The House Collective

watching clothes wash.

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When a couple of the kids asked about the washing machine last week, I didn’t think much of it when I let them climb on top and have a look.

I was surprised when they spent the next twenty minutes watching it do what it does best–wash clothes. It sounds similar to watching paint dry.

I was even more surprised when Zen Yaw came in days later and ran straight to the washer. “Kelli! Kelli! Come, come! Water! Water! Go!”

He started banging on the side of the washer. I told him I didn’t need to wash clothes–I’d just finished a load, and we’re still so-so on the water situation. I didn’t want to push it.

“We’re not washing clothes right now.”
“YES! WATER! GO!”
“No, we’ll wash tomorrow.”
“No. Now.”
“Tomorrow.”
“No.”
“…Tomorrow.”
“No.”

I let him turn it off and on a few times, “On, off, on off…”; open and close the lid, “Open, close, open, close.” We had a little language practice for both of us, but no clothes were washed.

Until this morning, when he arrived at the door to say hello and I asked if he wanted to wash clothes.

“WASH! WATER, WATER, WATER!”

His older cousin wasn’t quite as excited, but enough to join him and spend thirty minutes of summer watching the clothes spin. I talked them through how to start it, where I put the soap, and what buttons to push. We got out a snack of fish, a headlamp, and then we watched the clothes spin.

For thirty minutes.

IMG_0008It’s probably the cutest thing I’ve seen in a long time. Each time the cycle changed, it made a sing-song noise, or anything changed, he’d give a loud, “Oh?” with big eyes. He loved watching it spin and telling me when water was coming in.

IMG_0013Towards the end I had to go make Flour & Flower deliveries. He left begrudgingly, took of the headlamp begrudgingly, but accepted the fish as a peace offering. When I returned four hours later, he ran in the house and went straight to the washer.

“Water! Water!”
“It’s finished. The water is gone!”
“It’s not finished.”
“Yes, it is. Finished washing.”
“It’s not finished.”

So that’s the newest thing on the block! My neighbors are the cutest.

we call this home.

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We had a friend in town visiting this week, which is always just a fresh perspective. While this is foreign to them and I watch them adjust and explore, I find myself thinking over and over again: I live here. This is home. Sometimes that is amazing: beautiful kids and laughter and Bingo games to win laundry detergent. Sometimes its exotic and we enjoy fresh pineapple and avocado smoothies before we visit a waterfall. And sometimes it is poverty, and the kids play in our trash and stay at our house to avoid drunken fathers and we hear fighting in the street.

All of these are true, for better or for worse. But it is still home! So here are some pictures of the beautiful parts of it.

IMG_0004IMG_2443IMG_0041John was a huge hit with the kids.

IMG_0618We bake bread on Thursdays with young moms. One of the little babes is 7 months, which is just enough to get around and out of reach. Yaminoo was recruited to babysit, which brings along her brother, Lay Tah Oo. And Pyo Pyo’s son, Pyint Soe, gets to play, too, since his mom bakes. My favorite is watching Yaminoo multitask as she reads an ABC book and keeps little Win Mo moving with her feet.

And then they decide they want to sing the baby to sleep–with blankets, in nearly 100 degree weather, with two ovens and stove top running.IMG_0610 IMG_0611 IMG_0578It’s official summertime, so many of our friends are heading back to Burma to visit family and friends! Here we were helping a family get to the border.

IMG_2534Bingo is a big thing. We recently expanded to “real” prizes, which include laundry detergent, toothpaste, toothbrushes, soap, sponges, and noodles. We hope to help meet more practical needs in a fun way, and it draws in more adults. We  are also finding that most kids over 6 will choose laundry detergent over candy, so it seems its meeting a known need. IMG_0004 IMG_2480 IMG_2459IMG_5130We visited a few waterfalls while John was here. And even during the driest part of the year, there is fun to be had!

IMG_5151IMG_0029Isn’t she just beautiful? And its so fun to have the littles grow up with us and not be afraid of white skin and beards! She loves to have Stephen throw her up in the air.IMG_0629And some days, we sit on the washer and watch the clothes wash. For the older kids, we talked about what each button means and how it all works and watch the countdown until it finishes. For the littles, they exclaim over and over, “Water coming!” and “Whoa! Fast!” Instead of Saturday morning cartoons, we have thirty minutes of technology exposure!IMG_0634IMG_0036And this–this will be a photo I cherish forever. This house has so many stories in it. So many smiles, so many shaved heads, so much tanaka powder, and so many friends

celebrating well.

