Easter stories and other thoughts

Last week, on Palm Sunday, our HUG team met for our monthly worship night and Nicole began the discussion by having us talk about our Easter memories and traditions from when we were kids. I have long had an idea for a memoir-style book called "Tell me your Life Story" in which I interview friends and relatives and compile their stories into one place, just cause I find people's lives fascinating. But, since I have many ideas and not much time (and now that I put that out on the interwebs, someone will likely steal my idea before I can write it anyway), I thought I would start small, with our little groups' Easter stories.

Pretty much across the board, those of us from the US agree that our fondest childhood memories stem from Easter baskets, family meals and Easter egg hunts. While we all had these things in common, every family had different ways of putting them into practice. Bryan told us that his family would gather the Saturday night before Easter and gorge themselves on ham and Easter dinner fixings. When he was ten, he stuffed himself so full, he threw up! I found that hilarious. (Some of you may disagree.) Nicole's family, including all her aunts, uncles, cousins, etc, would gather all together to celebrate the holiday with a meal and a giant Easter egg hunt. She shared how each year a different cousin would be chosen to share the Easter story with the younger cousins and she dreaded being chosen because she was (is) so shy, but when she finally did it, she found that it was a really special experience. Emily's mom would hide their Easter baskets and get super into it, well past the age where it was really appropriate (I think she may do them to this day, hahaha). Emily said one year, her older sister couldn't find her basket and her mom refused to let them give her hints so her sister got SO upset. Families are so funny. I shared about my mom making us new Easter dresses for church, eating Easter dinner with the extended family and getting a solid chocolate Easter bunny in my basket. Apparently, this tradition is being carried on today, as my niece reported she got the same chocolate bunny in her basket last week!

Joy and Ralph are from New Zealand, which apparently is full of heathens (just kidding! I know lots of amazing people from there!!) They were feeling a bit left out hearing us talk about the kinds of things we got in our Easter baskets (Christian cds, Bibles, books) and hearing about the Easter egg hunts. They said most people don't even go to church on Easter in NZ. They used to take their family for a beach holiday at their cabin for Easter break. When they were young, church camp was quite popular during the Easter holidays, but sounds like that is not so much the case anymore. Their best Easter memories were of meeting at Easter camp and getting married on Easter! So sweet. :)

For Easter this year, I had heat stroke. I really hope that is not starting a tradition. The day before was my roommate's wedding and she had asked me to play the piano for the ceremony. We had only a little Casio keyboard, but hooked up to the speakers it sounded great! For weeks, I was nervous about playing in front of 150 people, but the day of, I was so focused on staying upright and not passing out in the middle of playing, that I didn't even remember to be nervous. Thankfully, I stayed conscious throughout and made it home and into bed before sleeping. Sunday was church, sleep, Hot Cross Buns party! My other New Zealand friend, Sacha, hosted a Hot Cross Buns party at her house to share this delicious treat with her US friends (the secret is, they are just raisin bread in the shape of rolls). They were delicious, and we got to play a rousing game of catchphrase too, which was super fun for our competitive group of international people. About 8 pm I realized I was about to fall asleep, so I drove home and went back to bed. Man, heat stroke is no joke! I do not recommend getting it, though I have lost some weight during the drama.

I have stayed in touch with my Taw Saeng crew and have been doing things with them in smaller groups. I took the littlest ones to see Cinderella when it came out. Here are some highlights:
Them: Where are we going?
Me: Airport Plaza (the smallest of the many, many malls)
Them: AIRPORT PLAZA? Have you ever been there? Yeah, once with my dad! Was it cool? It was so fun!

Them: What floor is the movie on?
Me: the 4th floor.
Them: Can we take the ELEVATOR????!!!!!
Me:.....um, yeah....
Them: YAY! AN ELEVATOR!
Them: Do they have POPCORN? They have POPCORN!!!!

They were a crackup. Also, it's a good thing I know the story in my sleep, cause dang do those kids go to the bathroom often. I probably saw 15 minutes of the entire movie. So worth it though for their first experience at the movies. They were the cutest!

