Sports Day at the School for the Blind

Well, my finger is much better. I still have my 4th and 5th fingers taped together and am trying to do some exercises to help with it's movement. I think typing the blog actually gives my finger some exercise. I hope to be back to tennis is another couple of weeks. I had a few pictures I wanted to send along. A couple of weeks ago the boys had a Arts Festival week at school that culminated with performances and exhibits of all the activities. Dustin and Nathan were a part of the jazz band, they loved their guitar classes and sang with a choir. Their choir instructor was a guest teacher from the US who was flown in for a week of classes for the Jr. and Sr. High students. Many guests artisans played a role in the week. Ethan participated in photography and paper mache' classes. One of the little girls in Ethan's class told me that Ethan's paper mache'project was an ice-cream cone, Ethan quickly informed me that it was a space ship and was emphatically not an ice-cream cone!



On Wednesday I attended the Blind School of Pattaya's Sports Day, what an amazing event. It was an olympic show on a very small scale but even more inspiring. I cried many times watching these children giving it their all without the ability to see, one of the most touching moments was when several small children sang, I See the Moon and The Moon Sees Me. This is one of the most exciting days at the school and they prepare for weeks for their particular events. There are approximately 50 children that attend this blind, boarding school, the youngest students are 3 years old. The games began with a small parade down the street entering into the school for the opening ceremony. There was a sports torch and continuous flame for the entire day, the Pattaya mayor awarded the medals, and there were cheerleader teams for both the green team and the blue team. It was amazing watching these children compete in relay races, goal-ball that is a form of soccer, swimming events, and some traditional Thai games-like coconut racing and the centipede race. For the running events, many of the children had people running in front of them clapping so they knew which direction to run. For the Goal-ball event, the ball has a bell inside it and they defend by listening for that sound. If the children had partial sight, they were blindfolded. It was so amazing to watch. I left in awe of these children and again reminded how thankful I am for the gift of sight.

2008 School Field Trip (Nathan blogs)

Day 1
Hey everyone my mom wanted me to write something about our school field trip that we had this week. The field trip started on Tuesday morning bright and early as we all went to school at our regular times except we didn't have classes. We were told that we could pick the people that we wanted to ride the bus with us. It turned out that all the Thai's were in a bus with some Japanese students, and all the Korean's were in a bus together with some other Thai's because our class is over 50% Thai. And lastly it was the American's with an Indian female student that is very strange. Every bus had a teacher with them and the American bus got a really funny teacher named Mr. Schievert, who is from the USA. We were all really tired so we wanted to get some sleep. We all tried for half an hour but the road was just a little too rough and bumpy. The bus ride was 3 and a half hours long and we were told we couldn't bring ipods, mp3s, dvd players, and other awesome stuff that every teenager loves to bring on very long car rides. Three hours later after we had talked and laughed our mouths off we arrived at the national park gate, Khaoyai National Park. The first National Park in Thailand. Every class in Middle School and High School went to a different Thai destination for a week of cultural and science studies. We then had a bathroom break and went to our cabins. As soon as we arrived at our cabins and organized all our stuff we started to play 21 with candy. A game that all of my mates enjoy since we all love cards and candy. At that time it was only my mates Zach, Dustin, and I. I didn't play well but Zach and Dustin got enough of my share of the candy to feed an army and a zoo. We then just hung around till we had to go on a hike. Once we started the hike we were told that we would see a "waterfall" it was more like a stream with half a meter drop. My mates and I ran the whole way in under ten minutes because we wanted to get back to the cabins. Once at the cabins we saw some weird deer with manes we called them the donkeys. Our cabin had the best people since we were all friends and Americans :) lol. After dinner of cashew chicken we all just hung around and talked, and ate fried caterpillars from a Thai guy in our class-they were actually okay.

