Itsara

For those of you who know me, (Sean) you can check out updates on yet another blog.
A new update titled Rice Planting. www.snabott.com

We’ve changed our lives more in the last four years than, well… ever. Sean has an interesting look on it at his being-revamped blog - a before and after shot of the houses. In the latest shot, you can see some of the stuff we’ve put up since, like a canopy (currently for bicycles) and a playground.

Everything he says in that post is true. And it is a huge blessing to have Sean and Prang living right next door. Seriously, communal living is the only way to go. Either of us can get help whenever we need it, for anything. Strangely, for me the biggest perk of having them next door is perspective. Sometimes when the kids start going downhill, it’s nice to have adults living next door to remind us (or the kids, in some cases) that it’s not about us, that the world isn’t over because one kid explodes, that the kids really don’t know what they’re talking about. If nothing else, it’s nice to have friends so close to support us, and vice versa.

It’s not often we get a family vacation. Last time we went to Pai. This time, we took Pan, Alaypa, Lutiya, and David (our friend visiting from Ireland) to see Bangkok. The kids grew up in villages, and have never been far from Chiang Mai, so it was exciting to take them to see one of the largest cities in the world.

We took an overnight train there on Wednesday night. It came late and we slept in chairs, so we were all dead tired when we arrived. But having only three days there, we still had to go out! On Thursday we went to see the Grand Palace, which was kinda cool - I liked the murals of the Ramayana in particular. But the kids were bored, so we went to find something more interesting at Siam Paragon, one of the largest malls in Asia. We were looking for a discovery museum, but ended up admiring some really expensive show cars and visiting the largest aquarium in Southeast Asia.

On Friday, Isaac spent the day with Cindy’s aunt while the rest of us went to Siam Park. Here the kids got to experience roller coasters and such for the first time. Everyone enjoyed it, though it was hard to find rides that everybody could go on (Cindy and I learned a lot about going to an amusement park with an all-ages family). But really we spent most of the day with Siam Park’s water slides. The last time I went on water slides was in 6th grade. They were packed with people, sometimes taking 30-40 minutes in between rides, and you always got yelled at by someone for breaking some safety rule, but at Siam Park we got a ton of exercise running up the stairs in between rides (a turnaround time of maybe 30-40 seconds), and though there were lifeguards on duty, they only seemed to care about obvious breaches of safety. It made everything a lot more fun.

On our last day, we went to Pattaya. Though not a great beach by San Diego standards, it was still pretty good. Pan spent most of the day collecting oysters, and nearly everyone got buried in the sand at some point. There was something in the water though, as both Lutiya and I got itchy like crazy and couldn’t go back in (Sean thinks it might’ve been jellyfish eggs). After a few hours at the beach, we began the long drive back to Bangkok and the longer overnight train ride back home. There’s some more pictures here.

These vacations are hard to pull off, but they’re a lot of fun and good to look back on, and Cindy and I learn all kinds of things about parenting. I was shocked to realize that, had I let them, our kids would’ve stayed in the apartment all day watching TV, but then I realized that I was the same when I was a kid. Honestly, I don’t know why my parents ever took us anywhere.

I got this from a missionary friend here today. True story:

My name is Abby. I am 14 years old. I live in western North Carolina. During the summer of 2008, I went on a ministry trip to Guatemala. During part of the trip, we divided up into small ministry teams (5 to 7 people) and visited different villages in the San Pedro La Laguna area. We traveled from village to village telling the Indian people about Jesus. On one particular day, we were visiting in the home of a young woman. She lived in a small village of about 14 or 15 houses. We were trying to lead the young lady to Christ, but it was not going very well. After awhile, we decided to move on. Before leaving, we asked the woman if we could pray with her about anything in her life. She told us that just the day before, she had given birth to a stillborn baby and that we could pray with her about that.