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At the beginning of this year, Stephen and I were praying over James 4:13-15, “Come now, you who say, ‘Today or tomorrow we will go into such and such a town and spend a year there and trade and make a profit’— yet you do not know what tomorrow will bring. What is your life? For you are a mist that appears for a little time and then vanishes. Instead you ought to say, ‘If the Lord wills, we will live and do this or that.'” We created a “goals” list for 2016 which is on our bedroom wall under the title If the Lord wills we will live & do.

Honestly, we set relatively low goals. Most days we are just trying to maintain status quo and love well in this community. And as we watch our families’ lives march on, conquering multiple jobs, selling and buying and building houses, starting business, having (more!) babies…I’ve struggled with my list. It’s small. It’s just living and loving this little community that someday we’ll walk away from, unsure of what seeds have taken root from all the planting and watering.

Even so, we wanted to just vocalize the dreams we feel like God has put before us. And one of the simple goals we set is this: celebrate Easter well, as a couple & as a community.

Honestly, I feel like we’ve really fallen in love with Christmas here. And even fallen into a sync with it. We are able to share the Christmas story each year, we are able to get gifts for hundreds of our dear friends, we have a huge community meal, we have carolers from local churches coming night after night. We had a candlelit carols night and a worship night; we had a Christmas movie night. We had time as a couple. We walked through an Advent together. It felt meaningful, generous, & full.

But Easter–Easter still lacks some flair. I feel like it often gets overlooked somewhat by many of the communities around us. We build up the birth of Christ, but we miss his death and resurrection.

So this year, we set out to celebrate well: between the two of us; in this little neighborhood that surrounds us; and in the expat community of Mae Sot.

In House Church, we have been walking through the Gospels since Christmas, and just shared Jesus’ washing the disciples feet the week before Easter. For Easter week, we had church outside, where we could use a sound system and hopefully keep the kids’ attention & encourage additional ears to listen in. We adapted the idea of Resurrection Eggs into bags for the kids to help open. We had a cup & crackers for the Passover meal, money for the betrayal, flowers for the Garden of Gethsemane, a “whip” (a fake leather belt) and “crown of thorns” (thorny rose stems jumbled together), three nails, a white cloth, stones (pieces of concrete from the yard; we were thinking creatively!); and the last bag was empty, to represent the empty tomb. The kids really enjoyed opening the bags, and since they got to keep what was inside, the little girl who got the money was pretty excited!

IMG_0015We finished with a special snack of sausage & cucumbers for the whole community. After the arrest of Daw Ma Oo last week, her daughter-in-law, San Aye, was nervous to sell at her pork shop. Since she wouldn’t have any business for the week, we asked her to cook sausages for House Church. It was fun to see the community functioning holistically, and despite the fishy smell that filled our house that evening…It felt special, and that was the goal!

IMG_2512On Saturday night, we had our monthly OneHouse worship night for the expat community. We then woke up early Sunday morning and headed out to the local reservoir with a host of fresh-baked cinnamon rolls and coffee. We had invited the expat community to join us for a “sunrise” service at 7:30.

IMG_5093IMG_5102Stephen did such a great job throughout the weekend leading everyone, and it was such a great way to celebrate Easter. We also had our friend John visiting from the US, and he was so kind to come along despite all that we had filled the weekend with!

So while I look at our list, the goals are simple. But I’m so thankful for the opportunity to see the Easter story resounding in our neighborhood.

down-trodden.

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Stephen asked how I slept this morning. I told him it was awful: I tossed and turned and woke up multiple times, either crying or screaming. He asked if I had nightmares.

Well, I don’t know. My dreams had simply re-lived the previous two days, so does that count as nightmares?

We waited out a community-wide fight on Sunday night. We then woke on Monday morning to learn that our sweet friend, Daw Ma Oo, had been arrested the night before in the market. Perhaps this is where the tensions started: fear.

