oneyesatatime

If anyone had asked him “Where did you come from?” he would probably have said, “I’ve always been here.” That was what it felt like—as if one had always been in that place and never been bored although nothing had ever happened

I came across this quote from the first Chronicles of Narnia book and it so well describes how I have felt about Thailand from the very beginning.

 

Well, this has been a long month with short days. I am not sure how that works, but so it goes! After a well-loved, cool, rainy start to Thailand’s summer, the past 2–3 weeks have delivered hot season in full force (Jesus help us). This is the part where they burn out all the underbrush, and the air quality is extremely poor. Smog has settled over the country, and we have not seen blue sky for many days.

Looking back over the past month– boy, have we ever done so many things! We’ve been all over the city furnishing our home, figuring out the best places to buy groceries, gathering all the many documents and paperwork it requires to be here, handing out dreadful looking passport photos everywhere we go and such.

We have been working on getting our moto license basically all month, and the work is still not done! Over the next two days, I must go to a couple different government offices to obtain the final things I need to actually get my license. We have also sat through two days of lectures and tests, it was truly a fascinating process. The lectures were videos in Thai with English subtitles. Every couple of hours, we needed to get fingerprinted, and every time we moved from one subject to another, we had to fingerprint “out” of the previous subject and then get fingerprinted “in” to the next one. If you missed any of the fingerprinting moments for any reason, you were o-u-t, out and had to come back another day to finish. They stressed very strongly that we must be there for the fingerprinting times. One day, we rushed back from lunch so we would not miss it. We got there on time and were fingerprinted in, and then the instructor came in and informed us that we would now take a 30-minute break because it was very hot outside (remember, we had just rushed back from our one-hour break).

However, we survived it all! We passed all the tests, a miracle from the Lord, for sure.(Had to have little celebration with ice-cream after the worst was over) The written test was translated from Thai, and sometimes you would come across a question where multiple answers said essentially the same thing, maybe with slightly different wording, and you had to figure out which one was correct. Other times, there were questions and answers that just made no sense. It was a 50-question test, and you could only get five wrong. I could talk about this experience for hours and hours, but I will refrain for now, you’re welcome!

We started language school! This month, while we had a lot of other things going on, we only did two days a week, with our teacher coming to our house. Our teacher is the most amazing “little bit old” (as she calls herself) Thai lady. She is not super fluent in English, which really helps speed one’s language learning along. She is also such a good teacher, I feel like I am learning so much about teaching just from being in her class. She brings a lot of joy and laughter to learning as well. She likes to give little compliments and then hold out her hand and say, “Okay, 1 baht” (Thai currency). Or if someone forgets a word we learned the previous week, she will say, “Okay, you forget–pay me one baht.” She pushes us to construct sentences in every class and has also been teaching us a lot about Thai culture. I have never loved school so much. 😯 Next month will most likely not hold the same sentiments as we move into four days of language a week instead of just two.

I was also able to go up to the children’s home for a day almost every week, which was such a treat. We did some work in one of the kindergartners rooms, painting and organizing a play room for them

They are currently on school break, most of the children have extended family or somewhere they can go during that time. The 70–90 who remain at the home are the ones who are truly all alone in this world, and it is a heartbreaking thing to witness and think about. The conditions at the home are poor enough that most children long to go somewhere else during the school break. On any given day during the school year, there is always a loud chorus of children from all corners of the property— playing sports, their little version of “jacks” using rocks, playing “clay” (iykyk), talking, dancing, etc. But around this time of year, it’s like a ghost town. I had never thought of “70 children” as being so few. One day, as I was walking around, there was a little boy quietly sitting on the sidewalk, just looking up at the sky with the most empty look on his face. Small tears are gathering in my eyes just thinking about it.

The PCCR team, who have been there for the past two years doing amazing things, just left to go back to the States, as well as five volunteers from North America who have been there for the past three months. So on top of all the loneliness and heartache that this time of year usually holds for them, they have had to say some really hard goodbyes.

So, if you, dear reader, want to know how to make the biggest impact at New Vision for Life Foundation, just start planning yourself a little trip to be here for the next school break. I dream of making the school break something they actually look forward to every year (as much as possible)– for short-term teams to come in and run VBS-type weeks, English camps, or (insert your own inspiration here), and for people who are willing to spend the whole school break here simply caring for the children and being with them during this time. So I urge you to go seek the Lord in earnest. Thank yew. 

We finished our month with a trip to Laos for a border run. We spent two nights in a little town of nothingness just across the border, let my testimony of only having one picture from our time there attest to that, I somehow have more pictures of the drive there than I do of actually being in Laos (hometown readers, imagine trying to kill time in Cooleemee for two days; that’s what this was like), but we were together as a team, so it was a good old time. We were all able to go to and fro with no problems, so praise the Lord for that.

Just a few pictures of everyday life in March.

and a few fun film photos from DTS

thank you for listening, or reading. here is the link if you would care to join my little update group, where you get the less polished (as if the previous writings can be dubbed polished) of the moment, behind the scenes, prayer requests and such

okay! love you byeee!

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