“In Guatemalan culture, there is great shame and condemnation on mothers who give birth to deformed or stillborn children. We prayed a simple prayer that everything would go well with the funeral and burial of the baby and that the mother would be spared the shame and condemnation associated with having given birth to a stillborn child. As we were praying this simple prayer, my friend and fellow ministry team member, Julia (age 17), told me that we needed to pray over the baby’s body. I thought she was crazy to suggest this and that it was not a good idea. Julia was persistent. She said again that we really needed to pray over the baby’s body. She told me to ask the mother if she still had the baby’s body. When I asked, the mother told us the baby’s body was wrapped up in a burial cloth in the back room. I asked her if we could pray over the body. The mother hesitantly said, yes. We went into the backroom and saw the baby’s body wrapped up in a bundle on the bed. Julia poked her head out of the back room and asked if she could unwrap the baby’s head. The mother said, yes, if we wrapped it back correctly when we were done. Julia picked up the body and unwrapped the head. The baby’s head was tiny and pale. The baby was stillborn and had been dead outside the womb for 27 hours. Her skin had turned shades of purple. Our entire ministry team, five of us, began crying and praying over this baby.

“We prayed for thirty to forty minutes. At the end of that time, Julia screamed out to God, telling Him that she believed with all of her heart that this baby could be raised from the dead. After Julia screamed out, everyone was silent. We were quietly interceding and praying. Within a few minutes, the baby started moving. Then the baby coughed and began crying. The mother came rushing into the room. She was screaming, what is going on? No one could answer her. We were just staring at the baby, who had come back to life. The mother asked us again, what is going on? She began crying as she saw that her baby was alive. She ran out of the house and banged on every door in the village, telling all of the people that God is real because her baby was alive. Within about thirty minutes, the baby’s skin tone and movements had become completely normal.

“The other villagers came to the house to see this amazing miracle. They asked us which of the Indian gods we had prayed to for such a miracle to happen. We told them we had prayed to the biggest God ever and we began to explain to them about Jesus. Soon, we realized we would not have time to minister salvation to each person individually. So, we gathered all the villagers together, turned on our little sound system and explained the way of salvation. Everyone in the village, 80 to 90 people, prayed to receive Jesus. Each of them was baptized in the Holy Spirit and began speaking in tongues. Many would fall to the ground as the power of the Holy Spirit came on them.

“Five days later, we returned to the village to check in on the mother and the baby. The village had prepared a big dinner in honor of our team. We enjoyed a wonderful time of fellowship together. The baby, whom they named Julia, was perfectly healthy and had gained weight. Even after five days, the mother was still shaking from the impact of God on her life through the resurrection of her child. Two days after our follow-up visit, the mother brought baby Julia to church. The mother was still shaking from the power of God on her life following this astounding miracle.

-Abby

The hearts of people amaze me sometimes. I guess the things God gives us each to do amazes me. Dano has just graduated and is musing on what to do with ethnomusicology. His idea - no, his heart - is to raise up indigenous worshipers and worship music. I don’t know how one does that (I’m not sure he does either yet), but the dream is awesome. Somebody needs to teach the world that Western music isn’t all there is.

I don’t know why I didn’t think of this before. Let me know if this doesn’t work for you. Update: I forgot to mention, the video has no sound. That’s a product of using a cheap digital camera that wasn’t designed for video.

The Coast team has just left Chiang Mai to go Bangkok, Rayong, and then back home. Cindy and I had very little to do with them this year. We basically just hosted them for a day and night last week and another one this week and that’s it.

It was really cool, though. We saw a few old friends and met a lot of new ones. It was actually really interesting to see people that I know only from the Coast mission trips. I wish we could have spent some more time with them and gotten to know them better, but it couldn’t happen this year. It seems we do less and less with them each year, which none of us really like.

But it’s the nature of what we do. Foster care (or children’s homes or orphanage or whatever you want to call it) does not handle mission teams well. Some ministries, like Philipp’s, have work for teams to do - things to build, outreaches to run, etc. But much of all ministry is relational, and short term teams just can’t do that. And unfortunately our ministry is 100% relational.

It doesn’t mean we can’t have visitors. It just changes the relationship. We don’t have work for a big team to do at our house, but we have a place for friends to come visit - live with us, see what we do, even get involved in family ways. Help cook, help clean, teach English (either overtly or sneakily - trying to communicate with the kids across the language barrier), etc.

Otherwise, with a big team, it has to be a vacation. That was one of the problems we had at Im Jai House. With all the teams they had coming in, it was always vacation, and the kids knew it. Once or twice a year isn’t a big deal (especially if it’s during their actual school vacation), but when it happens too often it can really wreck a home.

But I was talking about Coast. It was really good to have them and open our home like we did. We’re looking forward to seeing them in September.

Just got a package at the correct address so… I guess mail is okay!

Hm, gives me some faith in the Thai postal system.