Daw Ma Oo is our friend that sells flowers with us every Friday, so this was particularly heavy news, and we weren’t sure how to respond. I don’t know how much detail we can share publicly, but the attempts to pay a form of “bail” were not accepted. Nor will she be deported. Instead, she’ll be kept in prison for 45 days.

She is the primary breadwinner for her home. Her husband does some farming and raises some animals. She has six sons, three of which live with her, in addition to one daughter-in-law and a granddaughter. Two more sons and their wives and kids live in other houses in our little community.

Her fifteen-year-old son was with her when she was arrested, but he was left behind to return and tell the family the news. And so the days have now been full of trying to come up with solutions: how to keep the flower business going on Friday, how to incorporate the daughter-in-law into bread making for additional income, how to make sure Daw Ma Oo is fed and cared for in prison, how to make sure the family has rice today.

So in my dreams, our dear friend was in prison and we were trying to figure out all the details. And that is preciously what we’ve been doing.

We woke up Tuesday to a few visitors at our gate. A few high school students from a nearby home help translate for us every week at House Church. On Monday night, one of them went missing. His friends came looking for him at our house early Tuesday morning, and before long we joined the search. Thus went the next three hours of checking hospitals and locations all around town, praying for his safety. Honestly, suicide rates are high here among teenagers, and I was fearful.

Again, I’m not sure all I can say. It looks like now he went back to Burma, and it really isn’t in our hands, but we are hopeful he is safe. We are sad, though; he was a good friend and spending a few hours with him every week was special to us. He has been such a blessing to this community and has loved them with a servant heart.

So I also had dreams of us looking for our friend all around Mae Sot, which we did spend a good deal of time doing.

It has been a heavy week, and we are trying to pray through the next few days and what God has for us. We bake bread tomorrow, welcome a friend from the US in the afternoon, and share the resurrection story at House Church tomorrow night. We have two worship events we are hosting this weekend, in addition to delivering bread and flowers around town sans some staff and with heightened concerns.

Oh, and we have little sleep.

Per usual, I have no conclusions. I don’t know how to share the ups and downs of things here, particularly when it is some low lows. So rather than conclude, I’d just ask for prayer again. Pray for this community as we celebrate Easter here. Pray for Daw Ma Oo as she sits in prison, that God would meet with her. Pray for the down-trodden and broken-hearted–whether that be our friends or us!–that the hope of the resurrection would shine brilliantly.

learning verses.

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It is pretty amazing to see how God works things out, and his fingerprints have been all over our little House Church.

Let me first admit this: it is the most chaotic hour of the week. It’s mostly kids, save a few adults that will drop in, stand outside, or meander. There are kids coming in and out constantly. There is usually at least one child peeing on the floor. There are snacks being eaten and games being played. There are kids talking and trying to play with the magnets.

It’s absolute chaos.

BUT the kids are remembering things. They are remembering the stories. They remember the applications. They tell me about them through the week. And even in the middle of it, most of what they are talking about is the story being told.

In many ways, this is showing us a whole new side of the culture. It reminds me of when I found the child writing on the wall and snapped at him, suddenly realizing by his face he didn’t mean it that way and truly had no idea that my wall was any different than his own, which bears phone numbers and drawings and random bits of words. Likewise, sometimes the kids actions aren’t necessarily meant to be disrespectful, even if it feels that way.

It is also showing me a new side of patience.

And of hope. I find great hope in Isaiah 55:10-11, “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven and do not return there but water the earth, making it bring forth and sprout, giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater, so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth; it shall not return to me empty, but it shall accomplish that which I purpose, and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.” We have a room of children hearing Scripture presented in their own language, and it will not return empty. The Scripture is alive and active, sharper than any double-edged sword (Hebrews 4:12), and it will accomplish the purpose that God has put before it. 

So we will speak it above the hum of crunched Mama noodles and crying siblings and chatter.

In many ways, seeing His fingerprints all over is deep in my soul and not necessarily in the midst of a sweaty, loud bible study. It was pretty spectacular how we worked our way through the stories and the Christmas story fell nearly perfectly on Christmas Eve. We did have to work in one extra story into the book we are working through, but it was such fun to act out the Christmas story on Christmas Eve in our front yard.

