February update: Rollercoaster of life month

So exciting to see Cody’s house go from a falling apart shack to a livable structure with a solid roof and a sleeping loft. It was fun to get to participate in the building of it as well. My participation consisted of me holding logs in place while Billy’s dad hammered them into place for the loft. It was cool to get to spend some time with the grownups for a change too.

I was so honored to be invited by Cody’s mom personally to come to the housewarming party and dedication by their church priest after the house was completed. They invited everyone, but Ahna and I were the only farangs who showed up, because Rob and Judy were sick. When Ahna and I got there, we were the first to arrive, so Billy’s mom, Winnie’s mom and Cody’s mom were saying “Oh, don’t be greng tjai! (That is like feeling undeserving of the special treatment you are receiving). You are like family now. You are Akha now.” And they were saying I was doing such a good job as Sophie’s mom. They were telling her, “You need to listen to your mom now. We loved your first mom, but now she’s gone and if not for this mom, you would be dead! You were so sick walking around here coughing all the time. Where would you be if not for Heather? You’d be dead!” Even other parents who I don’t really know, but they live there too and have littler kids not in the program, will come and say “it’s so good that Sophie is living with you. If you hadn’t come here, what would have happened to her? We don’t know where she would have gone or who she could have lived with.” It’s just such validation and love from this community who loved her parents so much. I’m so happy that they feel that way and I totally love them too.

February is also Valentine's Day, obviously, and boy do these kids get into it. I literally spent more buying V-Day junk for Sophie's friends than I did buying Christmas presents for people. I kept going "IT'S NOT A REAL HOLIDAY!" But that didn't really work, I still had to buy chocolate.

Also, we FINALLY got to go on Flight of the Gibbon, the treetop zipline experience that is awesome! Sophie brought a friend from school, and my friend Aimee came with me. We had a great day in the trees and it wasn’t too hot. I loved it, and would do it again every month if I could! I cannot stress enough: SO MUCH FUN!

February was also the month that Ning left, which was excruciating having to deal with both her departure and the weight of the entire program falling on the shoulders of myself, Ahna and Orawun, with a few amazing part-time volunteers to help pick up the slack.  Finally, I was so exhausted that I was about to snap, and said straight up that we needed to close for a week so we could get some rest. I, for one, had not spent any time in prayer or reading my Bible since Christmas, and I was drained in every way possible. So, we closed for a week, and Ahna and I were so blessed to be given a free night at a private resort just outside town to rest and recenter. It was an amazing place, and the woman who runs it is so sweet and wonderful, and made us amazing meals. It’s such a great retreat, and we definitely left feeling refreshed.

The flower festival was this month as well, a whole weekend devoted to flowers, with a Rose Parade and everything! They closed down a whole section of the city for booths, flowers, snacks, rides and lots of clothing sales. It was a blast to walk around with Sophie and see the floats and eat lots of goodies.
 

Stolen Land, Broken Promises

Here is the info people keep wanting to know, so I'm giving it to you in a nutshell.  Sophie's parents left her land in Chiang Rai at her family’s village. The people living there were supposedly her mom’s best friends. Well, they wanted to buy the land from her, but Ning and I said she was not prepared to make a decision of that magnitude less than a year after her mother’s death and at the age of 14. The guy kept calling and harassing Sophie though and wouldn’t give up. However, here’s the clincher. Because her parents couldn’t technically own land, he had the deed cause he’s a citizen. So, what does he do? He sells the land to the highest bidder for 4 times what he wanted to give Sophie for it. 400,000 baht and he only wants to give Sophie 200,000. He basically sold her history, her heritage, her inheritance so he could buy himself a car. A CAR!?!! We finally negotiated him to give her 230,000 with the sob story of the fact that we still owe the hospital nearly 100,000 baht, so if he didn’t give us that much, she would only end up with less than what her parents paid for it 10 years ago.  The money is not the point. I don’t care if he HAD given her all of it. He had NO RIGHT to sell it in the first place. He sold the memory of her parents and the only thing of her bio father than she had in this world. AWFUL.

Here’s the reason that I am so incensed about all this. If I had never come here, these are the people Sophie would most likely have ended up with. These lowlife scum who would have taken her in, refused to take her to the hospital and would have sold her to the highest bidder to get a car, never mind the land. She would have either died from TB or been sold to a brothel and died there. That is the thing that really kills me and makes me want to kill him. Not just the idea that he sold her land without the slightest moral quandary, but the fact that if he is that money hungry, he would have not hesitated to get rid of her the easiest way possible to save him the cost of an extra bowl of rice at dinner every night. Terrifying. 

So when people ask me why I want legal guardianship since I'm not allowed adoption with her lack of citizenship, this is what I think of: I want to be able to protect her from people like this with the law backing me up, so no one can say they have a claim to her and then take advantage of her.