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March 10, 2013
So, despite my best efforts, it
appears as if blog updates will continue to only occur once a month. Sorry
about that, but life gets so busy and days are so exhausting that it is hard
for me to shift into writing mode rather than just collapsing on the couch at
the end of the day. In February, Taw Saeng had some very exciting things
happen: we moved, we had a sports day for the kids and we had a huge grand
opening celebration. Sophie and I had a month of practicing her English reading
and comprehension (which is basically a reenactment of D-Day every time I pull
out the English books; Sophie is NOT a fan of learning to read a foreign
language) she did her finals and I finished the paperwork to get her into the
new school. Nothing else has happened on the citizenship front, but we are
planning to go to Mae Fah Luang this week or next.
Moving
Moving was basically uneventful.
We got 90% of our stuff moved all in one day, thanks to a lot of friends
showing up to help out. Then, we spent a full week organizing and decorating in
preparation for the kids coming on the 19th of February. They were
so excited to be in the new space, that it only took 4 days for them to break
something. Luckily, it was just a doorjamb, easy fix, but they are fond of
fighting over opening and closing the sliding glass doors, so it’s only a
matter of time til one of them shatters, I’m sure. Oy vey.
Sport Day
We had planned to do a sport day
last year, but it never
materialized, so when Randy Bevis suggested we do a sport day at his
camp up in Mae Taeng, we jumped at the chance and started planning immediately.
Previously, we did a sport camp for just the older kids, but we thought it
would be fun for all the kids to have a day together. Each staff member came up
with some games and we talked about what would be the most fun for the kids. We
had P’Bua make fried chicken and sticky rice and get fruit for lunch and
organized with Randy to pick us up and drive us up to the camp about an hour
away. No vomiting accidents on the way, but plenty of carsick kids when we
arrived.
We played all the games and
everyone had a great time, despite the fact that they claimed it was not fun
because they were tired from running around. During lunch break, we were really
close to where Sophie’s parents are buried, so Randy ran us out to the cemetery
and we put some flowers on the graves. She is really blasé about the whole
thing, didn’t even want to pray while we were there. “I already did in my
heart. Flowers is enough, let’s go,” she said. Not sure whether this is normal
or emotional repression.
We came back and were getting
some more food while most of the kids were playing on the field. Amelie was
playing around with our new staff member Nuey and she was like “Help! Ajarn
Noo!” Ajarn means respected teacher or professor, and usually they call college
profs or pastors or school principals this word. Sophie asked “who are you
calling ‘ajarn’?” and Amelie said “P’Heather! She is the one who protects us
all!” That was definitely an “awwwww” moment and made me feel happy that she
thought that. I guess it is pretty true that I spend half my time defending one
kid from another or protecting them from the wrath of another teacher, hahah.
After lunch, we played water
games so we could cool off a bit and had a bit water balloon fight as well. The
kids were hot and exhausted, and Randy had mentioned that if they wanted to, we
could go to the river to swim in the afternoon. They overheard me say this in
English and the older kids immediately took off to tell the little ones we were
going swimming. They packed up and piled into the cars and off we went. When we
got to the river, it was flowing pretty fast, so we had the kids buddy up and
the little ones stay close to the shore. They were all in, jumping in fully
clothed, but the adults tried to stay close to shore and avoid getting wet.
Until some random stranger came up and just doused me from head to toe, then I
was soaked for the rest of the day. Glad my camera and phone were in Sophie’s
bag and not my pockets! Pretty much everyone fell asleep on the ride home, but
one little girl lost her cookies in the back of the truck, so we had to stop to
clean that up and then continue on. All in all, a fun but tiring day for kids
and adults! Another year should be enough time to recover.
Grand Opening
The day of the grand opening
started with all of us running around getting things ready and organized for
our big celebration. We all started about 8:30am picking flowers and dresses
up, organizing at the center, cleaning, decorating, printing pictures and
generally doing ten things at once. We were anticipating about 100 people to
come for the opening and were worried we did not have enough space for them
all, or enough food. In the end, only about 50 people came, so it all worked
out wonderfully. Sophie did a Northern Thai dance in the new dress material I
bought that day, and four of our younger girls did a dance together: Willow,
Miriam, Amelie and Yvonne. Sadly, for them, the music cut out halfway through
their performance due to the sporadic internet connection through youtube. They
were relieved though, as they thought they were not doing very well. I disagree
and think they did a beautiful job! Sophie was perfectly poised and lovely in
her dance and with her fancy makeup looked so grown up.
