Meet Suk- a little princess full of potentiality!

When we stayed at the Ranong Kids Home as dorm parents over the Thai New Year- this little girl captured my heart.  She had just come into the home a few days earlier, and was adjusting to a whole new world. The dorm parents have been asking to take her into the home for months and Mike kept saying no for a large number of reasons, mainly because we don't have money for more children and she has no citizenship. They knew that she was living on her own at a rubber plantation, and wanted to save her from future risk.

I don't even know where to start in trying to describe her life, but I will give it a start. 

-She is a total orphan- she had no mother, no father, no relatives that we know of. 

-She is from Burma, but living in Thailand so has no country citizenship or ID card for any country.

-She is 10 years old. 

-She has been living on her own, taking care of herself, sleeping wherever she can find a shelter.

-She has scars on her scalp, forehead, and arms from some woman who has abused her with a knife.

-She is very very sharp, bright, sociable, easy to be around, and lovable.

-She is illiterate because she is simply uneducated and no one has sent her to school, but she is learning to read quickly. 

-Mike compared her to the wildcats in their barns.  I think she will be easy to tame.

One of the first days that we got there, I took the girls to a store with art supplies to find some activities to do during the week with them.  She found this plastic crown and carried it around as if it was made of pure gold, the whole time that we were there.  I knew she wanted it more than anything else in the store and got it for her.  She wore it off and on, the whole week that we were there. 

As soon as we got home, she asked if she could put on all white clothes to wear with the crown. Since she is from Burma, she does not speak very much Thai - so it is really hard to communicate and understand what she is really thinking.  She was so proud to wear all white with the crown. Don't you just wonder what was going through her mind? All that I could think of was that she is a "child of the king"- dressed in her white. 

She spent a lot of time in my room with me.  The other Moken children, see us very differently and are very shy to talk with us directly and would never even come into our room.  She has never been trained or taught and has had to fend for herself and has few inhibitions.  She came to our door at all times of day and just walked right in.  After I explained to her about our family through pictures (in Thai) she stared at this family picture for soooooo long.  This tugged at my heart so much, as I would have done anything to put her into our family photo.  She has never had a family and I want her to feel that love of being in a family.

I kept telling Mike that I cannot get over how normal she seems considering her past.  She is pleasant, cheerful, fun, silly, loving, charming and so competent. She is healthy. The dorm parents had to cut her nails, cut her hair and teach her to bathe when she arrived. She has amazing coping skills.  One day she walked up to me with ear buds in her ears - singing and dancing to music.  I have no idea where she found the ear phones, but when I followed the cord to the end, it was in her pocket with no connection on the other end,  She was so silly just pretending to listen to music, which she has never had. She made me laugh a lot 

One night, when she was in the room with me- I taught her to play a game on my Ipad. She was quite fascinated with it. Because she has lived so much on her own, she is very independent.  She would walk out of our kids home and wander down the street on her own.  When we took the kids to the store, she would not stay with the group and we ended up looking for her a lot. Hopefully she just needs to be taught and trained.  She is obedient when she understands the instructions given. 

She discovered that I liked her to comb my hair (oh the blissfulness) and I did not even need to bribe her with money as I do my granddaughters. :)  For being alone so much of her life, she wanted to be around us, probably starving for attention. 

Please pray for this adorable and bright girl who is so very precious in God's eyes and ours. We do not know her future.  Because she has no paperwork and citizenship, she has no legal future. She will live in the home with the other 30 children. She will be able to go to school when it starts back up next month, in the 2nd grade. 

She is just beginning to learn who the God of the universe is and what Jesus has done for her. It is all very new to her.  As we explained it to her, we told her  that it would take some time for her to learn about God and her new Christian friends.   After a Bible story one night, she brought me a book that she had found in the home with pictures and Bible stories.  She looked through it several times, and I know she is curious and wants to know more.  

Please pray for understanding of the Bible.  Pray for her to adjust to living with people and to fit into the home. Pray for wisdom and a bright future for Suk and her life. 

HOT HOT HOT

What can I say?  That "feels like 113F" seems low and the wind gusts of 0.0 really describe the stagnant air.  These 2 Iowans, should be use to this heat now after living here in the tropics for 37 years, but honestly we still struggle each hot season. Every year, we tell each other that we never remember it being this hot and laugh at ourselves because we then remember that we say it every year. But this year is honestly hotter.  Read this article, which confirms that this is the hottest year.  I think it has been well over 100F every day during this month of April.  As I looked at the forecast for the next week few weeks, it will still be hot with temps even up to 108F a few days. 

The most common question from people back in the USA is "don't you have air-conditioning?".  We do in a small office room and in our bedroom- but we simply can't hang out in two rooms for months at a time.  Cooking for me is the biggest challenge.  It is not fun to cook in a kitchen that right now reads the temp at 97F. 

