the spurlock house

please leave a message.

August 12, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli Leave a Comment

The concept of leaving a message is kind of foreign here.

It isn’t really used, so I mostly forget about it when I’m stateside after not utilizing this service for a few years. And if I call any of you while I’m in the States, you’ll notice that I’ve completely lost the skill of leaving a message: concise, clear, and with a point worth the fact that you went through the mess of listening to this.

Tonight, a friend wanted to call America.

It started days ago when she asked if she could call America and provided a number that was not the proper amount of digits. Even today, she finally had a number in hand that could possibly work, but still started with a country code to leave either Columbia, Nigeria, or Ecuador. We decided to drop the country code altogether and try it with our free Skype line.

She’s illiterate, so they numbers were child-like. We misread a nine as a four and got a hold of Candace.

Sorry, Candace.

With a potentially right number, we tried three times with no answer. It rings a few times and then goes to an automated woman saying to “Please leave a message for (insert automated number reading).”

Their not having an official message, like Candace had, is actually a sign it might be a Burmese resettled refugee! They never had their messages set up when we were working with them! 🙂

After a few tries, I attempted to teach Jean Wei how to leave a message. I explained that a high-pitched nice woman would speak English, there would be a beep, and then she should say something. I suggested, “Hi, I’m Jean Wei. I will call you tomorrow.”

She nodded in understanding, which I took to mean she understood.

The nice lady spoke English, the beep came, and…silence.

Jean Wei, speak now.
“Hello? Hello? Nephew? Are you there?”
No, he’s not there. Say your name and that you’ll call tomorrow.
“Are you there? Nephew?”

Insert Kelli & Stephen in broken, quick Burmese: “Uhh, this is Jean Wei. She’ll call you tomorrow. Or in 5 minutes!” And then laughter.

If it is an English-speaking American on the end of that phone, they are going to be very confused. If it is a Burmese relative of Jean Wei, he might be slightly less confused, but confused all the same.

Leaving a message is quite the art. And apparently none of us in this little community have the finesse!

a few of my favorite things.

August 11, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, photos Leave a Comment

Somedays we need lighter posts, and today is one of those days! Here’s to a few of my favorite things as of late.

The Burmese market. This has always been one of my favorite places in Mae Sot, and it just keeps getting better. It’s a really beautiful market of colors, vegetables, flowers, meats, bicycles, and shouting.

Great books. Though many might consider it a depressing book list, but I have loved reading recently.

Though I’m years behind on this one, I would recommend Half the Sky & A Path Appears to most everyone. Half the Sky is a great picture of women’s issues around the world, all presented in a very realistic but hopeful way. A Path Appears looks more broadly at development and poverty both locally and globally, and somehow presents very personalized and hopeful stories and perspectives. I loved both.

I also have recently been reading about community development lifestyles similar to our little collective, and though Restoring At-Risk Communities is very much written in the 90s, it was a great little find! I would recommend this to anyone wanting to move into impoverished or marginalized communities. It was refreshing to see that what we do isn’t as crazy as it sometimes feels (or people tell us it is). I also love that we got this one for 99 cents on Mardels’ sale shelf.

Most recently I finished Invisible Hands, another incredible Voice of Witness book. It gave great insight into the labor behind most of our worlds–from factories, agriculture, mining, and more. Living among migrants that often work in factories, fields, and mines, it was a personal, intriguing read that made me so thankful to be here and love on this little border town.

And on that note: Voice of Witness books. Buy every single one they’ve written and will write! This is such a great organization that publishes books about current human rights crises from oral interview perspectives. It is stunningly interesting and puts a personal touch into modern crises. They really do their best to present a balanced perspective, and they’ve written my favorite book on Burma to date, Nowhere to be Home.

The Rock Game. I have no idea what to call this, really, but it is what it is!

There is this little rock game that all the Burmese kids learn and many of the adults continue to play. I started playing a few weeks ago. In short, you throw the rocks out and choose one. You throw it up, pick some up, and catch the one again. The first throw & catch you get to keep. Then you have to collect the rest one by one; if successful, you go again.

It looks much easier than it is, but I’m moving up to about a 10-year-old skill level. I still get squashed when I play with Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo on Thursdays while the bread bakes.