Day 2:
We all slept in a bit until people started to move around outside the cabin. We started the morning with a 3.5 click hike. We walked to a bird watching tower. We only saw a couple of birds a wild dog and elephant poop(BORING). Later that night we were hanging out with a couple of guys and the strange Indian girl kept walking outside with a flashlight gazing in the woods and mumbling with her thick Indian accent. A couple of guys asked her what she was doing and she said she was looking for ghosts. After that all several of us came to a conclusion that she is a little off. We still kept trying to include her in stuff but she just doesn't want to hang with our class, it's very odd.

Day 3 the last day:
We all woke up early to a quick breakfast of spaghetti (yuck!). We then went bird watching and walked 1 click, even more boring than the 3.5 km hike!!!! We were all bored and tired. We then were taken to a campsite to spend a night in a tent. There was a store that sold cokes and stuff like that so our class ran over to it and drank some cokes :) yum!. Until the teacher told us we couldn't do that any more because we had to eat healthy :(. That night the Americans were in charge of cooking the hot dogs. The Asian kids and adults didn't want theirs black on the outside so they basically ate it raw (yuck). There were a lot of porcupines walking around and some ugly monkeys. We were all sad about leaving the field trip the next morning because it was fun and were all just hanging around the campfire. When all of a sudden a big Korean guy, the size of Dustin, jumped up and started to hit a Thai kid. The Thai kid is probably 20 kilos (44 pounds) overweight and was cowering, covering his face. Dustin quickly jumped in there while others went to get a teacher, I started yelling at the Korean kid to cut it out. Dustin grabbed the Korean and pinned him down so he couldn't hit the Thai kid. We only had one man teacher on the trip and he is really skinny, without Dustin it could have been worse. Everyone was worried because we know that the Korean has anger issues. My mate Zach and I knew that the Korean who had started the fight had a little knife in his tent but even his 2 and a half inch knife could kill a person. So we told a teacher. We then found out that the Korean said a nasty Korean word to the Thai kid who had done nothing wrong. The Thai kid said something back in Thai to the Korean who then got angry saying some other trash and started to hit the Thai kid. Hopefully the Korean kid will be sent to counseling quickly. It turned out that the Thai kid was fine even though he had been hit in the face. What a way to end a fun field trip right?

Anyways, we now have a three day weekend which is cool!! As soon as i came home I found a HUGE box of candy with my favorite chocolates in it. It also had chips and salsa from Aunt Lavon, Uncle Curtis, Cory, Angel, Coli, and Jenna. It's awesome good stuff. Thanks so much!

Nathan

It was a great week in Thailand! We have just come through the cool season in Thailand. We have had some evenings and early mornings where the temperature has plummeted all the way into the high 60's. Many people here break out their down-coats for that kind of cold! We have had men mowing our yard in the 70's with coats and hats on. We had about 5 nights that we did not need our air-conditioners in our bedrooms, it was a wonderful reprieve from the heat. We're bracing ourselves for the hot season which encompasses February, March and April and so enjoyed the last two months.

We had a busy week. Dustin and Nathan had their first volleyball game on Monday and then a basketball game on Thursday. I thought we were through with basketball but ISE has put together an under 15 team to provide practice for the surrounding British International Schools who compete in basketball in the spring, opposite of the American system. Ethan began after school tennis lessons this week and was ready for a break from soccer.

On Thursday, one of the wives of an Esso employee took me on a tour of all the services the Catholic church offers in Pattaya. I've been prayerfully considering taking on one other ministry while we are living here and was anxious to learn more about Catholic Charities' work. I was given a tour of the Home for the Disabled and introduced to their job-placement program for the disabled. I toured the blind school where I was blessed to peek in on a musical/choir practice, the King of Sweden is visiting the school in two weeks and they were practicing the musical program to mark the occasion.

In October the boys and I started visiting the Mercy Center twice a month to play with the 1-3year olds in the afternoons. It is a Christian orphanage that has about 40 kids. The house parents are currently a retired couple from Minnesota that are serving out a 10 month volunteer term. A benefactor had given each Mercy child 500Baht($15) at Christmas time for clothes purchases. A shopping trip was planned for each child. On Friday, we took two little guys out for their shopping trip. Doy and Niger. Doy was 4 and Niger 6, they could only say one word in English-"no" and were quite the energetic duo. I was amazed at the whole process. We just showed up and were handed over these two little guys, no identification was required, no phone numbers exchanged. Granted the house parents at least recognized us from our Wednesday afternoon trips but no one there knows us at all and these two guys were allowed to just leave with us and that they would go with us!! A car load of Farangs that speak very little Thai just driving away with them-TIT, This Is Thailand!!

