeks and its such an answer to prayer, I’ll be taking her tomorrow morning, despite it being a Monday.

As Stephen and I talked about it this morning, we talked about the Pharisees challenging Jesus healing on the Sabbath, and how he argues for your son or ox falling in a well: would you not rescue them? We talked about how it was probably best to help San Aye with this with all that’s gone on in her life recently.

But then Stephen noted, “What I don’t know is what we do if we live by all the wells and all the oxen. There is always something falling into the well on Sabbath!”