It really is so fun, though! There is something so beautifully simple in a group of friends playing with rocks! It does destroy your nails and fingers, though.

All of these cute kids and a husband who loves them, too.

…And their cute little quirks.

Flowers. I was never much of flower person, really. I bought them occasionally in the market, and then a few times as they were sold at our door. And then we started a flower delivery business, and I buy them most every week. They are so incredible! I have loved having something so beautiful in our home week after week. It is incredible to see the colors, varieties, and detail that God put into each and every flower. It is also beautiful to watch them bloom and die each week; I find it oddly cathartic.

beFREE designs. I went to university with Nicheyta ages ago, and her work is just lovely. I love the simplicity and elegance of her jewelry, and some of the smaller pieces I can even get away with in Mae Sot. And what I can’t really make practical use of, I simply admire on Etsy regularly.

Friends. I am really getting to know and love these two women. They hold a special place in our hearts and home.

And last, Mae Sot. It’s a really weird, beautiful place to lay your head, but it’s becoming home. We borrowed a friends’ motorcycle to make a loop around the city and enjoy the sunset on Sunday night, and it was just gorgeous.

The monsoon season is just great in so many ways, not limited to making everything a million shades of green and creating stunning skylines.

I also love the corn fields laced in banana trees, where my childhood and life here on the border just roll into one. It makes me feel so deeply at home.

bread & birthday cakes.

August 8, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli, photos Leave a Comment

Our bread sales are going well; almost too well. It has been a challenge to determine how to expand this great opportunity for them and yet still keep us afloat, as it all takes place in our kitchen, our oven, and our lives.

Thursdays just keep getting fuller. I go to Burmese class from 8:30 to 10am. Pyo Pyo & Nyein Nyein come at 10am and we begin baking immediately. Stephen goes off to Burmese from 10:30 to 12, while we make a few batches, let them begin to rise, and then begin second rises, begin baking, and transfer pans. We play a few games on the floor & occasionally run an errand or two. The goal of the afternoon is to not forget to purchase snacks for house church and eat lunch; oh, and also not to burn any bread! By 4:30 or 5pm, bread is nearing the end and we start our weekly Bingo games in the community space (enter 20-30 children & adults into the house). At 5:45pm, our translators arrive, and we start house church at 6pm. Snacks are served at 7pm, and we clean up. Dinner is usually scrounged up by 8pm.

And we are tired.

This week, on Wednesday night about 9pm, we were asked to bake cakes on Thursday, too. There were two birthdays on Thursday, and they were hoping we’d help bake some cakes for the little celebrations.

Of course! My oven is already on from 12pm to 5pm; what’s another hour right?!

So in between batches this week, I taught them how to make chocolate cake & icing. I showed them a few scattered decorating tips that nearly caused us a burn a batch of bread. Multi-tasking is not my specialty.

Do I look like I’ve been a hot kitchen all day? Why I certainly have!

Thankfully we had some little helpers, including newly-turned-four Pyi Soe, who was sent to the store for eggs!

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Per usual, we chatted throughout the day.

At one point, we talked about the floods in Burma currently. Both Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo’s families homes are flooded, so they are currently living in monasteries near their homes, which are built on higher ground. There are also some flood victims that have crossed over into Mae Sot and are living just down the street from us. Pyo Pyo told me that she had given them some clothing. She explained that I had given her a bunch, so she passed it on to them.

She lives in a hut that is also flooded from all the rain here.

In between baking times, we sat down to a game or two of Uno. Sitting on the kitchen floor (again, to prevent burnt bread!), they were asking about the oven. They asked if it was gas or electric, presumably since I have written down a fee for electricity-per-batch, but there is a gas tank sitting next to it. I explained that the oven is electric but the stovetop is gas.

Here, Pyo Pyo proceeded to tell me that I was very lucky to have a large gas tank.

It’s standard size for any foreign home. It was given to us with the oven, because it isn’t of such value to be sold separately, but simply comes with any stovetop in town.

And yet in their home, they have a smaller one. They have to refill it about once a month, she said; I have to refill mine once a year.

So I’m “lucky.” Never mind that an oven worth nearly $1000 here was just given to me by a friend! Never mind that we live in a home that stays dry and even keeps us “cool” (or cooler than them!) with fans and an aircon. Never mind the countless things that count us blessed.