I went to my first Chiang Mai Football Club game with some of the other HUG team and we invited the boys from HUG along. They had a blast, and the next week at Bible study the highlight of all their weeks was "going to the football game*." 
*for those of you unaware, football aka soccer.

It's March Already?

Clearly, time flies when you are having fun. It has been months since I last posted, and in that time I have gone to Australia where I held a koala and saw two platypuses, visited friends and generally had a great time; started my new job with HUG Project; spent a week with other Covenant missionaries from all over Asia at a conference/retreat at the Hua Hin beach; and bought a car. OK, that about sums it up!

Today, I had the pleasure of spending some time with my friend P'Angkhana and the kids she works with. We took them to a park in the city to eat some grilled chicken and som tam (a local favorite salad made with unripe papaya) and sang some songs together. I was thinking about the fact that it has been nearly 4 years to the day since I moved here and used to go to that park on Sunday's with the Taw Saeng kids and Field. At the time, I was super paranoid about keeping the kids in sight at all time, sure they would be snatched and trafficked in the blink of an eye. Clearly I have gotten way more relaxed about these types of things, as this morning the kids were playing on the swingsets on the complete opposite side of the park from where we had the picnic blankets set up. I have come to understand that trafficking doesn't really work that way here in Chiang Mai. However, in having a conversation with P'Ang, we were discussing our fears that two of the little girls she visits with may still get trafficked.

They are from a family from a neighboring country who are working here illegally. It's a sad family situation with no dad in the picture and the mom not even 21 with two little kids to raise and few parenting skills. P'Angkhana was telling me that the grandpa said he would just give her the kids when they go back to their country, if she wants them. It's always hard to tell when people say that if they are joking or serious, and also whether they are saying that because we have a relationship with the kids in question or if they would give them to just anyone to be rid of the responsibility. P'Ang is worried that if the family does return, will they take the little ones and just dump them with whoever wants kids. In that country, this is a real problem, due to extreme poverty. People sell their kids to traffickers much more often than it occurs in Thailand. P'Ang is not sure how to help them in this situation, but she is certainly not in a financial position to take them on her own and they would still be here illegally, so it could cause big problems for her down the road if she were even considering it.

Just when I think I get used to hearing these stories, another one comes up! I just can't wrap my head around the idea of giving your kids away, no matter how bad things are. I hope they choose to make a different decision, for the sake of those little girls. 

Furlough

I am back from mini-hiatus! (That's what we called it in showbiz.) I had a lovely trip to the US and had the opportunity to spend a lot of time with my family, especially my little niece and nephew.

 I did a month in Washington, where one of my Kiwi (that means New Zealand) friends that I know from Thailand came to visit for a week and a half. It was fun to play tour guide to the Pacific Northwest for the first time in many years. Also, it gave me an excuse to eat a lot of not-so-good-for-me food because it was new to her! 
Here are some highlights:
Seattle: visited my friend Kate Lindsay and her adorable 4-year-old twin girls, visited Theo Chocolate Factory, ate baklava at Turkish Delight and pierogies at Pierogi, Pierogi; had fish and chips on the waterfront, took the monorail to the Seattle Center and saw the Space Needle and where the Grey's Anatomy hospital should be

 Eastern Washington: saw a Switchfoot concert, went cycling, ate elephant ears, curly fries, S'mores and Magic Cookie Squares (not all at once, of course), saw some movies

Road trip to Portland:  saw a wildfire, climbed to the top of Multnomah Falls, stayed with my cousin Kate McPike, spent too much time at Powell's Books, ate Voodoo Donuts, ate a lot of things at the Bite of Oregon, ate some delicious Indian food and homemade ice cream (including one with cherries and bone marrow!) on Division Street, had yummy food truck food, did a lot of shopping

Basically, I spent a lot of time eating in the first couple weeks! Then I went to my dad's family reunion, and when back in Prosser, read a lot of books that my mom ordered for me from the library. I spent a lot of time with my family and got to visit with most of my supporters from the area, and connect with many friends from high school.

