My true heart revealed and other thoughts

This is out of the ordinary but I figured I would share it with you anyway. The other day, we had to go to Mae Sot, which is the nearest big city located 4 hours away on a very windy road. There are not many ways to get there, you either drive a truck, motorbike (not recommended) or ride in a song tau (blue car). Riding in the song tau is... let's say interesting. It is a single cab pick up truck that have 2 benches put in the cab. They also add a roof cover with a rack. They are fairly inexpensive, but man, they pack those things out! Since it is the main means of transportation, everyone and anyone can be found on it, and like I said, they pack it out! While riding in a song tau, you sit very close to other people on the bench, and when the benches are full, people sit on the floor in the middle. The people also bring all sorts of things on with them, like chickens, huge bags of rice, etc. You name it, they bring it. Since the road is very windy, people often get car sick, while in very close proximity. The people in the middle on the floor will often hold onto to a total strangers leg for support or just straight up lean on a lap to sleep! Why all of this detail, what does this have to do with my heart? Most people that ride the song tau are poor, which means they are not very clean. I realized while riding that I really don't want anyone touching me...which is impossible! I don't want them to touch me because they are dirty or because they smell, or just because they do not look pleasing to the eye. The types of things that goes through my mind are do they have bed bugs, do they have a contagious disease that I can get, when is the last time they showered and many other such things... Most people are very nice though, but why do I have this attitude towards them? I am very displeased and ashamed with the attitude of my heart, it is not consistent with Jesus Christ. Others on the song tau will generally help each other get off and on, but I realized I didn't want to since I don't want to touch anyone that I don't have to. On the way back, a sweet family got on consisting of a toddler, mother and grandmother. They were very clearly poor. The little girls face and hair was dirty and her clothes didn't fit very well. They put the little girl on first and this time I helped. I picked her up and moved her to the other side of a large bag of rice. They sat across from me. I was sitting next to a Thai woman and her Russian boyfriend. They were coming to my area for vacation. I realized how the Thai woman looked at them, and it was a very similar attitude that I have and that made me very sad. I am supposed to be different. The little girl was very shy, whenever she looked at us and we made eye contact with her, she would turn away laughing. After a little while the song tau stopped and it was the most remote place on the rode. I was wondering why when the family got up to get out. I wondered where on earth could they possibly live?! There is nothing here! Then I saw a small path that led down a steep slope, that is where they were headed. My heart went out to them, I cannot imaging their living conditions. Then I thought, who comes here to evangelize? Who even knows it exists? I do not limit God, I don't know if there are any Christians there or not, or if people have not heard the gospel in Mae Sot, but they live in such a remote, obscure place. If I cannot show the love of God in my short interaction with them on the song tau, then what exposure do they get? Granted, this time I was fairly pleasant because all of this stuff was already going through my mind. I would really like to go and visit their village, but I don't know if it is even possible. I wouldn't even know where to stop on the road. That is in the Lord's hands. On this same car ride when we first left Mae Sot, a man got on. He was VERY thin, so thin I knew something had to be wrong. As you head out of the city, there are check points that the song tau is required to stop at, where the police check ID's. At the first check point, which is about 1/2 hour into the ride, the very thin man got up to get out. As soon as he stepped out of the truck, something hit the ground.... it was diarrhea. It was even running down his leg. We were all pretty much horrified. He was walking away, clearly looking for a bathroom, but what were my thoughts? Oh man, it's on his pants and he is gonna get back in here. I won't be able to handle that smell, it's gonna make me sick, I'm glad he is not sitting next to me (he was sitting next to Doris) and many more selfish thoughts. What kind of embarrassment must he have been going through? How sick must he have been that he couldn't hold it until he got into a bathroom? Everyone saw it, all of us on the song tau and the police at the check point. He couldn't even find the bathroom immediately and no one was really directing him. The police told the driver and he came to the back to make sure it wasn't in the truck. He spoke with the officer and ascertained that the very thin man used to be a police officer, but he has AIDS now and no longer works, that is why he is so thin. The driver got back in and we pulled off leaving him there at the checkpoint. What should my attitude have been? How would I have treated him if he did get back on? Should I have insisted that we wait for him (he is not stranded there, song taus come through regularly)?

