Missive 13

Another month, another “burning”, another birthday and more cows. Where do I start? In the last missive I shared our first experience of a “burning” when the father of one of our carers died. It was only few weeks after that that Big Whun’s grandfather died and as we are quite close to her we were privileged to be involved in some ways. We drove her around to her parent’s house which is just over a river from her grandparent’s place. The mourning procedures were getting started, the big speakers and microphones were being set up and the bier for the coffin was being decorated under the house. We met a lot of Whun’s relatives and her grandmother and she allowed us to pray for her.

A day or so later I took a group of our carers around and the mourning was in full swing. A team of monks was sitting in a row and for an hour or so they chanted their way through a ceremony. I have joked that a monk obviously doesn’t have to be able to sing to do this job, but to give credit where it’s due, this bloke was pretty good and had a great voice (although the tune wouldn’t win any awards). Again, after the monks were finished, it was a privilege for a group of us to gather around Whun and her family and pray for them. Whun was finding it a bit of a struggle to carry her Christian faith into this cultural Buddhist setting. It’s a bit of a struggle also to come to grips with the cost of all this – the monks have to be paid and apparently they charge for every year of the deceased’s life. I’m not sure if Thai families hope their relatives die young but it is a huge cost on poor people and a 40 000baht bill when you earn 5000baht a month takes a bit of covering. That’s why the invitations to the funeral come with the expectation that you will put some money in the envelope.

The “burning” took place at a local temple and again we attended. It was very “rural” with chooks and roosters wandering around – sort of nice in a way. It rained during the ceremony which made it a bit boggy going up to the burning house to pay last respects. The girls from Whun’s house (including our Whun) were there to serve water to the people there and they looked very smart in their school uniforms. They got a lot more water than they bargained for though because that day it kept on raining on into the night. They were sleeping at Whun’s house next to the river and at 2am they had to evacuate because the river overflowed. They waded out under the house which is on stilts, fortunately just in time because the water was waist deep under there a bit later.

Somewhere in the midst of all this I had my birthday and what a wonderful day it was. I went for my morning run and had just finished my breakfast when a knock on the door revealed all of the young kids (maybe 30 or 40) lined up on the verandah to sing me Happy Birthday and give me hug (and me in just my running shorts and needing a shower!). Throughout the day kids and carers alike were handing me cards they had made and giving me a hug. It’s not hard to feel loved here! That night we had a special tea and Pawinee had rushed home from Lomsak to make sure 2 icecream cakes survived – they were worth the effort and capped off a delightful meal of barbecued meat, gravy, mashed potatoes (a rare treat) and vegetables.

As I write we haven’t had any rain for a week but up till then we were getting plenty and it seems to have brought the snakes out in force. We had a tiny one in our spare room the other day and that reminded us to take extra care of the door seals. We were having another karaoke night at our place and barbecuing some pork in a fire bucket out the back when Whun saw a snake coming along the path towards us. Most snakes stay clear of noise but this one either hadn’t heard that theory or otherwise fancied his chances at karaoke. My best weapon was a piece of steel which he was inconveniently gliding over the top of so when he had passed by I retrieved it and attempted to deal with him. Only having thongs on was a bit of a handicap especially when he came back to argue the point after my first strike, and having to hold a torch in my other hand cramped my style a bit, but eventually he was dispatched. He was only about a metre long and paled into insignificance compared to the one caught by the blokes at the site where they are starting to build Pawinee’s house.

They caught a 2.5metre python (beautifully marked) and brought it up to the kitchen to put in the fridge. Glom wasn’t happy about that especially after one of the cooks just about had an early entry through the pearly gates when she came across it, so Gordon, a volunteer from Berri, SA, brought it down to our place to cook. We dug a hole in the back yard, used some rocks which we heated with a fire, put in the python, covered him with banana leaves and buried him for the night. Gordon uncovered him the next morning and put the meat on a plate for anyone interested to try. And yes, it looks and tastes just like chicken! Because we buried it with burning charcoal it had a slightly smoky flavour and was really very nice.