In early September, I went with my parents, my sister Lynae and her husband and kids to a cute little cabin in Sunriver, Oregon. Sadly, the week we were there, it was FREEZING! Like, literally 30 degrees F in the mornings. I was not prepared for that. But, we still enjoyed ourselves in using the huge water park facilities, eating a lot of ice cream, and going for bike rides and to the park. They even have an outdoor rock wall there. We saw a lot of wildlife, mostly deer and chipmunks, but at the nature preserve, we saw some adorable owls who had been rescued.

My niece, Lexi, and I took Oliver, my nephew, to the park one morning and saw several deer grazing right next to the path. It was pretty magical. Oliver learned to walk with more confidence in Sunriver, and by the end could go from one end of the house to the other and back again! Now, apparently, he's running all over the place. Lexi came back from Oregon to start preschool.

After Oregon, my parents and I continued the road trip to California! We first stopped in Redding for the night, then continued on to my Great-Aunt and Uncle's house in San Jose, where we had dinner with my mom's cousins. My Uncle Maurie had a bad fall earlier this year and shattered some vertabrae, so it was good to see him up and moving around. Still strong for 90 years old!

After San Jose, we met up with my friends Denise and Chris Bueno for breakfast in Salinas, then lunch with my friend since 4th grade, Jennifer Marx (now Vacovsky) and saw her adorable baby girl, then made it to Thousand Oaks for dinner with my other Great-Aunt and Uncle (Pat and Bob). Finally, after dinner, we ended in Los Angeles, where my parents deposited me at my friend Helen's house.

The very next day, we went to Disney's California Adventure! (That's the park next to Disneyland). It was a fun day, and I got to see my favorite Disney show: World of Color. That alone is worth the price of admission!

Finally, we packed up the rest of my stuff from my storage unit in LA, cramming everything into my parents' CRV (actually, the credit for that goes to my parents as I was running errands around town at the time of the actual packing) and they were off back up north! I am so grateful to have such accommodating and generous parents.

I spent the next three weeks planning a fundraiser at my cousin Colins' climbing gym ROCKreation, with a lot of help from my pastor, Doug, visiting friends and eating a lot of great LA food. I managed to pack in some volleyball games with my pseudo niece, Maya and have some delicious family dinners due to Helen's gourmet chef talents. I was lucky enough to get to spend a lot of time with some of my friends from my beloved Bible study, Warrior Princesses and saw my friend Tricia do stand up for the very first time at the historic LA Improv!


I also got the chance to see a lot of my supporters, both those from my church in LA, and other friends, like Greg and Emily Wilson and my script supervisor friend Veda, whom I hadn't seen in years!

At the end of the trip, I flew back to Washington to see my friend Helen Pagal, whom I have known since kindergarten, and her husband and baby, who is adorable, of course. I spent the rest of the day with my friend Kathryn and then some more time with relatives in Olympia and then flew home to Thailand. Not a super exciting story, but that's where I've been for the past two months!

Now, I am excited to jump into work with HUG Project and see what new inroads we can make in the fight against trafficking and injustice to children and youth in Thailand. If you would like to be a part of our work by partnering with me financially, you can click the link to "CORD Donations" on the right.

What the heck is FCF?

FCF stands for Family Connection Foundation and is the foundation I work with in Thailand. They will also be my sending organization for this next season of my life. If you have ever wondered how the whole foundation thing works or what they do for the volunteers who work with them, then this post is for you!

What is FCF and What Do We Do?

 

The Family Connection Foundation (FCF) was formed as the ministry, outward focus of Chiang Mai Christian Fellowship in 2006 The church is not formally recognized by the Thai government, so FCF also serves as the legal platform for the church, providing a way for staff and ministry partners to work and live in Thailand.

 

It quickly became clear that there was a huge need for a foundation willing to partner and/or take on small ministry projects unable to create a foundation of their own. Missionaries often come to Thailand with a vision and passion to serve in very specific ways. Starting and operating a foundation  to obtain legal working status requires hundreds of hours of compiling (and signing) documents, hours spent at government offices, and a knowledgeable, native Thai speaker to navigate the arduous process. The process is costly and time consuming.

 

FCF’s willingness to be open to take on projects and people who want to serve in Thailand has opened the doors to 87 foreign volunteers, 40 Thai staff, 21 Thai Ministry projects, and 7 support projects. This expansion was well beyond the original vision of the foundation but FCF has adapted and is able to accommodate the growing interest of partnership and project development.

