Itsara

My parents came to visit for a few weeks and took a lot more pictures than I normally do. My dad wrote a blog post on their time here, including links to a bunch of pictures and videos. I highly recommend the album from Cindy’s dance performance (including Pan and Lutiya) and the video of Cindy doing homeschool with Isaac, Nathan, and Abby.

Ah, heck. Why don’t I just embed that video here.

You can see their attention spans waning, but they’re so dang smart! Part way through you can see Nathan trying to stop Opa (my dad) from taking pictures. He’s saying, “No cheese, Opa! No cheese!”

Go to my parent’s blog for a bunch more pictures and videos.

Emmet’s come and gone. My parents are here for another few days. And Our Young Apprentice is due to appear in about a month. For the most part, this is the calm before the storm (although it’s going to be a really cute storm, with drooling, diapers, and nursing). Cindy’s dance class is done for now, and I’m trying very hard to finish up edits on my novel in the next couple of weeks.

I’m still working on getting Lutiya a birth certificate, so she can be a full-fledged Thai citizen. It’s complicated, but I haven’t hit a dead-end yet, so I’m not worried. Yet.

We’re still trying to get all the documents together for Pancake’s adoption process. That’s also complicated, and there’s so many fears we have about what the government will say about what we’re doing and want to do. We just try to remember that God’s the one putting this family together. We often have little say in it.

Anything else? We went Airsofting and I put some welts on Lu’s leg and my dad got hit in the head. And we’re late on our truck registration (though it’s really not that big of a deal here; just a small late fee).

I’m sure I’m forgetting something. And probably something terribly important if I’m telling you about our truck registration. I’m sure it’ll come to me…

I think there might be one picture from Christmas in here.

Isaac’s birthday was in December. We also had a shared party for Isaac, Nathan, and some other 2-to-3-year-old friends (at least one of which had a birthday around the same time too). We didn’t know how to explain to them that it was some of their birthdays and not others, so we just gave them all a candle. Finally Lutiya had a birthday too, which we’ve celebrated a couple of times with food, but we have yet to go Airsofting like she wanted.

And then there’s Children’s Day. We took everyone to a local carnival, consisting of a few slapped-together rides — often being welded or fixed on the spot, some grounded via a stake in the dirt, jury-rigged wires connected to a breaker switch or foot-operated brake. So in one sense, this was the most terrifying carnival I’ve ever been to. But the kids loved it and nobody died, so I guess that’s a win.

Click here, or on any of the pictures, for more.

I don’t think I ever posted this here. One of the things Sean is doing is helping set up rice mills for some of the villages. These aren’t charity, but a small loan business (the kind banks won’t bother giving because they’re so small). So Sean’s looking for investors who will earn their money back as the rice mill makes its small profit. The idea is not to make rice for mass production, but so that the families can produce rice for themselves in a fraction of the time and earn money helping others do the same.

Ultimately, Sean plans on this project being self-sufficient — the profit from the rice mills being enough to start up new rice mills. For now, he needs donations and investors. The video below can tell you more, or you can read more about it at Sean’s site here. If you’re interested in helping, talk to Sean.

Sean’s got an update on his blog with more information on Abigail, news about a new teenager he has, and some other stuff. Go check it out.

I skipped a whole week and didn’t even realize it. Way to go, Adam. (Although I did say we’d get nothing done with Emmet around, didn’t I?).

Lutiya is in her village for the weekend, so we haven’t yet celebrated our family’s official Christmas. This week for sure (before Pan goes back to her village for New Year’s). We’re still working on getting her birth certificate. We’ve gotten a lot of good documentation together which makes me hopeful. I’ll know more later this week as to whether it’s enough or not.

No word on Pancake. We’re still collecting documents for the adoption process. We’re also going to see what we can do about adopting Nathan again. I mentioned how well Finland keeps track of its citizens, but more than that, we may not need the man on Nathan’s birth certificate any more. If his mother divorced and remarried, the new husband may be enough. We’ll see. We’re working on determining what it is, exactly, that we need from the parents before we try to track them down again.

Abigail hit her head pretty hard today, so the Abbott’s are in the hospital with her. The doctor says she’s got a skull fracture and they want to watch her overnight. If you’re reading this, pray for her, please.

Only other news I can think of is my laptop is finally on life support. The last USB port died for Christmas, which means no wireless, no external mouse, no webcam (i.e. no Skype). I bought this thing before we moved out here, so it’s done more than its share of good. But now, I think, it may be time to move on.

I feel like I’m missing something. If I think of it, I’ll let you know.

I’ve been posting a drawing every week on my other blog. This one came with a story from Im Jai that I don’t think I ever shared here, and I thought you’d like to read.

I took a break from drawing this week (not entirely intentionally), so here’s an older drawing from my sketchbook. I couldn’t find any dates, but near as I can figure this sketch is from about 4.5 years ago. I drew this during naptime at an orphanage called Im Jai House. That’s Tee on the left and Heart on the right.