Our food experiences have been varied recently when we went to Bangkok to celebrate David Kidney’s 50th birthday. David organised all our new kitchen equipment and it was a special pleasure to go to his birthday “bash”. And what a “bash” it was! On the first night we went to an authentic Italian restaurant run by an authentic Italian who cooked the most marvellous Italian food. It was to die for and we made such gluttons of ourselves we nearly did! The entertainment was also great and David’s wife stunned us with some wonderful renditions of several songs. On the next night we went to an authentic Thai restaurant (not so rare in Bangkok!) and ate very well again. The birthday was an added pleasure for us because Ben Chapman (our godson) and his wife Sarah were over and came up to Ban Meata for a couple of days. We enjoyed their company immensely and they went home sponsoring one of our kids.

Our cattle project is presenting us with a problem as the dry season begins. The project has been amazingly successful with sponsors responding so generously that about 60 of our kids have cows and many with the second generation. A herd of over 100 cows eats a lot of grass and although we irrigate to keep it growing we desperately need more land for pasture. We are currently mulling over ways to modify the scheme and have considered capping the number of cows a child accumulates and using the proceeds of sales to buy land for them and planting teak as a long term investment. This project began less than 3 years ago when we bought a cow for Whun and it has grown amazingly since.

Just today I have come back after a lunch with the blokes who had a piece of buffalo to cook. All the outside workers were licking their lips and a couple of them had a bucket barbecue going while others were mixing up a vegetable dish. The most interesting dish was raw meat cut into strips, mixed up with some herbs, fish oil and plenty of chilli and eaten by picking up some in your fingers, dipping it in another chilli mix and then straight into your mouth. Believe me, this one doesn’t taste like chicken! We sat around the bowls of food on the board floor of one of the worker’s houses and had the inevitable rice to eat with it. The blokes brought a couple of plates for Gordon and I but the rest just ate straight from the bowls and from their little cane baskets of sticky rice which they bring from home every day for “kin-kow” (lunch). It was a convivial time and good to be invited for the meal. A bit like a backyard barbecue at home, the blokes enjoyed the preparation as much as the eating and had lots of jokes at our expense because we struggle with chilli level which feels as though it is destroying your tongue and eating into your sinus cavities. The heat comes out in my bald spot which literally runs with sweat!

I must tell you about some recent mid-week worship services we have had. Some of our kids and a few staff went to a worship camp for a few days during the school holidays and Glom thought she would capitalise on their enthusiasm and we had a couple of evening worship services. They were amazing and very well attended as everybody was asked to bring their friends and neighbours and we saw a lot of new faces. A highlight was the kitchen and laundry staff singing a song and they really got into it with Yon (head cook) working the crowd with the microphone and the others worshipping God enthusiastically with Bung-on, our oldest worker, right into the spirit of it and dancing. Many people were touched deeply by the Holy Spirit and we had lots, including the blokes, come out for prayer.

Last week one of our kitchen workers brought along her 15 year old niece who is deaf and mute and brought her out for prayer. We prayed for her for some time and Pawinee was clicking her fingers by her ears. After a while she looked up and smiled and indicated “nit noy” (little bit) with her hands. We believe God is healing her and hope she will be back for more prayer. She can read and write (even though she has been deaf since birth) so we sent her home with some encouraging messages on a piece of paper.

Colleen has been busy during the school holidays with a programme for the big girls at our house. They have all made a pair of shorts on the sewing machine, painted a picture on canvas, and been introduced to the wonders of honey crackles. The girls have loved it and it has been very satisfying to see them produce some wonderful work.

I must close – life seems to be getting busier than ever here. We have started a new 6 classroom block at the school and believe it or not I am the building supervisor. I have to go and measure up how much concrete we need in our footings and get some levelling pegs in the 38 holes we have. I’m glad I’ve done this with Malcolm before so I at least sound as though I know what I’m doing!!