And now, as we are nearing Easter, we are working our way toward the story of the crucifixion and resurrection, which will be on Maundy Thursday. We’ll do it outside again, but we’re working out the details for other creative presentations, so as not to have a skit of the crucifixion for obvious reasons.

Last week, Stephen took a week to present theology to the kids. From the beginning, every week has been connected to the Prince that was coming to save us. (If you aren’t familiar with The Jesus Storybook Bible, look it up. It’s such a beautiful presentation of the Bible for kids and adults alike.) And now as we walk through the stories of The Prince in the New Testament, we wanted to try to tie it all together. So first, we needed to attempt to explain the Trinity. We also needed to explain what the Prince came to save us from, and why the Prince was necessary.

Stephen did a stellar job, and it was one of the more {obviously} successful weeks ever. As a part of it, we encouraged the kids to memorize a verse, John 14:6, by this coming week, and safid we’d have prizes. Some of them knew it right away, as they’ve learned it at the Saturday church program they attend. Even so, we went all out with the prizes, and they were nearly to Christmas present level at about $2 per prize, which is also about half their parents’ daily wages. We had about fifteen kids say the verse perfectly!

We also went to work learning it in Burmese. I’ll admit I only got halfway through: I memorized the first three sentences, which break down into, Jesus said, “I am the way. I am also the truth. I am also the life.” 

But Stephen did awesome! He learned it all and recited it for the kids. There was one little mistake in the middle, where also is very, very near to the derogatory slang word for the male reproductive organ–like so close that it’s the same spelling, but different pronunciation. At least it gathered a laugh in the middle.

(Side note, it’s also very similar to part of the color orange. So last week I mispronounced orange, to which the little girl giggled and said with big eyes, “No, Kelli! Orange!”)

In the midst of all this verse memorization, I took the verse to our teacher to ask a few questions about how it breaks down grammatically and what words are chosen. Many of our neighbors aren’t literate, so the children are only partially literate. In addition to that, written and colloquial Burmese are different, and the Bible is in the literary form, which not everyone knows. So while some are literate enough to read spoken Burmese, they can’t necessarily read written, formal Burmese.

As we broke down the verse, it was so interesting to see how it translates. The word for “Christ” is literally “master.”  Burmese is structured differently than English. English is subject-verb-object, but Burmese is subject-object verb. So it makes the sentence “No one comes to the Father except through me” to be translated directly as: “Me without depending no one father to arrive can.” (See why language learning is so dang hard?!) But there are a couple things I really love about this. First, I love the use of the word translating most like “depend.” It seems so much more explanatory than coming through Jesus. Instead, we must depend on Jesus.

And what I love most is the word they use for father. It isn’t just what you call your dad, formal or informal. When my teacher, who is Buddhist, read it, he laughed. He said, “Oh! They use the word for the King. Like a prince or princess calls their father.” He thought this was quite funny to choose such high language, but I loved it. In this one verse, and really in every instance of Father, it inherently implies our role as heirs. It make us princes and princesses. I am amazed how much theology is buried in the language–in any language–and thus how pivotal it all is.

Either way, the kids took to memorizing so strongly, we’re doing it again this week! May the Scripture not return empty.

uneven stephen.

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Our lives have always been uneven.

We have papers to grant us an official birth, country, and legality; our neighbors often do not.
We were born to well-fed mothers; most of them were born into an outrageously high infant mortality rate.
We have a house with concrete walls and strong ceilings; they have a collection of bamboo, wood, tin, old signs, and tarp.
We have water and electricity that runs into our house {most days}; they have one light bulb and a communal well.
We have a house above floodwater; they have mud and rising waters.
We have locking doors; they have diary locks.
We have an amazing machine to throw our dirty clothes into; they wash them by hand each and every day.
We shower in private; they shower publicly.
We drive a motorbike or car or bicycle; they bicycle as a family or walk.
We sleep on a mattress raised above the rats and creatures; they have cardboard or mats resting on the ground.
We throw out the trash; they collect it from us.

I could go on. But it’s an easy point to see and has been since we arrived: it’s uneven.

And yet today, I finally woke to my third alarm at 6:45, which is yet another uneven: the cell phone, the alarm, the fact that I slept past daylight. Stephen rolled over, put his arm around me and kissed the back of my hair. He told me he loved me.