Cindy and I started working with Im Jai House almost immediately after we moved here. At first we just went in the evenings, but soon we were there all day (minus time we left for language school). It was actually really hard for me. I mean, I loved the kids, but I never felt like an authority or role model. I didn’t really know how I fit in their lives.

I don’t know what impact I had on them, but they impacted me a lot. Not only did we learn Thai at an insane speed, but I realized that I wanted to have a place in their lives — not just as the volunteer who sometimes plays/sometimes disciplines. I wanted to be the dad.

Tee, in particular, really got to me. We were there the day he first arrived at Im Jai. He was 6, with no friends, and scared. He hung around me a lot. I don’t know why since I could hardly talk to him.

I remember one day I was playing soccer with him. Some older kids joined and soon after — mostly because I was tired — I left them to their game. Tee came to me in tears. I tried, in my broken Thai, to ask him what was wrong. Between heaving sobs I understood the words, “I wanted… to play… with you.”

It was the first meaningful conversation I remember having in this language, with Tee or anyone.

Later, Cindy and I realized that we couldn’t do what we wanted to do at an orphanage with over 50 kids. We gradually lessened our commitments until we had foster kids of our own to take care of, and we left Im Jai House. Tee is 10 now, and living with a family who does what we do just down the road. I see him sometimes, though I don’t think he remembers that scene like I do. I doubt he even thinks of me at all other than “that farang I used to play with at Im Jai,” but I’ll never forget him.

Dang. And here I thought I was just going to say, “These are a couple of kids at an orphanage we used to work at.” Well there you go. Merry Christmas.

Here’s a quick rundown of what’s going on around here.

Sunday is Cindy’s birthday, Monday is Isaac’s, and Nathan’s was last month. So today we’re having a sort of joint party/playdate thing with lots of sugar (I’m taking bets now as to who will crash first: us or them; also when).

The Fantastic Emmet is coming to visit soon (and for a while, I hope) before he leaves for Uganda. That means we’ll get a lot less done, but we’ll be having so much fun who cares? We don’t know what we’ll be doing for Christmas yet, but I’ll let you know. Then in January my parents come, followed by a new Heine in February. So lots of visitors, one of them staying forever.

And in other news, I finally sold something I wrote!* It’s a fantasy short story set in the same world as the novel I’m working on. You can see the writerly announcement here. Feel free to ask questions in the comments.

Also, we owe you guys a newsletter. I’m working on that.

* Technically, I’ve already sold fiction. But that Twitter-sized stuff only goes for $1.20 per story. That supports half our family for like an hour.

I’ll bring you more than a song, for a song in itself is not what you have required.

Cliches are bad in writing. Really bad. Why? Because they’ve been used so many times that we no longer think about the meaning. Seriously, when you hear the phrase “filthy rich,” do you imagine someone dirty? “Dead as a doornail.” Anyone thinking of an actual nail? How about when I say “tough as nails”? It actually takes extra work for us to remember there’s an image there.

When these, and thousands of other cliched phrases, were first used, they were strong images that made people really think about what the speaker meant. Now we’ve heard them so many times they are meaningless — almost worse than simply saying rich, dead, or tough.

Worship songs have their own sets of cliches. Praise the Lord. He is exalted. Glory to the Most High. With all my heart. You are worthy. We’ve sung these and many other lines so so many times that they have lost all meaning. Or at least, we have to work really hard to think about what it is we’re singing.

Worship is hard enough. It’s so easy to fall into the music and stop thinking. But worship is more than music. It’s about our hearts, and whether we like it or not, our hearts are often directed by our brains. If we stop thinking about what we’re singing, our minds wander to something else and — what do you know? — our hearts are no longer in the worship.

Cliches compound this problem. They’re easy to write because they’re the first things that come to mind. The same old phrases, the same Christianese quotes from Psalms (etc) that we’ve been singing all our lives. This is one reason we are encouraged to sing new songs. Sometimes old songs can remind us of what God’s done in our lives, but very often they become just old songs. New songs — well-written ones — help us think about what we’re saying and why we’re saying it.

The danger in me telling you this, of course, is that we’ll get down on all our old worship songs or on tired phrasing. That’s not my point. The only thing worse than not thinking about what you’re singing is to think about everything that’s wrong with what you’re singing.

No. My points are these: (1) If you write songs, don’t take the easy route. Read over what you’ve written and cross out all the cliches. Then find a new way to say what you really meant to say.

(2) And if you sing songs, think about what you’re singing. If the current song is filled with meaningless words it makes your job harder, but it’s still your job. It’s your mouth. Don’t open it if you don’t know what’s coming out.

Here’s a couple dozen pictures for you. Isaac and Nathan feature heavily in them. They’re just… around more, and love the camera. Click here to see them all.