 

In 2013, FCF processed 60 work permits and more than 180 visas (one for every family member) resulting in more than 19,000 sheets of paper, that all must be printed, collated, and stamped by the visa team, and then each page hand-signed by the director. The visa team is estimated to having spent more than 700 hours at various government offices just last year, at the time there were only two staff members on the tem.

 

Our media team created dozens of videos (including the one above), prayer cards, stories, newsletters, and branding. Our finance team processed over 7,000 transactions. Our admin team processed more than 50 new volunteer applications, and spent over 100 hours consulting with other foundations, building partnerships and sharing our experiences.

 

Outwardly; we now have seven children’s homes, and are one of seven anti-trafficking foundations in all of Thailand, with two trafficking intervention and investigative projects.

 

Our Lahu Bible course has reached 2,000 people; Education Matters scholarship program now sponsors over 40 children. We have four urban outreach programs in different parts of the city, and three rural outreach and agricultural training programs.

 

While the numbers are never our goal, they demonstrate the growth and impact FCF is having on this community. We are both humbled and inspired by what these numbers represent and want to share the amazing work God is doing through this foundation, and all the of the people who volunteer and partner with us.  

The HUG Project: A New Beginning

As I get ready for my final week in Thailand before heading to the US, I am excited to share about the organization I will be working with when I return to Thailand in October: The HUG Project!

HUG is a Northern Thai word that means "love." This is a perfect word for the project because love, specifically the love of Jesus, is something that these kids have had precious little of in recent years, if not their whole lives. In English, HUG stands for Hope, Understanding and Grace. HUG wants to give kids Hope for the future, provide Understanding for their situations, and extend Grace when they return to unhealthy styles of living, sometimes repeatedly.

This is a relatively new project, having been birthed in June of 2012 by P'Boom and P'Dao, two amazing Thai people who had a vision for helping the street kids who lived near the river and in the red light district of Chiang Mai. Their first idea of helping these street kids has grown to include eight full time volunteers and expanded into the arenas of fighting human trafficking, exploitation and abuse of children.

HUG was one of the first nationally recognized anti-human trafficking organizations founded in Thailand and P'Boom was one of the first people certified as a child interviewer in cases of abuse or trafficking. She has a wealth of knowledge, connections, and partnerships and a willingness to share all of these with her staff.

Let me break down all the aspects of HUG for you to show you the scope of this project. One aspect is the Big Brother Project. This is the partnership with the police of Region 5, near the river. Policemen from this precinct volunteer their time to build relationships with the homeless boys who sleep under the bridge at night and expand their worldview by taking them on outings to places like waterfalls, the shooting range and a jungle zipline course. One policemen has become a Christian since working with HUG and can be even more of a positive influence in the boys' lives. The goal of BB is to build up the boys' confidence and self-worth and encourage them to complete their education so they can get good jobs, have a place to live and support themselves as adults.

Another aspect of BB and HUG is the Education Center. This is a twice weekly time when teachers from a GED program come to teach GED classes to boys from Big Brother and girls from other FCF organizations such as Baan San Rak and Compass 31 to help prepare them to take the test equivalent to either a 6th grade, 9th grade or 12th grade academic completion. After GED classes, HUG volunteers teach additional classes such as music, art, critical thinking and life skills. I will be helping to teach the critical thinking class. I hope to put my history working in film to good use by teaching the students how to tell stories on film, teaching them about the different aspects of preparation, production and post-production. It's a big project, but I hope we can make it work. My goal would be to have the kids work together to produce their own short film by the end of a year. I have already reached out to some industry friends and perhaps will get a team of them to come do a hands on filmmaking seminar. We'll see...

Every other week, HUG hosts sports days where the kids have the chance to spend the afternoon playing soccer, rock climbing, doing archery, or some other activity. There are also optional cell groups, aka Bible studies, for the girls and boys to take part in separately. The girls' group currently has about 15 girls, while the boys' group varies from 4-10, depending on the week.