We bought 4 shirts, 1 pr. shorts, 3 pr. underwear, (which they both emphatically kept saying, "no!" too) a toothbrush, and a toy for each of them. We then took them to a nearby play area while our boys rested on nearby benches! We finished the evening with pizza and ice-cream cones. They seemed to really enjoy their shopping trip and it was a blessing for us to get to be involved. I'll post some pictures of our two little buddies.

This morning Mark is leading a book study with our boys, and Dave and Drew Clarkson. They are going through a book called, Know What You Believe on Saturday mornings. My job is to provide a big breakfast and then they discuss each chapter for about an hour. I so appreciate all the time Mark puts into the spiritual growth of our boys. He is so busy but is making the time to do this study and teach their SS class. On Tuesday, Mark has been invited to a dinner with the new Thailand Prime Minister in Bangkok along with several other hundred foreign businessmen. He is a busy guy but finds the time to make his family a priority. I'm so thankful for Marko. Well, I feel this has been a hodge-podge of a posting but just filling you in on our week here!

Boxes of Love

I'm still slow on the typing but am so grateful that the casting of my 3rd and 4th finger together seems to be doing the trick and I won't require any surgery at the moment. Thank you if you prayed for me and my pinkie, I really covet your prayers. Only another month in the cast and then pinkie rehab! I'm writing today to just send out some additional thanks for each of you that played a part in our receiving several boxes of love over the last two months because I don't know how long it might be before I can send out a handwritten note that might be legible.

Aunt Lola has already cashed in some of her life savings (the postage is so expensive!) to send over two care packages, she is amazingly creative in wrapping Pop Tarts to prevent breakage on the long trip from the states. Grace Church of Gainesville blessed us so much with their Christmas boxes filled with all kinds of wonderful things. They sent over some much needed Christmas paper goods, I tried not to hoard any of it and used it at some of our holiday gatherings. I was so excited about the gift bags and tags-decent wrapping paper is no where to found in these parts, you can only buy small pieces of wrapping paper here. The gift bags got me through Christmas. Somehow in our moving over, none of our board games made it, we have had some Sequence withdrawals for sure! We received a new Sequence game, Bible Scattergories, and a puzzle-what a blessing to our family. Another thing that didn't make it over is pot-holders, Grace also sent over some of those and an apron-woohoo. I'm enjoying my new stationery and scented sachets so much-it just smells like home. I still have the little glass snowman out on my kitchen counter just to jog the memories of cold weather! The CD's we received have been such a blessing. I have really missed Christian radio and now only listen to the CD's we have accumulated over the years, I was needing some new tunes for sure! I told someone that Grace is partnering with us, planting seeds of the gospel through those CD's in our car.

Many times as they are playing I pray that those words would become alive to Songkran, our driver. I know that God can speak through language barriers and I ask Him to reveal himself to Songkran. It's hard to know what he really understands. Last week he was taking me to a shopping center that I frequent and as we were driving down beach road for the hundredth time, I thought surely there has to be another route. Beach road is vile, much nakedness, drunkenness,perversion-it's so sad, offensive and really starts to weigh you down. So I asked, "Songkran, another way we can go to shop? Do we have to come down this road every time?" He is looking confused so I attempt to explain to him my problem with Beach Road and just decide to lay it all out there, explaining it like he could understand everything I was saying. "Songkran, do you know what sin is? This is sin! It's like if Khun Mark had girlfriend-that is sin. If Khun Da wants to kill someone, that is sin. If boys don't obey us-sin. Songkran this is sin all around us, no one has any thought of God and His Word, they are all worshipping self and their indulgences, Christ had to die because of this. It offends me to see this everyday, because I love God..." Songkran looks like a deer stuck in the headlights, he keeps saying, "Okay, Okay, no come this way again." I imagine he was thinking Khun Da was losing it! I've often wondered what he thinks about us and how much he comprehends?