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After the bingo & house church chaos, we attended two birthday parties.

The first was for Jor Lay, who turned 3. He is the one who was dropped into our arms about three years ago, when he was just days old and the community flooded.

The second was for Pyi Soe, Pyo Pyo’s little four year old. We took turns eating cake because there were only two spoons. We shared three cups among the five of us.

And we came home and cried.

Because we love this community. We love these families. We love the birthday parties and the cakes and the bread businesses.

But we love them enough that we want so many things for them. We want them to have enough spoons! We want them to have nice clothing and big gas tanks. We want them to know Jesus.

So we deliver beautiful flowers and bake bread; we study language again. We say another prayer for God to be here and be with us and in us and moving. We pray for God to expand the blessing beyond our home and into our community.

And then we take a date night away to breathe. We take another picture that, in some ways, is a pretense–we are simply pretending that our lives are picturesque, when they simply aren’t. And while not picturesque, our lives our blessed; so we can at least capture that.

on having children.

August 8, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: housewares, kelli 3 Comments

While we wait for the bread to bake on Thursdays, we often sit around and chat. We are usually somewhere near the oven, because I’m still not spectacular at remembering to set timers. We play games, like a little rock game the kids have taught me; we literally sit and play with rocks on the floor, as three adults. Last week I introduced them to Uno (or the Burmese version, “One card I have!”), which they loved.

Last week there were three of us: Pyo Pyo, who is 23 with a four-year-old son; Nyein Nyein is 20 with a baby on the way; and Chit Ne Oo is a 15-year-old high school student who was off school for the day. They were looking at some family photos and asking who everyone is. I tried to explain who each sister was, who she was married to, and how many kids she had for both Stephen & I. I explained that Hope is “adopted” into our family, because they are often confused in our family pictures! It didn’t take long for them to see the trends of most of our sisters having children, so they asked about us not having children.

They’ve asked many times before, since it’s common for 19 or 20 year olds to have their first child. At 27, I’m behind schedule for here. But I guess they thought maybe it was an American thing?

But then they saw our families…was it just us?

That’s mostly what they were asking: it’s odd here, but it’s odd there, too?

I wasn’t sure what to say.

I’m not sure what to say to you either, and that’s why I mostly don’t here! But I tried, in broken Burmese and broken English…I told them that we have always wanted to adopt. I told them it was complicated, though, because we live here, where there are lots of children to adopt, but they don’t have papers. It gets messy.

Or at least that’s what I think I said. Those are a lot of vocabulary words I don’t know.

Mostly I said I just didn’t know; we were praying about it and waiting on God.

Nyein Nyein smiled. She said we had so many children—she started naming off the children playing at our house, and pointed to each of them—three adults or nearly adults!—and said they were all our children. She said we didn’t need children, we had so many!

There are so many things I don’t have answers to in the world and in our own lives, and this is one of them. I don’t know how the things will come to fruition. I don’t know if we’ll have children or adopt them or just love on children & adults with families our whole lives! I don’t know if we’ll have a namesake.

But I know that God sends little messages through these friends, and it was a beautiful little moment. They don’t have to understand the story or the prayers or the questions or even the culture.

A few years ago, I wrote about a little girl coming to our door, and the idea that in me giving her water, I could be Christ to her; but that she could be Christ to me, too. I am still mulling on this, as I spend more and more time in the community. Over the years, this community has taught me so much of Christ. There are so many days that they have been Christ to me, even not following Christ.

That day, I had spent all day baking bread with two women and play Uno on the floor, trying to show them the love of Christ. And yet, they gave me Christ that day: he hears our prayers and questions. And he sends them to tell us that for now, for today, he has given us an abundance of children!

an end to all the fighting.

August 5, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house church, kelli Leave a Comment

Every week at House Church we ask for prayer requests before we all pray together. We often talk about who is currently sick and pray for everything from the little boy with the fever to the woman in the hospital with typhoid, the little boy who fell off the toilet & has a cut on his head to the man who survived a nearly-catastrophic roof fall at work. We pray for safe travels, mostly for Stephen & I and Kelvin & Laura—the people with passports who can travel legally—and a few neighbors’ trips to Burma to see family. Every week they ask us to pray for “money”—which we are trying to turn into God providing for all our needs…

Last week, we asked if there was anything else we could pray for, for the kids moms & dads or in their homes. One of the little boys raised his hands and asked if we could pray for the fighting to stop, because there is lots of fighting in the homes & community.

