Heading out to meet Tawan

Visiting one of the schools in the area. About 30 Compassion children go here. It is a private school - VERY nice! - and Compassion office headquarters for this region. Tawan is able to go here on Saturdays for free education and instruction

One of the very nice classrooms. We would love for Tawan to attend school here but his grandmother wants him to attend the Buddhist school instead

Some of the children

More precious children

Sharing some smiles

Meetin Tawan!!!!

All of the Compassion children from this project site - pointing to Tawan

Walking in to Tawan's "house"

There he is! The boy to his right just died recently from a brain tumor

Tawan and his grandmother

Signing the guest book

Tawan's home.

Gifts from Compassion!

Our picture in Tawan's home

In the Compassion office. Each letter we write to Tawan comes through this very office

Gifts from Tawan

Gifts FOR Tawan

Playing

Showing him all his gifts

He didn't know what some of the things were

Tawan's home. They collect some recyclables for money too

Opening gifts

Playing with plastic animals

Cute little boy feet. Not much difference - they just walk in different worlds

More gifts

Jacob and Tawan play together outside

He had never thrown a frisbee before, but Jacob hadn't either so they were a good match

Visting in their home

Coloring pictures for Tawan

Tying his very cool shoes - I'm pretty sure we bought these for him for his birthday. We sent money and got a letter back saying he bought a shirt, pants, shoes and a new blanket. While we were visiting he changed into a very nice new pair of jeans, shirt and shoes to go to lunch. They were washed, ironed and laying on the bed ready to go.

Photo with the family, Tawan in his new outfit

We took him to lunch with us. Felt like he was ours!

Choosing from the menu

Enjoying a watermelon shake with his Compassion sister

Playing with Jacob at the restaurant

Racing cars with David at the mall

SO much fun! He loved to crash!

David shows him how to fight

Boys....

Playing a little air hockey

Driving cars with Jacob

Saying goodbye

Had a great day with him!

One last hug

ice cream at the mall

Yum!!!

Compassion

Today we will drive 4 hours to Bangkok, eat lunch, board a plane and fly about an hour south to go visit our Compassion International child. His name is Tawan. He is 6 years old. And we never thought in a million years that we would have a chance to meet him face to face. The best part? - He has NO idea we are coming!!!

We've been sponsering a Compassion child for over 15 years. Obviously not the same one :) Our first child, Nattapol, had to move out of the program due to a family situation when he was about 12. We've had Tawan for about 3 years now. We write to him and send him pictures of our family. We send him money for his birthday and Christmas and the organization takes him shopping to buy clothes, blankets, animals, seeds, and tools - whatever he might need to make it through another year in his tiny village. Compassion does an excellent job of sharing the Truth with their children and their families. We hope to be able to do the same. Please remember that as you experience the end of your week - throughout your entire night THursday night beginning at 9pm we will be visiting with Tawan and his family. By the time you wake up Friday morning we should be back at our hotel, hopefully forever changed and blessed by this experience. We hope to share Truth with his family if they have not already heard. Lift that up!

Hua Hin - Thailand

Family Photo on beach

Starfish

Playing at the beach makes one tired

Checking out the water

There's the baby!

Sunrise

Not feeling well

On a bike ride around town

Beautiful mountains

Before our bike ride

Who doesn't love coconut juice from a fresh, cold coconut

My love

Jacob fell asleep at lunch without eating a thing

Oh my gosh. She's SO beautiful!

Yes, that's a pina colada. Love it! Virgin, of course

Snuggling with mommy 'cause he just didn't feel good

Daddy and daughter

Village life - do I really get to live here?!

Christy got to travel to a local village with a friend of hers on Tuesday of this week. There are about 800-1000 people who live here. It's only about 1.5hours by bus from our city so it's easily accessible. It was a VERY cold and dreary day, with a threat of snow, but we bundled up, put on our rain boots, headed out and had a very fruitful day.

This is a picture of the village. The yellow things in the trees are piles of corn drying.

Amazing, huh? How do they get it up there?!

Here is a family hard at work in their courtyard. This is a large, but typical style, home. There may be one or more families living here. Most of the homes have a front door that opens to a spanish style courtyard in the center of the home (no roof) with all the rooms off the edges. Quaint!

More of the village off the main road

A beautifully handcrafted window in a home

We walked into the main gathering place in the village to discover preparations for a wedding feast!! They were hard at work to prepare for the 900 expected guests!!!

Two of the four pigs we saw being slaughtered.