We are thankful for our large home and yard  that was a spacious place to raise four daughters, but now we are ready to downsize to an apartment that we can completely use AC's. In the meantime, if you need me at home, you can find me either in our office, bedroom, or slaving over a hot stove. 

PS- No need for hot water heaters now either.  The tap water is very refreshing this time of year. 

Another article has just come out about this longest heat wave. And another one--- it's really the talk of the town. 

dorm parents for a week

Thank you to those who told us that they were praying for our week in Ranong as dorm parents.  The week turned out to be quite different than we had expected.  We were told there would be 10-12 children who did not have a home to go to over the Thai New Year, but for various reason, most all of the children found relatives to stay with and we ended up with just 5 children in the home with us.

It made the time much easier and laid back to focus on those 5 and do activities with them. We went to the school supply store one of the first days and spent a lot of time with  colored pencils, water paints, markers, scissor crafts etc.  Mike and the boys made some soccer goals for them to use on the field. We played ping-pong, went to a new pool with a water slide, played board games, went to a shooting range, and ate out a few times.  With all our activities, the week went by pretty fast.

They were quite independent when it came to meals.  We did one meal each day for them, and they fixed the rest for themselves.

All day on Wednesday we played with water for the Thai New Year Water Throwing Festival, which I already wrote about.

On Sunday, we took them with us to church on Koh Chang.

The girls who went home to the village and the girls who stayed with us, were so happy to see each other and catch up about their time away from each other. 

When the kids are home, they keep busy helping the family business of preparing the nets to go out to sea each day and gathering whatever comes in.

It was so good once again to see the children from the home sitting in the front at church and helping to lead the service with their fellow Moken families. 

Much of my time was spent with Suk, this newest girl to the home, who came in just last week.   She has no family, was living on her own at age 11, has a lot of needs, and yet so much potential.  I will share more about her later, but she definitely captured my heart during the week and I tried to pour as much love into her as I could. 

Yes, it was a tiring week of heat, not so pleasant living conditions, different foods, and some stress- but we are thankful for the chance to give Somsak and Uan a break.

Now we are enjoying a few days to ourselves in much more beautiful living conditions.  Thailand has some of the most beautiful beaches in the world and we are thankful to soak in a lot of beauty for a few days. 

Cru Global Missions

We are excited about all the Summer Mission  opportunities with Cru this summer. Our family will be spread out.  The Foltzs and Mike and I will be doing various projects here in Thailand. 

Ben and Jennifer will be helping staff a stateside project called the Ozark Lakes in Branson Missouri. You can read about their project here.

Lori is going on the Oasis project to the Middle East. You can read about her project here. 

Michael and Bethany have been asked to film an updated documentary of East Asia and help with the filming of the GPro Congress in Bangkok that we will also be helping to staff. We are thrilled that we will get to see them here in Asia in June.

Summer is not too far off and we anticipate each of these exciting opportunities for our family. It is pretty neat to think of all the ways that God will be building His Kingdom this summer. 

Songkran 2016 in Ranong

Happy Thai New Year!! We just finished another year of celebrating the world's largest water throwing festival here in Thailand.  It was fun to look back at some of our memories on old blog posts going back to  2011  and this video. Look at those posts if you want to know  more about the history of this holiday. We usually celebrate in Chiang Mai, but this year since we were staying with the children in Ranong, we took them out.

It started out with buying some water guns for the kids which are sold at stands all over town.

Then filling up water balloons as another source of ammunition.

Then we loaded up our truck and joined the rest of Ranong city in an all out water fight. 

In Chiang Mai they throw water for a minimum of 3 days, often a full week- but here in Ranong, they only throw for one day.  Because it is just one day- it seemed everyone was really into the day of fun. 

The main streets of Ranong were lined with people throwing from thier store fronts to the trucks passing by.

Since the majority of Ranong-ians ride motorcycles, they entered right in throwing and getting splashed.  This country sure knows how to have fun on this holiday and it was  a treat to watch the kids at the home enjoy the  day also.

train trip to Khun Tan

I am pretty sure that this post is going to be the poorest quality one I have ever made, but 'oh well'- it's the memories that matter most. Since it was a day of travel and hiking, I did not want to carry my camera and just snapped with my phone. Hence the very poor quality. 

Jon took Collin and Marisa took Summer away for some needed one on one time and asked us to take the two little's. We decided to have an adventure with Nathan and Hayley and took the one hour train ride to Khun Tan. Nathan was soooooo excited!

Hayley had been on a train once before, but this was Nathan's first time.  They both sat glued to the window watching the sights go by and were very enamored by the whole experience of riding on a train.