Oh, honey, yes. That is my prayer. Sometimes I pray it selfishly because I just don’t want to go to the hospital with a bloody patient. But, oh, yes—we will pray for peace in these homes! We will pray for an end to the fighting!

Please pray with us.

Jesus, please save {Burma}
Please bring an end to all this fighting
Jesus, please save {Burma}
In Jesus’ name, Amen

“Jesus, Please Save Kenya” (and Burma!) by Kaitlin Pflederer-Feriante in Can You Hear Us?

the good, the bad, & the ugly.

August 3, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: house calls, house church, housewares, kelli, onehouse, photos Leave a Comment

There are so many titles for this very long, very overdue post.

We have had a very, very full few weeks, and there is so much to share. {Consider yourself warned: it’s long. But God is good!} I initially thought to title this “Living the Dream” or something equally as hopeful, because it feels like so many dreams are coming to fruition. We are seeing relationships really take root. We are seeing a lot of dreams we had for the community unfold.

About a year ago when we left our organization-based, structured life for “community-based development”—or just loving people as we could—I was scared. I was very aware that we were either going to sink or soar, but either seemed oh-so-possible. And we just had to try it to see.

This is the first month I feel like I can say I can see the soaring. I can see it working.

So maybe I could call this living the dream.

But the dream is so messy.

While so much good surrounds us, there is some bad. And the bad is really just a symptom of the ugly. And I don’t think we can acknowledge one without the other.

So here’s to a post, starting with the beautiful, good growth we are seeing, with the bad that still exists, and a little bit of the truly ugly, as well.

_____________________

First, something we are so excited about: our little growing bread business! We are nearly a month in, and we are having a great time. Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo are learning so quickly, and even made the last couple batches by themselves this week while I ran to the hospital.

We have gotten a great response from the expat community here, and we sold about twenty loaves last week!

It just keeps growing, and Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo are so excited. I have written out the recipes in Burmese, so they can nearly do it all themselves; plus, we go over the orders and costs and profits each week, so they can learn the system. It’s been such a great learning process for all of us, as well as such fun to spend every Thursday baking together (and playing games while the bread bakes!) and Friday driving around town and chatting.

It has also helped to boost flower sales, as we have houses that would love to receive both. This is great for Daw Ma Oo, too! We are so excited about all of this.

_____________________

It has been a season of great|interesting gifts! Just one week after we started the bread-baking, a friend—or series of generous friends—gifted us an OVEN! A great, beautiful oven that looks like a real American oven—just imagine a little mini-version, or maybe what was common in the 1960s.
This is an incredible gift in this town and a rarity—that is why our bread business is taking off! It also has four little burners on top, which is an upgrade from our two-burner stove. All around, this is an incredible gift from a series of generous people, and it couldn’t have come at a better time. God is so good to us!

And on the note of gifts, we also received a series of interesting presents recently, including, but not limited to: a 70s-style beaded door curtain, like you might see in That 70s Show or your 11-year-old girls’ room. It has pearlescent beads to cover your door frame. Not only was it gifted to us, but they also offered to help hang it up at our front door! Oh, my.

The very next day we were gift live crabs. For this one I protested a little, insisting that I wasn’t sure how to cook them. She assured me I simply had to boil them, but just to be careful because they can walk off. (!)

_____________________

Our weekly house church in our home is still going! As with everything in our lives, it never looks exactly like we’d imagine it. We have just a couple adults that come, but a large group of teenaged kids, and then a whole host of younger kids. We have had to figure out how to make it engaging for the kids but include depth for the adults and teenagers.

It has also been so fun to get to know the three students that are translating for us each week. It has been fun to see their interest in Scripture growing.

Despite the many hours of work that go into it each week, it is well worth it. This is one of the dreams we have been waiting for the perfect timing on, and it’s exciting to see it come to fruition. And we are believing that truth will not return void!