Also, while in Mae Sot, I was walking back to my guest house, when I saw a boy of about 12 years of age, digging through the garbage. I just looked and passed on. The thought in my mind was, sure I can give him money or buy him food now, but what about later? How would that really help him? Then later that night, Doris and I were riding our bikes through the Burmese street market as it was closing. Again, I saw several people digging through the garbage shamelessly. They were pulling out food and anything else that could be useful. I was saddened because I thought to myself, how can I just pass these people by and not do something for them? But what can I do for them? I can't share the gospel, we don't speak the same language. But could I have shown it to them? Why do I limit God? My one act of kindness may not change their circumstance forever, but I do not know what it will speak to them without words.
I do not feel condemned, but sad about the condition of my heart. I am glad that I see it and I hope that this revelation will turn to some form of action. It is overwhelming when you see so much, but that should not cause me to shut down and do nothing. The Lord said, "For I was hungry, and you gave me food; I was thirsty, and you gave Me drink; I was a stranger, and you took Me in; I was naked, and you clothed Me; I was sick, and you visited Me; I was in prison, and you came to Me. Then the righteous shall answer Him, saying, Lord, when did we see You hungry, and fed You? Or thirsty, and gave You drink? When did we see You a stranger, and took You in? Or naked, and clothed You? Or when did we see You sick, or in prison, and came to You? And the King shall answer and say to them, Truly I say to you, Inasmuch as you did it to one of the least of these My brothers, you have done it to Me. (Matthew 25:35-40) I emphasize the word one, because that is all it takes. The though should not be,  "I cannot help everybody, so I will not help anybody", but should be, "I know I cannot help everybody, but I am willing to help anybody that I can."

Thanksgiving at H2O

We celebrated Thanksgiving here at the orphanage. It is most likely the first Thanksgiving ever celebrated in Umphang! We not only celebrated with the kids and workers, but with other foreigners living in town, some who have never celebrated Thanksgiving either. There were about 45 people here in all. We had some locals, both Burmese and Thai, New Yorkers, Brits, and a Kiwi come to join us! The goal or should I say challenge was to cook American food. At first it seemed impossible, they don't sell turkey, they don't have ovens and we cannot find many ingredients that we would need to cook. However, as we spoke to other foreigners that have lived here for years, it started coming together. You can find most of what you need in major cities.... we are 4 hours away form the nearest one, but we have connections! Our menu consisted of steamed chicken (remember, no ovens!), macaroni and cheese, sweet potatoes, rice, an asian noodle dish, eggplant and green beans. For desert we had cake and cookies. Our day was almost like a Thanksgiving at home, with our share of drama and arguments, people walking off and various other misunderstandings! Overall it went well. The people got to try new food and we had a good time. Doris told the Thanksgiving story and played some games with the kids, they had a blast! The mac and cheese was a hit with some and a miss with others. the sweet potatoes were received well, a bit too sweet for some though. Now I do not feel as intimidated to cook here, we can make do with what we have. Enjoy the pictures of the day!

This is how we cook!

Food prep

Frying veggies

O Si the Pilgrim

Pilgrim

Cute little Indians

Pin the tail feathers on the turkey

More games

Craft time

Friends and dinner

More friends, more food

Even more food

The clean up crew

Blessings!

In coming here, we have seen that there are different needs that the orphanage has. A few people have asked how they can help and help has come! World Challenge has agreed to donate money towards the purchase of a car. Right now, H2O spends $100/month in transportation costs to shuttle the kids back and forth to school. This will help save a lot of money. There is always a need for clothing since they grow so quickly. A friend in the US has agreed to donate money towards the purchase of any necessities for the kids. He is also going to raise support to meet this need. The children have been praying a very long time for a car and they are so happy to be receiving one! Also, someone in the US has agreed to finance the building of a playground! Construction should start within the next 2 weeks. Lots of blessing flowing here at H2O, thanks be to God!!

"Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above and comes down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness nor shadow of turning." James 1:17

Adjusting

My whole time here has been filled with adjustments. From the food that I eat to the way that I have to think and everything in between! Some have been easier to deal with than others, but I hope to learn a lot from it all. I will briefly touch on areas, if not this will be ultra long.
Food:
Most of you are probably thinking, why would food be an adjustment? Thailand has some of the best food ever.... however, I do not only eat Thai food. Here at the orphanage, I eat Karen food and on occasion Burmese. If I want Thai food, I need to go out to eat. I honestly cannot tell you what is so difficult about the Karen food, but my stomach did not agree at all! I was "sick" the 1st week then lost my appetite for about another week. Now I am doing fine. We eat rice for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I am not exaggerating! We have lots of fresh vegetables which is nice. They have a vast garden here and everything is organic. We do not eat meat much (the orphanage is not rich) so we devour it when we do get it!
Housing:
We live in a small cabin like structure. The room is about 10x10 and has it's own bathroom. We have enough space for a table and chair, that's about it. There is no room for a dresser, so our clothes stay in our luggage. The toilet is a western style, which means it's a bowl, not a squatter. However, there is no plumbing so we have to pour water down for it to flush. Thank God we have hot water! There is a hot water heater attached to the wall and the bathroom is designed for the whole thing to get wet. There is no separate bath tub or shower, so I shower standing next to my toilet!
Bugs:
I have never seen bugs so big in my life!! There was once a moth bigger than my blackberry! Lots of BIG beatles, the kind you hear coming before you see them. In my room, there are many ants, snails and 1 giant gecko. The ants you must just learn to live with, there is no getting rid of them. The snails I kick out, although more replace them. The gecko.... he is often hiding but he leaves the "evidence" of his presence on my floor! I also hear it make it's gecko noise. It is very scary to hear in the middle of the night because I am never sure how close to me it is. They also run around the outside of the house all night long. If you are not familiar with the sound, you will think someone is knocking on your door. When they run around a lot, it sounds like squirrels running on a roof. I'm concerned enough about its presence in my room that I don't go to the bathroom in the middle of the night! Since it's dark, I don't know where it could be. Doris has 2 of them living in her room!
Language:
Not a whole lot to say outside of the obvious. Thai is not easy to learn, it is a very tonal language. One word with the same spelling has 5 different meaning. The meaning depends on the tone you use. Burmese is totally different but no easier to learn. It sounds to me like they are mumbling when they talk, so it's hard to pick up. Anyone that does speak English speaks it very broken, so we are often not fully understood when we ask questions or explain.
Culture:
Wow, too much to write about. Asian culture is VERY different than American culture. I'll just give you an example: when the kids get up to sing in front of the church, they usually have their arms crossed in front of them. Americans would have the kids put their arms down at their side. I asked if they were upset that they have to be up there singing, since they have their arms crossed... no they are not upset, to have your arms crossed is a sign of respect that the younger kids show adults in Burmese culture. Go figure!

The weather here is very nice. they go through 3 seasons (this was unbeknownst to me!) winter, summer and rainy season. Rainy season just ended and is from June through October. Winter is from late November through March, and summer is from April through June. Winter temps are said to be in the 60's during the day and 40's at night. Summer is just plain old hot!! Rainy season is... rainy! The main mode of transportation around our small town is via motorbike. No taxis or buses here! We have been walking, it's good exercise. The orphanage is located 10 minutes outside of town up on a hill. It is usually too hot during the day to go out walking. I did it once and thought I was gonna pass out on the street. I collapsed onto my bed when I got back and slept for 2 hours. I no longer go out in the sun between the hours of 10 and 4! The landscape is absolutely beautiful! I never cease being amazed. I have not kept up to my blogging blitz, but I don;t have too much more to update you with so I'm doing good. More to follow!

The Kids

I can honestly say that I am not naturally a kids person, so I do not often get attached to children very easily, of course there are exceptions. However, I found myself drawn to them so quickly. They are the sweetest, respectable bunch of kids! I am so happy when I am around them! There are 24 children that live here, mostly girls. They range in age from 3-16. All of their stories are different, but they share a common thread... each story is heartbreaking. I look at them and for the life of me cannot understand why their parents or other family members did not want to care for them. I will not get into the details of their individual situations now, I plan on creating a page called "Meet the Children", where I will post pictures and create a profile of them, so details of who they are and how they came here will be included. Hopefully I will start posting on that next week. Anyway, the older kids carry a lot of responsibility and it is good. They are each being trained to be leaders, not just followers. They do their own laundry, work in the garden, keep the place clean and orderly, and can even lead their nightly devotions if necessary. They have not had it easy. All of them are of Burmese or Karen decent, some are mixed with Thai. With that being the case, they speak Burmese and Karen. In order for them to be able to attend school here, they had to first learn to speak Thai. Initially, they were home schooled until they at least understood Thai. Once they did, they began to attend school, but they have more work to do than the other kids. Just because they can speak Thai, doesn't mean that they could read or write it, so extra time had to be put into that. They are all doing well with their Thai now, and a few of them can even translate Thai into Burmese when necessary (the house parents are not fully fluent in Thai either). Even though they are disciplined and responsible, they are still kids, which means they do get in trouble.... but I never really know whats going on seeing they get scolded in Burmese! They are quite talented... they sing, dance and act. I tell you, Asians love them some "action songs". That means they love putting movements to song lyrics, kind of what we do with children's songs, but they do it to adult worship music. I will record one and post it for you all to see. They are a bit shy with us still at times, but they are slowly coming out of their shells. When they are in school, they are pretty busy. They get up at 5:30 am to get ready and have breakfast and morning devotions. Then they are off to school at 7:30 and return by 4:30pm. Then the older boys work the garden while everyone else starts homework. Dinner is served anywhere between 5:30 and 6:30, then back to homework. Around 7:30-8 they have night time devotions. Afterwards, those who still are not finished with homework get back to it while the others have a little free time before going to bed at 9pm. Well I can't think of anything else to tell you about them right now, but more info about each child is to come! Check back tomorrow for another post!

