Early Christmas Present

We received an early Christmas present from a woman in our neighborhood that we don’t even know.  Paige was out walking with Hannah and Molly and was admiring a plant that one of our neighbors had.  Well, the woman who lived next door to that house then gave two of the same flowers to Paige.  I remember reading somewhere, concerning the Thai people’s generosity, that you need to be careful what you admire because they might just give it to you.  And so in addition to gaining a nice flower, we also learned a lesson in giving.

And so we bought some pots and some dirt and now we have a couple young, but soon to be very pretty plants.

Hannah’s checking out the new flowers.  I hope they grow fast.

Enjoying some more of the neighbors flowers. 

I think we’re going to get one of these for Christmas to put in front of the house.  It’ll give us some shade too.

Hannah sings the Abc’s and doxology

Hannah gets better at these songs every day but here is a video we caught of her about a week or so ago.  I think you’ll recognize the second song even though it is in Thai.  Please excuse my terrible song leading skills.

Some pictures of our new place

This is our view from the porch looking across the street.

This is the view of the front of our townhouse.

Here is the park directly across the street from us.  It is amazing that we found a location like this.  This is just about the most green grass since moving to Thailand.

This is the porch in front of our house.  The renters before us added a roof and tiled the entire porch.  This makes the living space much larger and its nice to sit out on it at night when it is a bit cooler outside.

The kitchen.

Yes, I found this Christmas tree for sale at the supermarket.  And no, I have no idea why they sell Christmas trees here.  Just an excuse to celebrate something maybe??  Hannah loves the new house too.  She keeps saying “cool house”.

Moved House

We’ve now moved in to the new house.  It’s great.  Praise God for supplying us with a great home for our family in a great neighborhood.  One of the positives so far….there is beef jerkey for sale every morning just outside our house with sticky rice.  What a great breakfast!  There are so many kids too.  Hannah is starting to make friends already.  Thanks for your prayers.  There is so much to do when moving, but things are starting to come together. 

Moving in to a house is much different here.  Back home, you can rent a place that is all ready to go.  There is usually a fridge, oven, sometimes microwave, mini blinds, and a closet.  But here there is none of that.  All of it needs to be bought and it makes for quite a job.  We’ll take some pictures when all the stuff gets put away.

House hunt

After a few trips to Khlong Luang (the area of Thailand where we will be living) we think we’ve found a place to live.  Lord willing, on the 10th of November we will move in to a nice little townhouse in a neighborhood which is only a few kilometers from the church.  We chose it mostly because of the neighborhood in which it is located.  In the Bangkok area, it is relatively easy to find neighborhoods similar to what we have back home.  If you’re there during the day, you won’t hardly see anyone.  People leave the house in the morning, commute to work, come back after work and then go in the house.  Contact with neighbors can be a bit more difficult in this situation when compared to the type of neighborhoods that we have chosen. 

 

Where we will be living, it is almost like a self contained little city.  When construction starts, it looks like any other neighborhood.  Duplexes and townhouses throughout and a couple scattered parks with some grass and tress.  But as a year or so passes by and people move in, things get interesting.  A townhouse sells, and then bam, you see another phase of construction kicks in by the owner.  The house is extended out to the front gate and that area becomes some type of shop.  The homeowner opens a coffee shop, restaurant, dry goods store, soup stand, motorcycle-fix-it-shop, or whatever.  This means we can walk out the house with the girls, and 30 seconds later sit down at a restaurant.  It will help when we don’t want to suffer the Bangkok traffic too.  Our camera is hanging on by a thread right now and doesn’t work when we most want it to.  But I’ll get some pictures up when we move in.  We’re thankful that we were able to find something relatively quick.

Back from Chiang Mai

This past week we went to Chiang Mai for the annual SIM conference and we spent another several days at a guest home designed for missionaries on vacation.  It was great.  Hannah got to swim and we got to read some and relax.  Now we’re off to house hunting.  Here’s some pics from the week.

 

Spirit Houses

Spirit Houses are common in Thailand.  Almost everyone has something like this on their property, outside, that will hopefully gain favor with the spirit of that place.  Sprits, in common Thai belief, are people that have died but are not yet reincarnated.  They may be ancestors or just people in general.  Often times we will see incense burning in front of the little houses and sometimes food given. 

The following picture is taken from our house and shows the spirit houses of our next door neighbor.

Want to go fishing??

I have great memories of fishing as a kid with my Dad.  As a kid, the anticipation just before you pull that fish out of the water makes it so much fun.  You can’t wait to see what is on the end of that line .  What if you got your hook on a fish bigger than a person??  It’s possible here!  Thailand is home of the Mekong Catfish. 

“The world’s largest scaleless freshwater fish lives a tenuous existence in the murky brown waters of Southeast Asia’s Mekong River. Capable of reaching an almost mythical 10 feet (3 meters) in length and 650 pounds (295 kilograms), Mekong giant catfish live mainly in the lower half of the Mekong River system, in Cambodia, Laos, Thailand, and Vietnam. 

The largest freshwater fish ever recorded was a Mekong giant catfish caught in northern Thailand in 2005. It was nearly nine feet long (2.7 meters) and weighed 646 pounds (293 kilograms).”  – National Geographic

 

Unfortunately, these fish are endangered.  So we won’t be going to the Mekong River on vacation to fish.  Bummer…

Wat Phra Dhammakaya

The other week we had the opportunity to visit some key places of interest in Bangkok.  We stopped by the Bangkok Bible Seminary, which is probably the best seminary in Thailand.  Also we went to Kanok Banasaan which is the major Christian publisher here. 

Perhaps the most interesting place we visited was Wat Phra Dammakaya.  The world’s largest Buddhist temple.  It is located on the north end of Bangkok and currently houses approximately 10,000 monks.  There is a construction project right now on a stadium that will be able to accommodate 1 million Buddhists from around the world.  The power of their meditation will “cleanse the world of evil”.  This stadium was huge.  Next time I’m in the area I’ll take some pictures of it from the outside.  I currently don’t have any. 

Here is the small temple part in the front of the complex.

Here are a couple pictures from their website:

 

How not to parent

It’s been a little while since we’ve posted here.  I’m sorry we’re not able to keep in touch better.  Recently, we’ve been thinking about raising kids in a way that leads them towards Christ.  And now that Hannah is in what they call “the terrible twos”, we’re getting a lot of practical, hands on experience.  We’re learning a lot.  Some of what we’re learning is how NOT to raise kids.  I came across both of these statements just recently:

“I try to let my 2-year-old control things and exert his independence as much as possible. I think it reduces the intensity and frequency of his meltdowns. Even if what he wants makes no sense to me, I figure I’m not 2, so I try to just go with the flow.”

     -Lori

I look at them and I tell them, you are the center of your universe right now….We are orbiting around you to help you.  If you think it’s all about you, it is all about you.”

     -Principal of a Middle School