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The young couple we know so well, and the wife is the five-months-pregnant new bread-baker, came to us with a financial issue. They had taken out a small loan a few months ago from a loan shark. Despite paying back some of it each month, they did the math this month and realized they amount they are paying back doesn’t cover interest. They decided she should go back to Burma to live with her family—and to have the baby in a village, where the infant mortality rate is 1 in 5—and he’d keep working here to pay it off.

Not only would this essentially end our growing relationships with them, it would break apart a young couple just as they were welcoming their first child. They are one of the few healthy couples in the community, and we were heart broken on so many fronts.

To make a long story short & to protect them, but also to show the goodness of God: with prayer & discussion, we decided to loan them the money from our own savings. They will be paying us back over the next four months, just interest-free. We were also able to connect her with Partners, where she has begun sewing for them four days a week! They are completely understanding that she is pregnant and willing for her to work as she can over the next few months. She’ll be working there four days a week & baking bread one day a week.

To say the least, this is all a risk. We might never see that money again.

But we also might. And we have seen the way God has answered prayers—providing a job for her, providing translators, providing more ways to show God’s love. And, we pray, keeping a family together.

It seems worth the risk, and it’s a part of the dream we’re living. We want to be here for times such as this.

_____________________

Another dream that has come true: OneHouse worship night! We haven’t shared much about this yet, and there is too much to say for this already-too-long blog. But we have started hosting worship nights once-a-month for the Mae Sot community. For now, it is mostly foreigners, with a few Thai & Burmese. It is part of a larger dream to translate worship music into local languages, but we saw the first stage unfold this past month, and that is beautiful! This is a dream God put in Stephen years ago, and to see even the beginnings of it take root is just worthy of a shout-out.

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Do you see the goodness? These are dreams we’ve had for this community: worship in our home, a little house church with our neighbors, growing businesses and relationships.

But even in the incredible joys, we still live where we live.

One of our friends had a roof fall on him at work last week. As an illegal migrant worker, he wasn’t on a safe construction site or wearing proper gear. There is no insurance, workers compensation, or unions to defend him. He was dropped off at the hospital with $60.

So he & his wife called us.

He had a huge gash on his neck—he was very lucky not to be decapitated from the looks of it—that required significant stitches. He broke either his femur or his hip—when you don’t know the correct word, its difficult to point too specifically in this region! He was in the hospital for a week and had surgery to put a bolt into his leg/hip. He will be on crutches for a minimum of six more weeks. His hospital bills came to about $300.

Despite the horrible situation, the family was beautiful. They negotiated the hospital bill with social services and asked us for nothing. We simply gave the wife & their youngest child rides to and from the hospital for the week. We are now helping them with food for this time when he cannot work; and helping them to get to follow-up appointments. She is starting work near their house, but it is just unrealistic for her to be able to provide enough for the family to eat. And $10 a week can go a long way for rice, fish paste, and vegetables.

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Another day, we were called because a woman was bleeding excessively. I will try to protect you from the details, but she had excessive vaginal bleeding with the Western comforts of pads & tampons. She wasn’t pregnant as far as knew, but needed to get to the hospital.
Our car was currently in the shop, so she & a friend climbed onto the motorbike and I drove off. She was weak and simply fell against my back as we drove, requiring me to hold a constant push-up as we drove across town to the clinic. I was shaking by the time we arrived, and I, too, was covered in blood.

This moment, I was not living the dream.

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This weekend another woman came to our door to have her bandage changed. She had been to the clinic the day before, and a friend told her I’d be willing to change her bandage each day so she didn’t have to pay to go across town every day.

I said that was fine and pulled off her bandage.

She had been stabbed in the back by her husband.

_____________________

And even in the “bad” situations, they are just symptoms of the ugly.

It is the symptoms of living in poverty; of being an illegal migrant. Symptoms of brokenness.

During our afternoon of bread-baking last week, I talked with Nyein Nyein & Pyo Pyo about another woman in the community who has had some physical abuse. I told them—as I told her before, and this other woman—that they could always come to our house. We were happy to let them sleep here, and Stephen is more than willing to fend off a drunken husband.

And as we talked, I asked them about husbands hitting wives; I told them it wasn’t good in America. Was it okay here?

They said that a little bit was okay.

I recently finished three books on development in impoverished communities, discussing everything from human trafficking to loan-shark problems in impoverished areas, to starvation & factory jobs. I read about stories that come across our porch day after day. There were so many things I learned and so many things I saw in the stories so much like our own lives.