Anyway, back to the love boxes. Today, we received another one of those special boxes-this time from Uncle Tommy and Aunt June. It such a joyful thing to see that pink motorbike outside our gate with a box, to rush in, gather around the opening and discovering all the treasures hidden within. There was much excitement over the Dr.Pepper and what a great find in the Dr. Pepper jelly beans-those were a huge hit! I'm so excited about the Rotel tomatoes and vegetable soup mix. Thank you so much.

The Pop Tarts, the jerky, the gum, the stationery, the cute socks, the decorative paper plates might seem like such simple things to you but they are things that remind us of home. They serve to remind us that we aren't forgotten over here, they speak much love to us and are extension of God's provision and care for us here. Thank you to each of you that sacrificed your time or money to make sure those boxes of love reached us. (Lavon, I'm still keeping my eyes peeled for your box and will let you know when it arrives!)

Happenings at Home

Well, I haven't posted in a while because I'm injured. I broke my little finger in 2 places almost two weeks ago. Your little finger is really important, I always think of God's Word that talks about the body of Christ and how each member of it is important, even those little fingers!! I was playing b-ball with the boys (still beating them in HORSE by the way!) and fell on our rock/concrete drive while running to get a rebound, my little finger took all the weight as I was trying to protect my knees. It's weird break, broken two places right above the knuckle, one horizontal and one vertical break. The first Dr. (by the way are the Dr.'s getting younger or what??) wanted to do surgery and place two pins under general anesthesia. The second Dr. was more conservative and agreed to cast it for one week and reassess, if it's not healing correctly he wants to place a metal t-bar over the breaks using a brachial block anesthesia, I went with the more conservative plan, please pray that it will heal. It's hard to type with just 3 fingers on the R hand to top it off, we have had no internet service for 3 days. I'm in Starbucks using the wireless connection. If I close my eyes and don't look outside, it feels just like I'm in the states. I didn't mention that Vietnam does not have Starbucks or McDonalds, I like that they aren't becoming westernized.They did have KFC but I don't know that I will ever eat KFC again after going to one in Thailand-yuck! Anyway, I'm glad Thailand has a Starbucks today, one where I can check e-mails and update my blog:) Please pray that my shooting, cooking, writing and typing hand might heal quickly-thank you very much.

Vacation in Vietnam Continued

We're setting in the Ho Chi Minh City airport waiting for our plane back home and I'm trying to finish up our Vietnam trip. We're all ready to be home again but had a very nice holiday in Vietnam. The second day of our stay in Ho Chi Minh City we visited a water amusement park. It looked very small and dreary compared to our US comparisons but was similar to the streets of Vietnam, extremely crowded. It grossed me out to even think about getting in that water will all those little bladders swimming and floating around. The boys weren't bothered at all and enjoyed their time on the water slides. Mark got in long enough to show the boys he could still do a backward flip off the zip-line! The best part of the day for me was the interaction with the Vietnamese children. It felt like being back in Africa, I don't think most of these children had ever seen a 'white' person and especially one with curly hair. At one point Mark and I were inundated with small, school, children who wanted to try out all their English speaking skills on us. Each one had to say, "Hello, how are you? I am fine, thank you. What is your name? My name is ___." They loved playing games with us, I played eye-spy with them, asking them to find certain colors, objects...teaching them new items. They wanted to share their gum and small toys with us, ask us lots of questions and touch my hair!! When we left one of the little girls said, "Thanks teacher." This made my day!! We were quite the attraction at the park, one lady asked to take her picture with us and another shared her fruit and an interesting type of homemade candy that was a little like peanut brittle between rice paper.