Not only is that a very good way to wake, but it was stark reminder of another uneven. After the night we had last night, I am very aware of what some women are going to sleep with and waking up to.

Instead, I’m waking up next to an uneven Stephen: one of the greatest gifts I’ve been given.

Which one of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!
Matthew 7:9-11

today is international women’s day.

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It’s International Women’s Day, and we were heading out to a local organization where they were playing He Named Me Malala. Stephen was pulling around the motorbike when we heard shouting. I saw a woman running away from the community with her husband running behind her, with a machete-like knife raised over his head.

I remember shouting her name to Stephen, “It’s {name}! GO!” She’s been attacked before, and we spent a horrible evening at the hospital getting her head stitched up and helping her get the blood out of everything.

Stephen leapt off the motorbike and ran into the street, straight for the husband. I was right behind him, and as I exited the gate I saw her running, baby in arms, as he ran behind her and lifted the knife above her head. I screamed oh-so-loudly in a not-very-culturally-accceptable fashion.

Stephen grabbed him, pushed him back, and argued with him to go home, which he refused. I tried to corral all the women and children involved–two women, three children–further away. We made it in the gate and I managed to sit her down on a chair. Stephen pulled the gate shut with the husband outside.

He then dented our gate and shook it furiously while he stared over it at us.

And since it isn’t that much of a gate, we convinced them all to come inside. We shut the door behind us.

Seven of us sat inside. The young mother and her little one-year-old girl began to cry. The grandmother who lives next door had perhaps tried to help and ended up here, too, with her ten-year-old granddaughter and three-year-old grandson.

We cleaned up the wounds, which were very, very minor for what we’ve seen him do before; and for that I am thankful.

He was still shouting outside of the gate, and then made his way in to the door. We soon decided we needed something louder than the awkward silence and louder than him: enter The Lion King.

She went home later by choice. We’ve told her she could stay all night or she can come back any hour of the night, any day.

We missed He Named Me Malala, of course. We tried to crack jokes between ourselves of celebrating International Women’s Day in a much more grandiose fashion: We don’t need to watch Malala save the day when we live here! 

But really, I want to cry. And I am.

This is why we have International Women’s Day. Because there are places, so many places around the world, where “just a little bit” of beating is okay. And one of those places is right here on our street.

______________

Earlier today I was talking with a friend in town about our work in the community. We’re over five years in and I’m still not sure how to say what we do. In some ways it’s a bit embarrassing: I feel like we do nothing. I feel like I don’t know how to put it into words.

We are present in the community, waiting for our presence to be needed.

That is an odd job description. I often feel I can’t defend it or tell you why I do it day after day.

Even tonight, as our presence was more needed than other nights, I feel a conflicting pull. A part of me wants to stay more than ever, because these are the homes that need love, presence, and hope. I am renewed in my resolve that this is worth it; this is why we’re here! Likewise, a part of me wants to throw in the towel even more now. I am suddenly aware of how small my presence truly is.

May His presence here be far greater than ours.

Praise the Lord! For it is good to sing praises to our God;
for it is pleasant, and a song of praise is fitting.
The Lord builds up Jerusalem; he gathers the outcasts of Israel.
He heals the brokenhearted and binds up their wounds.
He determines the number of the stars; he gives to all of them their names.
Great is our Lord, and abundant in power; his understanding is beyond measure.
Psalm 147:1-5

good things as of late.

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While adults are often messy, these kids give us smiles and joy day after day. There are a few good things as of late that need not be forgotten.

There are a lot of babies in our lives right now, and six more on the way in the next seven months!

IMG_0464IMG_0768While calling Bingo every Thursday, I try to make sure there is a baby in my arms. While I look overly focused on calling numbers and maintaining my sanity–forty or so adults and children playing Bingo in a hot community space while the young kids shout in a tent and play trains in a bit chaotic, to say the least–look at this baby’s sweet face!

And with babies come older siblings with lots of responsibility. The newest tactic is to place the baby in a tire in our driveway, where they can’t escape, and then the sibling is left to play. I came outside one afternoon to three tires full of babies and no adult or older sibling in sight! They were off playing hide & go seek.

In this photo below, the top child is actually a baby, unable to get out of the tire. The child on the bottom is three and just climbed in to join the fun!