HUG is committed to keeping families together whenever possible. If they find a child who has been trafficked or run away, they track the family down and see if it's a safe place for the child to return. If the family is not quite in a stable situation, they will meet regularly with family members to become a stronger family unit and be in a position to take care of their children better. As much as possible, HUG feels the best for a child's life is being in a safe and loving environment with their family. 

A huge part of P'Boom's work specifically is investigating allegations of abuse or trafficking and then interviewing victims to determine what the situation is and what type of intervention is necessary. If an investigation turns into court proceedings, she will help prepare children for what will happen in court. She also does a lot of counseling with the children of HUG project as well as children from ongoing investigations.

As you can see, it's an ambitious project and aiming to change the landscape of how the police interact with street kids, get kids off the streets and into safe situations and teaching all the children they come in contact with that they have worth and are valued. I am excited to be joining this team and am looking forward to being able to help them accomplish everything they aim to do.

My role when I return will initially focus on creating an information database with the story of every child we work with, even peripherally. This is a big task and the staff is currently so busy with the day to day, they haven't had the chance to get it done properly, so I can fill that void. Once that is up and running, it will take a lot less upkeep, just updating things as they come up and keeping track of progress of the kids we see regularly. I'll also be building relationships with the students through the ED Center and sports days and other activities, like the World Cup carnival we had on 4th of July.

Eventually, I'll be working with P'Boom on applying for grants to get funding for our projects. Right now, HUG operates from sporadic gifts from teams and other donors and from the support budgets of the volunteers. If we could get grants from corporations, HUG could purchase a vehicle for doing investigations in mountain villages that are difficult to get to by car, could do a wider range of activities with the kids and maybe even provide scholarships for kids who want to go on to university.

So, that's the next phase of my time in Thailand. I look forward to seeing what the fall and 2015 brings!

The Truth about "Saving the World"

July 2, 2014

Robynn Bliss writes about life as a missionary overseas: “I didn’t expect a rose garden, but neither did I expect that the disappointments and the pains would be so relentless, so incessant, so continuous.”

So, here’s the thing nobody likes to talk about: being a missionary is not all about saving the world. Just because you pack up your life to move across the planet and are planning to help people doesn’t mean your own life stops having trauma and pain and sorrow. In fact, I would argue it gets worse and more intense. And then, when missionaries have these traumatic or painful things happen to them, we don’t want to tell anyone or talk about it because we feel like we are failing at being a missionary, at doing this one thing that we have been sent to do. We compare our own sufferings to those of the people we are working with and then feel selfish for experiencing pain and suffering, because it’s nothing compared to not having running water or consistent electricity or a bed to sleep in. But the truth is, pain is pain, trauma is trauma, and discounting your own story because it’s not traumatic or painful ENOUGH is a bad practice. Our experience is our experience and just because it’s not the same trauma as someone else’s does not make it any less real.

I was talking today to several other missionaries about how we feel like we can’t be real with people because our supporters or families or friends have these images of us out there, strong and capable and “saving the world.” But, I think that is an unhealthy and ultimately, untrue, view of what we do here. Yes, of course, our work with homeless, stateless, exploited and abused people is important. It’s the reason we are all here, after all, the reason we get out of bed in the morning and fight day after day, to see change happen, to see people get citizenship, to see women escape trafficking, to see children graduate high school and break the cycle of poverty. And all that is good to share. But, I think it’s just as important to share our personal ups and downs so that people know what life is really like, that they don’t just get the rose colored glasses version of things and so they know how they can really support us.

When we come back to our home countries, it’s often very difficult for us to relate to people because no one can understand what life is like in this position unless you have lived it yourself. We are often bombarded with people telling us how much good we are doing, and asking how rewarding it all is and how we must feel so great that we are fulfilling our purpose in life. And, while all that is true, it also makes us feel like we can’t be honest about the disappointments we face when someone who has been making great progress backslides, or when someone we have trusted implicitly as a confidante betrays us. On days or weeks like that, we question what the point of it all is, just like people in “regular” jobs do.   We question ourselves, are we doing enough, working hard enough, working too hard, giving too little, giving too much, spending too much time on this area and not enough in another. And at times questioning whether God made a mistake in sending us here.