We had a pastor from Orawan’s
church come speak, do the ribbon cutting ceremony and give a blessing to our new building. Ahna, Seal and I
(with special guest Aaron, Ahna’s boyfriend) played three worship songs that
the kids and all our guests sang along with. I tell you, when the kids start
singing in their sweet voices and not like it’s a competition of who can scream
the lyrics the loudest, it sounds so nice and just gives me chills to hear them
praising God with all their hearts. Even though most of their families are
Buddhist, I can’t help but think it has an impact on them as well, singing to
God about His love for us.
After the ceremony and dances, we
let people tour the building at their leisure, get food and get family photos
taken. We did almost all the families and every kid that came got their
individual picture taken so we can put new pics on the wall. The ones we have
now are 2 years old already! It was a great opportunity to get the kids dressed
up and have some sweet smiles for the new pictures. After that was all done,
the staff finally got to eat! We had delicious food prepared by our wonderful
cook, P’Bua. Stir fried veggies, chicken in red curry sauce and chocolate cake
made by P’Angkhana.
Bible Stories
For the past few months, Ahna and
I have been teaching Bible to the little kids and every week there is something
new that cracks me up or impresses me with the depth of their understanding.
-We were playing pictionary and
teaching about how God is with us when we are scared. The idea was to draw
times when we might be scared and one girl got “when you take a test at
school.” The kids kept forgetting the subject so were calling out things like “paper!
Desk! Teacher! Pencil!” and we kept reminding them “it’s something you may be
scared of.” Just then the artists starts drawing a flag to show that it is
school and our littlest boy, Pip, bursts out “I KNOW! I KNOW! IT’S THAILAND!
THAILAND!” and Ahna and I just burst out laughing. We are like, “Nong Pip,
you’re scared of Thailand? Why? You were born here!” He realized his mistake
and started cracking up too.
- Another time we were teaching
that God is with us wherever we go, and Yim starts asking, with a horrified
realization, “Wait, if God is with us everywhere, does that mean He is in the
bathroom with us?” She pauses and says “Well, I guess it’s ok, cause He made
our bodies…..but He still closes His eyes, right?” Oh, the deep questions we
have to deal with now.
-Last month, the former women’s
prison started giving tours to classrooms and the public because they moved the
prison to a new location outside the city and are going to tear down the old
building. Sophie went twice, once with her social studies class and once with her
band. She was totally freaked out because the tour guide kept telling them
about all these evil spirits haunting the place. She was asking me a lot about
them and telling me how in some spots it was really cold even though it was a
really hot day. Later that week, one of the girls in our class went and a
spirit actually followed her home. In this country where so many people give
power to spirits and spend their lives appeasing them by giving them money and
food offerings and inviting them into their families, this is a real
occurrence. This girl’s family is Buddhist and after the visit to the prison,
the little girl started speaking in a strange voice, seeing things and having
vivid nightmares. Her mom kept taking her to the Buddhist priests but it wasn’t
doing anything. Her mom brought her in one day after she hadn’t come for a few
days and we talked to them about how Jesus’ name has power over the spirits. We
told her that Taw Saeng was a safe place and spirits were not allowed in, but
she said she could still see them, even there. We asked if we could pray for
her and her mom said it was fine, so we did. We told her that if she sees or
hears spirits, she needs to tell them to go away in Jesus’ name and they have
to listen to her. She said ok, but she wanted to stay with her mom and start to
come again on Friday. The week we taught about God being with us everywhere, we
told the kids to draw a picture of somewhere that God is with us, and her
picture was of people in jail cells crying, but God was above them to comfort
them. Who knew that our little Bible classes would become art therapy for a
traumatized 7 year old?
-During our most recent class, we
got a very complex, deep question from Penny: “I have a question: how can Jesus
be with all of us, in all our hearts, all at the same time?” Felicity was just
as interested in the answer to this question. Wow, how to explain omnipresence
to an 8-year-old, even a pretty smart 8-year-old? Out came Google translate and
in my very lacking Thai, I tried to explain what it meant. It seemed to satisfy
them and the rest of the kids were more concerned with what craft we were doing
than the theological conversation, so there’s that hurdle jumped for the time
being. Faith is a tough thing to explain to an adult, but I think little kids
have an inherent understanding of it.
Other news:
Felicity’s baby brother was born
and his name is Bible because his parents want him to be close to God. I think
that’s a pretty cool name. :)
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