A new blog site

My husband decided to set me up a wordpress blog...so now you will find me over here.
Hope to see you there :)

The Harvest is Great

Last Sunday night, we went to sleep to the sound of booming music and screaming. A new house in our village was being dedicated to the spirits. Most people here, actually have animism (spirit worship) mixed in with their Buddhism. I was tired enough to drift off to sleep, but later woke up, hearing a drunk neighbor shouting "Hey!" He sounded mad, and I laid there awake for a long time, somewhat scared and praying. This isn't the first time we've heard loud music and drunk people around us, but somehow this night experience really has lingered in my mind. The lostness of these people is continuing to be impressed upon me.

Sometimes I forget, on quiet days when the only sounds I hear are "Grandma" hollering "Bye nye!" (where are you going?) to every person who drives past or Dteep saying "Hi!", calling her cows as she leads them out to pasture in the early morning light. When an old man rides by,  his perfect posture making him look like so respectable even on a bicycle, when children laugh and play in our yard, when neighbor women laugh and turkeys gobble and you can't tell if you heard the turkeys or the women...

Thailand has become synonymous in the tourist world with laughter, smiles, and fun. Yes, you will see many more smiling faces here than in America. But the smiles hide a thousand sorrows. The laughter and "sanook sanook" (fun fun) mentality have become an age old strategy of covering the inner pain.

Go ask the woman whose boyfriend cheated on her, whose father died of alcoholism, now she says to me, "If I searched all over this world, I wonder if I could find a good man."

Go ask the man, covered with tattoos, hooked on sniffing glue, his wife long fled from him, now wandering our streets in search of easy money to get his next high.

Go ask the girl in the bars of Chiang Mai, whose father sold her so he could get a refrigerator, and now her father's god of money has become her own.

Go ask about peace, and hope. Go ask and see the aching void within.

Look up to Jesus, His tears falling gentle upon them, watering the soil of the heart, waiting for someone to go and let His love flow.

"The harvest is so great, but the workers are so few. So pray to the Lord who is in charge of the harvest; ask Him to send out more workers for His fields."                        Matthew 9:37-38

These are a few of my favorite things...

Something I have always liked to do is read. I remember, as a child,  coming home from the library with a pile of books, and reading until my eyes were tired or my head ached! Now, I enjoy reading to our children. I would rather have less books, with story lines that spark imagination and pictures that capture attention, than scores of books with mediocre pictures and predictable stories.

Here is a few of our favorite children's books.

The American Girl series
Grandma's Attic series
Virginia Lee Burton treasury - The Little House, Mike Mulligan, Katy and the Big Snow, Maybelle the Cable Car
The World of Robert McCloskey - Lentil,  Make Way for the Ducklings, One Morning in Maine, Blueberries for Sal
Holling C. Holling - Paddle to the Sea
Max Lucado - Wemmicks books and All You Ever Need
Elizabeth George - God's Wisdom for Little Girls
Stranger in the Woods by Carl R. Sams & Jean Stoick
James Herriot's Treasury (our boys really like this one!)
Are You There, Baby Bear? by Catherine Walters

I would love to hear your list too!

Where have I been?

Ok, I do not like reading blogs that are as sporadic as mine. My feeble excuse is that I've been very busy (just like all the rest of you!)
Here's one thing that's kept me hoppin'. Our neighbor children were on a school break in October, so we decided to teach the girls a baking class. They wanted to "learn how to make cake". We settled for cupcakes one night, then chocolate chip cookies, brownies, banana bread, and then pizza on the final night. They wanted shrimp on their pizza, so we obliged them on that one. We had a great pizza party, with them heaping their pizza with ketchup. Yes, I said ketchup. I forgot how much they like ketchup on pizza...
We did this on Tues. and Thurs. nights for about 3 weeks. It was very fun, but it was quite draining to me. The preparation and planning, and all the cleanup afterwards. However, I know its worth it to invest some time into these girls now while they're so young.
Last week was Andrew's birthday, so we invited some friends over for that. Each one of these things is a blessing, but it isn't always easy to reach across the cultural lines. People unknowingly say things that hurt me.  I don't sometime know what's proper, and probably offend them. Even here, I find myself looking for a comfort zone...a place to stay "safe".  I'm glad for Martin on that one...he's good at gently nudging me out, but also knows when I've had enough.