One theme I saw is this: when people are living in the margin, getting by from day to day or paycheck to paycheck, one small thing can push you over the edge. One small, unexpected problem leads you to make drastic, life changing decisions.

In our own community, we saw a family a few months ago—a great family that has some strong family values, and they are making it most days. But school registration went up this year, and they couldn’t afford to send both teenage girls to school, so the 12-year-old was sent off to work.

It was just a school fee; a one-time $30 fee they couldn’t afford, that led to a 12-year-old ending her education, being sent off to work, outside of the home, and in all honesty, putting her on the slippery slope to abused labor and human trafficking.

Or this family with the debt problem: it was just one month they came up short; one quick decision to take out a loan. And before they know it, it is pulling their family apart as they try to get out. But if everyone you know is in poverty, who do you ask for help? If you have no papers, how do you take out a loan with protection? If you have no options, how do you prevent this?

And I think, practically, this is so much of what we are here for—to keep a flooded house, a medical emergency, an accident at work, an increased school fee, or a loan, from becoming the start of broken families, prostitution, or unending debt.

Beyond that, we hope to be Jesus in these situations. As we share about the stories of the Bible each week; the stories of God caring for his people, we hope they will see God caring for them, too. We hope to be a part of the answered prayers.

_____________________

There is so much good; there is so much fruit and so many dreams coming true. There is so much bad, and so much more ugly. But really, God is in it all.

at the tea shop: part four.

July 22, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

We had a really lovely trip to the tea shop on Sunday.

I’m not sure what made it particularly lovely–it was rainy, which I do love; particularly with all the cute little umbrellas.

We also had our usual group, plus Nyein Nyein’s husband, Kyaw Htet, who had a surprise day off of work. And then it was just nice conversation, beautiful laughter, and realizing how much you really love the people you do life with.

the start of a bread business.

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

About a year ago, we started a flower delivery service. A sweet family in the neighborhood had been forced into much nicer housing, it was difficult to make ends meet within their flower business; we knew plenty of foreigners who would likely love having fresh flowers at home regularly, but didn’t want to make the trip to the market. To explain our different situation: instead of having flowers for sale in large supermarkets as in America, the large supermarkets don’t carry them here. Instead, they are only available in the crowded, outdoor, very local market in town. I have to say this is my favorite place in town, but it does take some getting used to with the crowds, stares, comments, animal blood, fish smells, live animals, and urinating. If you buy your groceries in the larger stores in town, making an extra trip to the market for flowers is a significant hassle. But they are only a couple dollars! And beautiful! And thus, it was a pretty simple model: our neighbor had the business established, and our responsibility was to create list of interested customers and keep in touch with them week-to-week.

We spend an hour or two each Friday making the deliveries, which has turned out to be such fun. Two hours in the car gives you time to talk about things, even with a language barrier. She teaches me new words and we learn to communicate and discuss her family, her business, and her plans for the future. We were even able to provide a micro loan to help her send her two boys to school this year, which she then paid back in small increments each week after flowers, when she had a small surplus from the increased business. The flower delivery has been rewarding!

It wasn’t long after this delivery service was successful that we wondered what else we might sell. We were already making the rounds around town, and we have a crowd of people looking for extra income. Western food seemed the obvious choice, particularly bread, which we Westerners would all love to be eating regularly but struggle to find around town or, even harder, find time & an oven to make. I love to cook and bake, and it seemed a skill we could share with our neighbors.

But it also seemed a much bigger commitment that was much more dependent on us. Where before we had a person with a business and with a system, we now had to choose the individual, teach the skill, provide the location and set up weekly, determine the costs and prices, and then explain the ins-and-outs of a small business. Oh, and in another language.

For some reason that seemed daunting.

So we kept it on the back burner and kept praying and discussing it. For any of you who don’t know Stephen & I’s decision-making-method, it is over-think, over-talk, and over-analyze it to the death.

