life as it is

A simple update on what’s happening in our lives here in Thailand:

In May Kaygee came to live with us.

It was sometime in March or April when I was first told of a young woman who was severely crippled by arthritis. She was really in desperate need of somewhere to live as her current situation was a small and isolated bamboo room with only a hole in the cracked bamboo floor for a toilet. She is unable to walk and has only very limited use of her hands. Her parents are dead and she is unwanted by the rest of her family as they presume that surely she must have evil spirits to be so unfortunate. 

I really felt bad hearing of her situation and wished we could help, but honestly, I just thought that I had far too much going on at the time for it to even be a possibility and I didn't think my house would be at all suited and so I pretty much brushed the thought off.

But I couldn’t forget.

Through the the next several weeks at odd moments she would repeatedly claim my thoughts. I knew we had to do something. And anything was a step up from what she had.  

I went to see her just as a visit and she came home with me that morning.

Kaygee definitely brings joy to our home and we’re delighted that she’s here. She has a gentle, sweet spirit. Jabez adores her!

In May I also began teaching two days a week at the Thai school in Maesalite. I teach Tuesdays and Wednesdays, but Sunday night I begin to feel a depression coming on that builds through 2:30 on Wednesday when I then suddenly find that I feel free as a bird. I am most definitely not a born English teacher. But I'm fully aware of how good this is for me and we're starting to have just a bit of fun together. I can scarcely believe it myself.

As a side-note, there are few things more thrilling than standing in your classroom of forty 8th graders and listening to an enthusiastic rendition of Jesus Loves Me bursting out the windows and wafting through the campus of a very Buddhist school :)

 

Jabez will be 2-years-old at the end of this month. This toddler stage challenges me ridiculously, but he's so much fun. Honestly, there was a point (he was 5-months-old, ok? :) when I thought I might have this parenting thing together. Now? Most of the time I have no clue what I’m doing. It’s moment by moment, prayer by prayer.

I don’t think a day passes that I don’t stop at some point and just look at him not believing how I've been given so much. I feel blessed beyond measure. I am no longer a skeptic on love.

You may remember from old blogposts my mountain village, Manykee? July would have been two years since I was there last. Sickness followed my last visit, together with time for training in Chiang Mai, and then Jabez came along. . . and diapers, hospitals, and days and nights that ran together filled the next year. 

But finally in June I returned together with a friend and a backpack full of medicine. We were happily greeted by a small crowd of villagers all eager for medicine for their aches and pains and various maladies. They have coaxed and begged me to come and live there once again, but I’ve regretfully had to beg out due to my other commitments. Happily though, in the last couple months we've been able to make quite a few visits. And I have assured them that I will continue to return with medicine on a semi-regular basis. These visits have done my heart much good. Up there in dim and smoky huts with simple mountain people I remember why I'm here and many of my semi-dormant dreams of mountain medical work have been revived.

I plan to, as God provides, build a small and simple clinic there in the village, where I can keep medicine in stock and also have somewhere to treat patients (as opposed to hauling everything in each time I come and treating crowds of patients in the squabble of a villager’s hut), keeping it open 1-2 days each week. I'm hoping that this will happen this fall and am super excited at the thought.

Some good friends who were here through June and July saw a good dirt bike as a definite need in order to continue our work in the mountains (especially during the rainy season!) and they went ahead and fundraised for one. I was truly blown away by the response.

Thank you to everyone who pitched in. . . We are absolutely delighted with the bike!