IMG_0473Sometimes it’s an adoring older cousin, too.

CousinsHouse Church has been fun lately as we’ve been going through the Gospels. We’ve tried to come up with ways to make the stories more tangible, including a snack of five loaves and two fish–

Fish & Loaves–and planting cilantro or flower seeds in good soil.
IMG_2344We also taught the story of Mary anointing Jesus’ feet with perfume last week and gave each person a small perfume bottle. Which was very popular with them, but less popular with our own noses. Whoa.

IMG_0478The kids have been asking to help more in the kitchen and house, so the past two Saturdays have found them chopping vegetables in the kitchen. The first week they helped me make a tomato-pumpkin pasta for the band at our OneHouse worship night.

Cooking Day 2
The second we we made chicken pot pies for us to take to a family for dinner and drop a second one by a family with a newborn. They certainly love to help, and they don’t mind having to wash their hands when our soap smells like oranges. And I don’t mind having help to chop a pile of vegetables when their hands are clean 🙂 IMG_0493The littlest sibling doesn’t mind it either. Who wouldn’t want to come to the house where they let you stand on chairs to see what is going on?

Cooking Day 3Cooking Day 4Pretty thankful to practice language and love on kids in a way that makes us all smile!

it was the bunny.

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Earlier this week, our water went out. We assumed that the water hadn’t come from the government overnight and our tank was empty.

Well, the water hadn’t come from the government and our tank was practically  empty, but there was another problem.

Our water pump cord had been chewed through.

I’d like to pretend that maybe our bunny escaped, went outside to chew the cord, and then came back in. I don’t like to think about other rodent-like animals that might be spending time that close to our house.

It was just the bunny, right? RIGHT?

We were baking bread on Thursday and I picked up a flour bag with a large hole chewed in it. I panicked a bit, as Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein said the dreaded word in Burmese. Was it a rat? Stephen and I talked it over, this time I was really, really, really hoping it was the bunny. Surely he had just chewed through that bag of flour oh-so-quickly when he was out running around. I just wasn’t watching him closely enough.

Now I was pretty ready to give credit to a rat for the water pump, which now felt far enough away that it was okay. A rat outside chewing on things is suddenly a non-issue when I’m trying to determine what is eating my food in my kitchen.

Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein could see my discomfort as I tried to tell them we thought it was the bunny. I told them I was scared of rats and really didn’t want one in my house. To which Pyo Pyo replied, “It’s okay. We were watching TV and a huge rat crawled right by us.”

Hmm. As comforting as that is (!!), I’m going to definitely say this one was the bunny. RIGHT?!

languages schlanguages: the other side.

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While I wish I could say every day goes as splendidly as these stories, it just isn’t true. There is another side, which mostly involves the simple fact that we are still studying.

This was yesterday’s test: I went to the hospital to pick up the previous evening’s drop off, and on the way back was quizzed by the passengers. The setting: I’m driving in a country where laws and lanes are suggestions while there are three people all speaking to me simultaneously in two languages in a car that sounds like it has a jet engine (and yet runs more like a go-cart…).

I told Stephen, “They then decided to quiz me the entire way home, in both Burmese and Karen! While I’m driving, which they have no idea how to do. I need to learn how to say “I am not a good multi-tasker” in Burmese.”

“So how’d you do?”

“Well, it wasn’t my worst. And it wasn’t my best. Unfortunately it was closer to my worst…”

————————

Also this week, one of the kids came to tell us a little girl was climbing on the motorbike, which one of our few rules outside.

{No fighting. No money. No motorbike.}

I then shouted over to the little girl, in Burmese: No motorbike! Don’t play on the motorbike. Don’t touch it.

Unfortunately, I exchanged “touch” for “see”–which, in my defense, rhyme in Burmese–and in essence said, Don’t see the motorbike!

This resulted in belly laughs from the nine-year-old who had come to the door. “No, Kelli! TOUCH not SEE. Don’t touch the motorbike. You said, Don’t see the motorbike! Don’t see!?” More belly laughs.

Nothing like having a nine-year-old roll with laughter at your language skills to encourage you!

So you win some & you lose some; and yet you still get up and go to class! Here’s to hoping there are more wins on the horizon.