A few months ago, we identified our people. After visiting the tea shop each week with the same small group, we found two women that seemed a great fit for it. Phyo Phyo & Nyein Nyein are sister-in-laws. They get along well and both have been looking for work. Phyo Phyo worked at a restaurant briefly earlier this year and told us how much she liked it; she loves to cook and brings us samples a few times each week. She has a three-year-old son that attends school, but as a mother, previous jobs she’s had have been too schedule-intensive to maintain her life and family. Nyein Nyein is twenty and pregnant with her first child due in early December. We know she & her husband well (Phyo Phyo’s younger brother) and it seemed a great fit that she could be a mother but also work a little on the side.

Choosing the people was one of the larger challenges, so I began to make a plan. I had them help me with a large cookie-baking day last month, and it went great. We started considering September for a start date, which gave us time to figure costs and ensure there was a market. I started measuring out my recipes more specifically and deciding what costs would be. And just last week I went to the shop to purchase bread pans so I could begin making regulated practice batches.

That was the Sunday Nyein Nyein told us she’d gotten a job. She’d be working at a clothing factory just near our house, working three four-hour shifts during the day–a twelve-hour day, seven days a week, for around $6 per day.

Read: Plan A, out the window.

We weren’t sure who to have join Phyo Phyo, but felt we needed two people. And while it would make Nyein Nyein much better money per hour, it just couldn’t compare over the week or month.

Then I came home a few days later, and Nyein Nyein was on our front porch with Phyo Phyo and the rest of the community. I asked why she was there, as this hour was, of course, within her 12-hour shift. She said they found out she was pregnant and wouldn’t hire or train her; it seems it wasn’t worth the investment to them.

And so, it seemed it was time to start. Nyein Nyein needed the work and would probably look for something else; maybe this would provide a healthier way for her to work while pregnant and even after the baby. It felt like all of our thinking and planning for a few months from now should just be put into place and happen.

So it did. I talked to Phyo Phyo & Nyein Nyein that evening, and they were excited at the idea. I talked to Daw Ma Oo to ask how she felt about bread deliveries happening alongside flower deliveries, and she seemed hopeful. I wrote our flower delivery customers on Facebook and told them about our new little venture, and we had some positive responses.

So this week, I spent my language lessons learning about “kitchen words”–ingredient names, how to say fractions, how to talk about bread rising, and more. I wrote out the recipe in Burmese and labeled necessary ingredients with Burmese tags.

And then on Thursday, I spent the day teaching two women how to make Western-style bread!

We are making French loaves and wheat loaves to start. We talked about yeast and how to know if it’s proofed. (Did I use the right word for “proof”? Probably not even close. But we made bread!)

We made four batches to practice, making some small samples for prospective customers plus loaves to sell if we could. I talked to them about the cost involved in each batch for ingredients and electricity, and we made a plan for them to collect all the money from sales and then pay us back costs for the number of batches they made. They will then split the profits on a weekly basis.

And Friday, we made our first deliveries as a group of four! We trekked around town offering bread & flowers out of the back of our little Zuk. For all it’s quirks, our car allows for so many opportunities in the community.

We sold all of the loaves we had with us Friday, which gave each of them about $5 in profits. This is about a day’s wage here for an undocumented worker, so considering their hours invested, this is not a bad rate. We do still hope it will increase as sales increase in the future.

So here’s to a new bread business on the side!

new family tradition.

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

A few months ago Stephen told me about a family tradition he’d like to have. He wanted a tradition of a “listening” for every new music album we purchased. When we get a new CD or album on iTunes, we take the time to sit and listen through the album from start to finish on good speakers. We discuss the new sounds and what we like or don’t; we discuss the bands previous albums and compare it to the new one. We look at the album art, discuss lyrics, and listen to drum beats.

Perhaps that’s stating the obvious; did you all know what a “listening” was? I wasn’t sure. Or maybe I was just a little skeptical. It’s quite difficult for me to sit through a movie, so an entire music album seemed…long.

But we have now held our first. And it was fun!

We had some visiting friends bring over the new Mumford & Son’s album, Wilder Minds, when they came to Mae Sot in May. So we were a little behind the game to only be listening now, but getting a new album purchased and across the ocean is no easy task. Neither is finding a couple hours to sit and listen to an album in the time of day where the kids aren’t too loud to disrupt the music, but also the blaring music isn’t too loud to disrupt the neighborhood.

But yes, a tradition has been born over popcorn! Here’s to many more albums being added to our collection in true Spurlock fashion.

weird days.