The meat was actually steaming because it was SO fresh! I thought it had just been cooked or something but my friend pointed out that it was smoking because the meat was a warm 98 degrees and it was about 40 degrees outside!

HARD work!! They were pulling and tugging and it took two men to carry the meat after it was removed from the bone.

Headless pics and a gutted goat

Oh, there are the heads!! Sitting right next to the pot of tea, chives and intestines (or brain - not sure...)

And here is that gutted goat. He smiled for the camera :) There are a total of three heads and one body in this picture. Didn't see the other bodies....perhaps it was a three-headed goat

A group of volunteers sitting around waiting to be called to wash and cut veggies

Let the games begin!

My friend talking to the ladies about washing the veggies.

Water buffalo - used to carry things and for milk, not for dinner.

Some sweet old ladies that invited us to come to the wedding to watch them dance the next day! We told them we couldn't come so they invited us to their home instead.

My friend getting a good laugh in

Here we are in their home surrounding a coal fire pit, watching them cross stitch and eating sunflower seeds

Aren't they amazing?

More corn drying

This is what they do with the corn after it dries out and they harvest the kernels - they use it for firewood! Which is how we kept warm while we told stories to a lady and her children

A door to a home, lady with a baby on her back

More corn!

This village was particularly beautiful because of the drawings on the walls of the buildings. Looks as though these people are worshiping the tree? Perhaps...

Man with goats. This was before we found the slaughtered ones. But I think these are just cousins.

Frustrations and Feelings

Tonight I started dinner at about 5:30. By 7:30 we were finally sitting down to eat; however, I could not finish my food because it tasted like the dead sea....apparently I used too much chicken boullion when making the "from scratch" cream of chicken soup. So, 3 chicken breasts, 8 handmade tortillas, 1 cup of cheese, 3 tomatoes, 1 bulb of garlic and half an onion went into the trash. Along with two hours of labor in the kitchen, away from my kids, all the while making a nice pile of dishes for my sweet helper in the morning. ARRRGGGHHH!! SO frustrating.

I usually keep Campbell's Cream of Chicken on hand but I used it up this weekend and thought that making it from scratch couldn't be that difficult. It was super easy, but the boullion bag was written in characters and unfortunately after 6 months of language study I still cannot read.

David was out at one of the 4 stores he visited tonight, all in a effort to buy: hamburger buns, whipping cream and milk. His first stop was Walmart - the place to get anything and everything you need, right? nope. They had NOTHING. Not one item on this list. SO he headed off to the two trusty import stores. One had one item, the other had the other item. Neither carries the milk we like. He finally came home at 7:30 only to sit down to this nasty dinner. Poor guy. He's really taken up the slack with this pregnancy. He does ALL the shopping now. After dinner he told me he was going out to HoMart to see if they had milk. Sure enough - of ALL places - they had the High Calcium, Low Fat milk we like!!!! This is also the place, if you'll recall, that carries my powdered creamer occasionally. I am lovin' me some HoMart!!!

As I was reading to Hannah David came in the room and I told him I was so frustrated that we cannot just go to one store and buy everything we need. He said he was frustrated that we couldn't just go to one park and play on a single patch of grass. I thought that was ridiculous! If I had to choose between and SuperTarget and a patch of grass, guess which one I would choose! I offered that scenario to him to which he replied, "The grass, of course!" .....WHAT?!?! Is he crazy?!

No, he's not crazy. If a patch of grass means as much to him as a superstore does to me then I totally get it. We all have things on this side of the world that really get to us; that if it just wasn't this way life would be SO much easier. For me, it's the shopping. For David, it's the grass.

As I was pondering this I realized: how selfish am I? Some people live in a world where they don't have to plan their trips to 4 different stores to buy what they need because they don't HAVE 4 different stores to choose from! Some have one. Some have none. Some buy everything they need at the market. Some people make cream of chicken soup, sour cream, coffee creamer, butter, cheese and syrup from scratch ALL.THE.TIME. And some don't even have electricity to do it. Or internet to write blogs to complain about it. How selfish am I....

I am thankful for where I live. I am thankful that moments like these cause me to step back and reevaluate my thinking. I am thankful for my 4 stores. I am thankful for my amazingly selfless husband. I am thankful for internet and electricity. I am thankful for perspective.

As long as I have access to Campbell's I'm not sure I will attempt the "from scratch" kind again, but I wouldn't be surprised if one day I find myself in the place I described above: only the market to shop from, no electricity to cook with and no internet to tell you all about it. Would it be worth it? You bet. And you know what? I bet we'd have grass instead.