If we can’t feel free to express these natural emotions on the rollercoaster of life, we can feel very alone and lost. It’s so important for our supporters to be able to encourage us through the hard times as well as the good and to remind us that what we are feeling is normal and that we will get through it.  

Personally, the past year has been very painful. I haven’t posted much about it because I was worried about what people would think of me. I thought I had failed at everything: as a parent, as a missionary, as a person in general.

In June of last year, just when I thought things were getting on a much better level with Sophie and me, she announced she wanted to go live with Ning and Faa at their children’s home. This floored me because it felt like it came out of left field with no warning whatsoever. She couldn’t even give me a reason why. She just said she missed living with people of her culture, and I couldn’t fault her for that. Since I hadn’t technically adopted her, there really wan’t much I could to do stop her, especially since every other person who she pulled into this conversation was supporting her moving out rather than advocating for her to stay at home and work through her problems.

So, two weeks after that bombshell, she moved out of the house. It was basically the most devastating thing to ever happen to me emotionally. I had spent two years fighting to keep her alive, keep her in school, get her citizenship, adopt her, and then with no warning whatsoever, she just decided to bail. Maybe it was all too much for her, the structure, the language, the culture, the chores, especially with her background of absentee parenting. I don’t know, but all I know is that it felt like my heart was being ripped in half as this child that I loved as my daughter and thought would be a permanent part of my family decided she didn’t want to be that anymore.

Over the next few months, as I tried to repair our relationship, she pushed me further away and things got worse rather than better. Finally, about two weeks before Christmas, she said she didn’t want a family, didn’t want anyone to be responsible for her, didn’t want to be responsible to anyone, just wanted to make all her own choices and she didn’t want to live with me anymore. She instead wanted to live with the people she had stayed with while I was in the US last time. She ended by basically saying “Don’t call me, I’ll call you.” Which she didn’t for about 6 months.

Then, out of the blue in April, just before her birthday, she called to invite me to her birthday party.  It was like nothing had ever happened and everything was normal. Since then, I’ve seen her every few weeks for a movie or dinner and things have gotten better. They are not where I would want them to be, and I still worry about the fact that she is not experiencing any natural consequences of her actions, due to all the other adults in her life catering to her every whim, but I have to accept that it’s not my responsibility to make sure she learns those lessons anymore. It’s just my job to love her unconditionally, as her mom, even if that isn’t what she wants me to be anymore.

So, that is the main reason I have not written anything of substance in my blog for the past year. Fear of people knowing the truth, of judging me as a bad parent or a bad person in general. It’s one of those situations where it’s impossible to know what it’s like unless you have gone through the same thing. Everyone has an opinion, and while they all mean well, most advice I have gotten just makes me feel worse. What I really need is for people to just say: “Man, that sucks. I’m sorry.”  I am so thankful for my parents, sister and pastor who said almost exactly that and really helped me get through this year (well, my mom doesn't like the word "sucks" but she said something similar.) Despite all of the anguish and pain this situation has caused, I would still like to foster and adopt kids in the future because I think every child deserves a home and a family.

Another Farewell

Right after SongKran, we lost one of our most important volunteers: Charles. He started working with us in January 2013, just after Christmas. He just walked in off the street one day during Loy Kratong and applied to work with us. Of course, we were a little apprehensive because of the type of men who usually frequent the red light district, but we checked his references and everyone said he was such an amazing man of God. He helped us set up our new building and was amazing with all the repairs and installations on top of taking on teaching the oldest English class.

In October of 2013, he suffered a heart attack, his 3rd, and he returned to the US for surgery. He had multiple surgeries to finally install an internal defibrillator. He rushed back to Thailand in January because he missed it so much, but the dramatic difference in climate caused his body to go into shock. He ended up spending much of the next month in and out of the hospital and eventually decided to return to the US for further treatment, against recommendations of the doctors here. He arrived in Korea for a layover and suffered a pulmonary embolism so was rushed to the hospital from the airport. After three weeks in the ICU, he succumbed to the weakness of his heart and passed away on April 11, 2014.

He was buried in Korea and we had a memorial service on April 28. It was a nice service at the beautiful Doi Suthep overlooking the city.