Till next time
God bless
Ron


Saving face is important to the Thais


It’s not only the French that like frogs


Letting lunch settle the Thai way


Skill building on the sewing machine


Sharing lunch with the blokes

Photos - Missive 12

Beautiful Thailand - scenery next to the temple

The decorated coffin with a photo of Kallum’s Dad

Monks filing up to the coffin at the burning house

The swanky room for our Executive meeting

The tree that didn’t fall on Glom’s house

Missive 12

I’m back to my keyboard after a pretty frantic month of preparations for our regular executive meeting. For nearly 2 years now we have been restructuring the work here and have identified over 20 different project areas which have a schedule of tasks and deadlines. The executive meeting is our time for the leadership to report on progress and make decisions about future directions. One of my roles is to manage the meetings which means making an agenda, chasing up progress reports for all the projects, summarising them, putting all the information for the meeting into a Powerpoint presentation, arranging the venue, chairing the meeting and preparing and distributing the meeting summary. Add to that the need for all written material to be translated into Thai, and everything said at the meeting has to be translated as well. It takes hours but is worth it to keep everyone on track with achieving the vision for Ban Meata.

Seven or eight of the projects are my responsibility (finance, assets, information management, communications, marketing in Thailand etc) so that keeps me out of mischief for a fair bit of the time. I have just realised that in past blogs I haven’t really said much about what I do with the hours in the day – and maybe you are none the wiser even now! Besides all the above, most of which can be done in the air-conditioned office, there are countless other things which by necessity or interest I end up doing. I’ve taken on the recording for the cow project (and thankful for how wide and long an Excel page can be), I help with instructing and monitoring the building and outside staff (although Chris Stolte has been here for a couple of months and he is doing a great job with that for the moment), I do a bit of translating (into English of course!), I sometimes help kids with their homework (English and Maths) and I preach every few weeks.

Anyway, our executive meeting was last week at Khon Kaen and because there are some building alterations happening at the Ban Meata centre we had the meeting in the conference room at the hotel in which we were staying. It was a great venue with a sound system and a data projection set-up so we really thought we were in the lap of luxury and should make sure we put a capital on the word “Executive”!

You may be able to get a bit of a picture of life here if I tell you about a couple of parties we have recently had. The big girls have been keen to have a karaoke night at our place so we had them over on a Friday night. Even though they had had their dinner they spent a lot of time preparing food, some of which was really nice and some which we could take or leave. We had one of the BBQ buckets on our verandah (a charcoal fire in a concrete-lined bucket) so they could cook some pork balls on a skewer, a big pot of very sweet soup with unpronounceable bits in it (that was the take it or leave it stuff), the inevitable rice and with due deference to technology, microwaved popcorn. With 2 microphones being passed around they then spent 2 or 3 hours singing Thai pop songs (mostly about unrequited love it seems) although they had a DVD of some English songs that we were able to make a suitable hash of. Later in the night the marshmallows came out and we introduced them to toasted marshmallows on the bucket BBQ and they took to them with about the same enthusiasm as we take to deep fried scorpions.

The other party was Meow’s (one of the carers) birthday. We were invited down at 8.30pm after the kids were in bed and the trusty BBQ bucket was fired up. Lots of little bits of beef were cooked, bowls of chilli were provided, the sticky rice came out and we sat around in a circle on the verandah picking out handfuls of sticky rice and dipping the meat in the chilli. Out of deference to age and infirmity they gave us chairs but everyone else sat on the tiles which is pretty normal for eating in village homes. I’m not sure if the ants were invited but they came anyway and kept us on the hop. At the end a cake appeared with candles and we all sang the song which seems to transcend culture and language barriers. The cake was sent by one of the farm workers who is a bit sweet on Meow but it’s not the done thing in such circumstances to actually come to the party. We left them to party on and then all the kids, who were supposed to be asleep, came out to give us a hug goodnight so it took a while longer to get away.

We had a very interesting occurrence here a few weeks ago when the mother of all storms hit us. It began with a very heavy downpour of rain and was followed by a shrieking gale that caused a bit of carnage at Ban Meata. Trees were blown over, tiles torn off the rooves, ceiling tiles blown every which way, rain blown inside the buildings, many of our fruit trees on the farm blown over, and the power to the site interrupted when a tree fell on the line and snapped it.