Umphang

I have been so bad at updating sorry. I plan on doing a posting blitz this week. There is too much to write for each post, so I will break it up. Getting to Umphang: Plane, bus, private car? Every option was discussed, dissected and discussed again and after much debate about how to actually get to the orphanage, we took the bus on Thursday, October 14^th. The roads finally opened up! The bus ride would be an overnight ride lasting 10 hours. We took the VIP bus, which was very nice. The seats are wide, recline very far back and have leg rests that come up. They give you a blanket, food and drink. There is also access to coffee and tea at anytime during the ride. Also, they make a rest stop about 2-3 hours into the trip where you can get free food when you show your bus ticket. All of this for $20 USD! Our destination was Mae Sot... still NOT where the orphanage is! The ride was uneventful and we arrived without incident. Were were met at the bus station by Esther Yi and her husband Gum San. They run the orphanage. We still had 4 more hours to go before we would be at the orphanage. They were merciful to us and suggested we rest some before the next leg of the trip. I got to eat a good ol' american breakfast at a restaurant run and owned by a Canadian who has lived here for 14 years. Eggs and bacon on an english muffin of sorts. Then off to Umphang we went. We drove for four hours on a very windy road, but the landscape was absolutely beautiful! Finally we arrived! It was a bit overwhelming. After such a long trip here, I felt extremely isolated, almost trapped! There is one road in and one road out, if that were to get blocked, let's say by a landslide (which happens in rainy season), we would be stuck! Anyway, that feeling left me soon enough. We spent the first few weeks adjusting,

Thee Lor Su Waterfall

getting used to the area, the food, the people, and our living situation. In this post I will talk about Umphang itself. It is a very small town located north west of Bangkok. Their claim to fame is Thee Lor Su (pronounced Tee Lo Su) waterfall. Many Thais come here to vacation and to visit the waterfalls. I just went this past weekend, it truly is beautiful! The main "business" part of town consists of two roads that run parallel to each other and are traversed by about 10 short blocks. This is where we find most shops to supply our needs. There is no lack of restaurants here, but the main problem is most of the menus are written in Thai Sanskrit... we have no clue what to order. There really isn't much to it, so it only took a few days to figure out where things were. Things are a little pricey in this small town for two reasons; 1. there is only one way to get things here and that road is intense at times and 2. this is the only place to buy stuff, there is nowhere else to shop! Umphang is considered a boarder town, so the population consists of Thais, Burmese refugees and Karen people. Here at the orphanage, the directors are Burmese and the children are either Burmese or Karen. What does that mean for us? We need to learn both Burmese and Thai! I currently know a few phrases in both languages. One day Doris asked me how do you say water in Thai, but I only knew how to say it in Burmese! This happens a lot! We have met so many wonderful people in our first month here! We have met very nice locals, refugees and farangs (that's Thai for foreigners). There is a couple here from NYC! The wife works for an NGO located in town. If I stick to my plan, you will have something new to read everyday this week! That's all for now!! By the way, in case any of you have heard about the flooding in BKK, it did get pretty bad. We are not directly affected because we are 14 hours removed, however, BKK is where supplies come in and are shipped out from, so many places are short on supplies. The only time I notice is when I go to a big city and see empty shelves, otherwise, I really don't know what Umphang normally has.