The next day we took a tour of the Mekong River by boat. As part of the tour we went to several islands along the river. On one of the stops we watched as they made coconut taffy, another one taught us how to make rice paper-I was amazed that it is still made by hand, the process reminds me of crepes. I think about all those spring rolls I rolled earlier in the week and how many pieces of rice paper we used and to think they were all made by hand. The boys had the opportunity to learn how to play a Vietnamese violin-you'll see shots of all of this in the slideshow.

We shopped a lot in the markets of HCMC, the vendors were very overwhelming, grabbing you, calling out, "Madam, you buy from me? Where you come from?" I didn't like the crowded, hot, stalls but we did find some amazing deals. We bought Tommy Hilfiger shirts with the price tag of $69 still on from the US for $5. We had been told to always offer 50% of the asking price and work from there, I let Mark do all the bargaining for sure.

We ate some interesting things in Vietnam, not knowingly dog but some interesting things nonetheless. I'll put a picture of the elephant ear fish we ate that had been cooked whole with the scales still on, they just curled up during the frying process. We tried sea-slug soup-not my favorite. The boys mostly ate their old stand-by of beef and noodle soup, Vietnam's version is called Pho soup. We all agree that we like the spicy food of Thailand better.

One other note, it's funny that you can be half way around the world and see something that brings someone in particular to mind. While walking the streets one night we saw my Dad's cattle brand up in lights. Mark noticed it and we all laughed and took a picture of it, I'll put it in the slide show too. We may be far away but you all are never far from our thoughts-we love you!

Vacation in Vietnam-Cu Chi Tunnels

We were welcomed to Ho Chi Minh City by the sunshine after a 1 1/2 hour flight and grateful to be away from the rain in central Vietnam. Our local guide, Mr. Tao met us at the airport and we headed right to the Cu Chi Tunnels about an hours drive from Ho Chi Minh City or Saigon. Did you know they are one in the same? The name of the city was changed after the Vietnam War by the government in honor of Ho Chi Minh, the leader of the North Vietnamese. Our guide who was born in South Vietnam still calls it Saigon. As we drove out to tour the tunnels, he told us his 'story'. His father lived in America for 6 years and was a trained military pilot. After the war was over because he was from the south, he was imprisoned for 10 years until his death. Before the war, Mr. Tao and his family lived a privileged life, they had a nice home with a pool, status...when the south lost, his family was forced to sign over their home to the new government and his father was imprisoned. His mother and three sisters fled to the jungle to survive. He was 6 years old at the time, two times his mother sacrificed much to try to smuggle Mr. Tao on a coconut boat to the Philippians and both times their boat was detected by authorities. He put himself through university in his late 20's and has learned English, thus he can have the much desired job of tour guide where he makes about $300/month without tips. He feels much affection for Americans and much animosity to the current government, he has talked several times of the political corruption, the mistreatment of the poor, poor health care...

Before touring a small part of the over 150 miles of tunnel systems used by the Viet Con during the war, we were forced to watch a video filled with propaganda, praising many "War Heroes" with the number of American soldiers they killed. Then we were allowed to tour portions of the amazing tunnels dug under the Vietnam jungle. The tunnels are in three levels, the third level is as deep as 10 meters. You'll see from the pictures how small some of the tunnels are and how ingenious. Nathan and I could only stand to crawl through one 30 meter section of the tunnel system. Mark, Dustin and Ethan crawled through 3 separate tunnels, one being 100 meters long, at one point Mark said he had to squeeze through flat on his stomach and remember it's pitch black-oh so confining and eerie. I can't imagine fighting an enemy in that environment. We saw bombed tanks, bomb craters, lots of different kinds of booby traps-just validating how horrific war really can be. I was most amazed with the kitchens that were in the tunnels, they had so smartly placed the cooking fire vents many feet from the actual underground tunnel. The air vents were placed in termite mounds and very difficult to detect.

The boys had the opportunity to shoot a M-60 mounted machine gun, Ethan opted out but Dustin and Nathan took part in the loud activity. On the return into the city we stopped at a rubber tree farm. The trees have to be cut daily to allow the 'rubber' sap to seep into attached bowls, the sap is collected daily for rubber production and this is all done by manual labor, we saw thousands of trees. What a great experience to learn so many new things.