July 14, 2015 by Stephen & Kelli Spurlock Filed Under: kelli, on the house, photos Leave a Comment

I can’t make these things up.

Sometimes I wish I could…so that I could also un-make them up. But I just can’t.

On Sunday morning, we headed out to the tea shop, per usual. There are five regulars that come along with us: we’ve chosen them in different ways and for different reasons; mostly that it works. They all are quite young, from 16 to our age. Three are mothers, so there is a three-year-old & four-year-old that come along. The third mother is pregnant and due in December. Two of the girls are students at local high schools. They are all becoming fast friends with us an help us practice and learn Burmese. One of them is a small-business owner and buys her ingredients and items for the week of sales while were in the market.

Anyway, that is the usual.

This was not a usual day, as we were to learn. A grandmother in the community asked to come along with her grandson who was sick. There’s a clinic with a Burmese-speaking doctor in the market area.

One of the 16-year-old girls’ mothers also asked to come along for some special purchases this week. Despite this now totaling nine adults and three children, it felt do-able. We went for it, dropping off the patients at the clinic first and heading out to the tea shop.

But everything was just off. Nothing went normally and we were all just out of sync.

In reality, Stephen and I’s lives hardly have a sync, so we weren’t phased. We just sorted enjoyed what we could and took what we got! And then we headed off to the hospital for one of the women to visit a friend that was having complications recovering from delivering twins just a couple days ago.

And that’s when we lost the window out of our car.

For most people, your car window is a little square of glass at elbow height. Our car is kind of one big window. So when we lost our window, we lost the side of our car. In the middle of the main road, no less.

When it fell, Stephen thought it was something off the roof of our car, where we put the excess market purchases that don’t fit in with all the people. Thus, he didn’t panic or anything–he just slowly pulled over to pick up the onions that had fallen. Or the ginormous piece of glass, which by sheer miracle didn’t break.

We were also thankful that it fell out right near Canadian Dave’s restaurant, where our good friend Dave let us store this ginormous piece of glass for an hour or so while we took everyone home. Since we already had loads of people and plenty of market goods, we were a little too full for a heavy piece of glass very nearly the length of the car.

Our priceless moment on the way home was passing our Burmese teacher–who already thinks our lives are little odd–sitting outside of his house, who gave us the BEST face of bewilderment. {Side note: Stephen left his phone at class the other day, so our teacher returned it by simply driving towards our house and asking where we lived to all the people he passed. And he found us!}

After dropping everyone off, we felt like we needed to try to get the window fixed as soon as possible. It is monsoon season after all, so it was only a matter of time before our car flooded. {Another side note: did I mention that our door took in water about a week ago? The seal on the window isn’t great, so after a few rainy days, we had a door full of water, like enough for fish to survive and enough to get sloshed on you when we turned corners. A hole in the bottom of the door now solves that problem. Sort of.}

We headed off to Car Shop #1, which was closed to eat and for a holiday. Hard to say which one. I will say that the phrase “It’s always a holiday in Thailand” is not unfounded; this is the country of holidays. But they directed us to Car Shop #2.

Car Shop #2 claims they don’t work on windows, despite the selection of windshields in the corner.

We visited Car Shop #3 today, which appeared to specialize in glass, but really might only make glass cabinets? We aren’t really sure. They might not even be a car shop, but directed us to Car Shop #4.

{Yet another side note: When I say “directed,” in all of these scenarios that involved a worker at one shop getting on a motorbike and leading us to the next one. It has a very small town feel, I must say.}

It was at Car Shop #4 that they agreed to fix the window. However, it was also here that we didn’t know where the car shop was. Stephen was in the car and followed the unknown-person-on-the-motorbike to the shop, but I was just planning to meet him there on our motorbike. When he’s not where I thought he’d be, I get this call:

“If I send you a map, do you think you could find me?”

Uhh…we clearly did this backwards, because there is very little of chance of that working. Apparently the motorbike had taken him down a number of little backroads in a neighborhood, and he wasn’t sure where he was.

Thus ensued me driving the motorbike up and down tiny little one-lane roads while shouting on speaker phone what I could see and what he could see. Thankful it is a small town after all, and I did find Stephen!

And now our car is mostly-sealed yet again, without a downpour in between!