The one hour ride was just perfect.  They absorbed each part of the ride, but were ready to get off when we arrived at Khun Tan.

They are both at such fun ages (5 &7) for adventures like this.

They thought the tunnel was really cool and wanted to walk into it, but we told them it was not a good idea.

The hike took us about one hour up the mountain to get to the first set of cabins.  If it was cooler, we would have gone farther, but the heat was killing us.

It was NOT, I repeat NOT, a good time of year to do this.  I asked Marisa to send me the temp that day. The feels like 112F part was more like 140F, since we were hiking in the sun.  We want to go back in the cool months, when it would be more beautiful and comfortable.

Silly Hayley thought of this pose. 

The trail was dry, sunny, hot, and dusty.  However, what once use to be a dirt path, is now paved- so we were impressed with that progress, since the last time we were there (many years ago).

Samantha, a new teacher at GIS joined us for our outing.  It was fun to have her along.

Of course, they wanted to play on the tracks for a while.

On the trip back, we were in the un-air-conditioned train. The wind blowing around us felt like a hair dryer.  We look forward to going back with the whole family during the cooler season and exploring more of the beautiful area. All five us agreed that it was a fun day and worth it, even though we were wiped from our day of exploring in the heat.

L.O.S.

The Life Objective Seminar is held every year on a Saturday close to the end of the school year.  The university juniors and seniors that have been involved with us on campus are invited to come and discover opportunities on how to invest their lives to help fulfill the Great Commission after graduation.

During the day they have speakers and activities to help them deal with questions like "How do I know what God is calling me to do?".  Mike gave the well known Cru talk, "How to Know the Will of God in your Life According the 'Sound -Mind Principle' of Scripture". We call it the Paul Brown letter. 

In the evening there was a dinner party to honor the seniors who are leaving.  This year the theme was "Step Up to Faith" and it was at our TCCC center.

Some of the seniors read a commitment that they made to walk with God wherever He leads them with their lives.

They also received a certificate of appreciation for their years of involvement with TCCC during university.

It was a great day of decision making and thought provoking discussions.  We pray that each of these students will walk with God every day of their life after graduation and influence people wherever they go to want to know Him more.

Easter- 2016

• Easter weekend was full! We went to our churches Seder Meal, which we both really enjoyed as we ate the symbolic foods eaten at the Passover Seder meal.
• The GIS drama department performed Godspell this year.  I wasn't sure that I wanted to go, (didn't sound that interesting) but a friend highly recommended it.  I am so glad we went. It is based on the Gospel of Matthew and tells about the last days of Jesus and his well known parables.  It was funny, so well done, and perfect to reflect on over the Easter weekend.  
• Saturday was our first of some upcoming garage sales, in an attempt to down size our 20 years of collecting in this house. 
• Our Easter meal made me feel a bit guilty, and yet I need to give myself grace at times like this. I grew up with the tradition of a nice home cooked meal with family for Easter lunch and had planned to do that.  The heat here makes cooking so difficult this time of year, our home is being painted on the outside and smells strongly of varnish and paint so we ended up eating out as a family and did not even have Easter baskets for the grand kids.  Our lunch was delicious and special with 11 of us but hopefully I'll do better next year with the family traditions. 
• I finished reading "The Land Between" which was a great read and in good timing as I've also been reading through Exodus.  The author recounts the Israelite's journey wandering for years feeling lost, scared, and frustrated. This ancient story provides us a guide when we travel through our own seasons of difficulty. I've been reminded that transitions can provide our greatest opportunity for spiritual growth, and even a gift as we look back later on.   

• Missionary friends of ours  here in Thailand, Sandy and Barb Sandell have been heavy on our hearts.  He suffered with cancer this whole past year and died last month. We  got news that Barb just found out that she too has the same kind of cancer now and will start treatments. 
• And then to top it all off, good friends of ours that we have worked with ever since coming to Thailand- had a very shocking unexpected death too.  Tom Silkwood was just out mowing his lawn on Saturday afternoon (with no known medical conditions) and collapsed in his yard of sudden death.  Their kids are our kids ages, and they are close in age to us.  As fear and shock have been so real, Mike has reminded me that God is the ones who numbers each of our days. We never know if it could be our last day or one of our family members. Please pray for the entire Silkwood family.  Their three children and family have come back from the USA with grand-kids to be with Gayle and the funeral is this Tuesday.  He was a good friend, passionate missionary and movie maker, and left a big vacancy in the community here. 
• The Ranong Kids Home had a great summer camp and are now enjoying their summer break. We have heard of more children who are at risk and need a place to stay.  We need wisdom on these decisions.
• Mike is finishing a week of Leadership Team meetings in Bangkok where they also need wisdom and unity as they lead the TCCC ministry. 

Moken Summer Camp- 2016