And now for the miraculous……….
The wind firstly blew from the north and a huge tree at the back of Glom’s house fell away from the house where her baby son was sleeping on the verandah.
A tree by the staff quarters fell away from the building and into the dam.
Several huge branches outside the visitors’ centre fell on the lawn narrowly missing the building.
The wind then howled in from the south and blew trees down the other way. A large one away from one of the front houses and another away from the new bike shed we have just built.

And now for the “coincidences”………
The storm hit at the very moment that the man who sold us the land on which the village was built was being cremated at a nearby temple. He had been a thorn in the side of our organisation for 20 years, opposing many developments and bad mouthing us in the community. A couple of nights before he had been invited by his Christian son to accept Jesus and he had done so. Pawinee and Glom (both relatives) were at the “burning” (funeral) and were expressing their own forgiveness for the past difficulties.
The storm hit only 2 places – our village and farm, and this man’s home, a few kilometres apart. Surrounding villages were almost unaffected and suffered no damage.

And now for the conclusions……..
Spirit worship is common amongst Buddhists and Satan has a hey-day. We believe that this was a final stoke of anger against God’s people and the last minute loss of one of his people to the Kingdom of God. One of our carers, Kampat, who has been with us from the early days and was demonstrably delivered from demon possession, was looking after Glom’s child when the tree fell not 3 metres away. She immediately said “It’s finished”, referring to the debilitating animosity that had existed for so many years.
In the middle of all that we were grateful that God had his protective hand on the people here. Potentially it could have been disastrous but the damage was relatively minor although it took the blokes a week to cut up all the trees and drag them away. We have a fair pile of fence posts available which is timely because we have to build new cattle yards in the next few weeks.

Colleen has been making steady progress over the last few weeks and by the time this is posted we will be in Phetchabun for the last (hopefully) doctor’s visit. She has much increased mobility but still finds it painful sitting down and suffers a bit when she has been standing too long.

We have enjoyed Chris Stolte’s company over the last couple of months. He is a long time member of the South Aussie Building Team and has given 3 months and possibly 6 more next year to work here. He has done a great job working with the Thais on a new workshop and then will build 2 more accommodation rooms for the Thai workers. He is loving the responsibility and has been worth his weight in gold.

At the risk of making this missive overly long I want to tell you about the “burning” we attended today. One of our carers, Kallum, has been off work for a month or so caring for her dying father. On Thursday he died and today (Sunday) they had the burning ceremony. It was as hot as all get out today and the tradition is to wear black so we lost a bit of weight I reckon. We turned up at the temple and sat under an erected shade in front of the burning house. The coffin, highly decorated, was up on the steps and we sat through a good deal of chanting from the monks over the inevitable PA system. Next, various people took gifts up and put them in front of the coffin and the monks then filed up, chanted something and then took the gifts away. This happened several times before we all went up and put a bamboo floral token in front of the coffin. At the end of the ceremony a bloke threw some fire crackers which just about burst our eardrums – they are meant to break open a passage for the departing spirit, so if the passage is through my head it went close to working! They also threw out handfuls of what looked like lollies but were apparently wrapped numbers and if you scored a certain number there was a cash prize. A strange custom for us but the enthusiasm of the crowd scrambling for the brightly coloured wrapper indicated its popularity.

As people drifted away the burning party cleared all the decorations and trappings and put them on a fire, whipped off the top of the coffin and dropped in some food and splashed in what we think was an accelerant, and pushed it in to a furnace just behind where it was sitting. They shut the door and we sat there watching the smoke pour out of the top of the chimney – all a bit traumatic for Kallum who was sitting with us at this stage.

All this happened in the most stunning scenery you can imagine. There was a blue sky with some fluffy clouds as a background for a number of coconut palms, green rice paddies and the distant view of the surrounding mountains – just beautiful. Kallum is a lovely Christian girl and it seemed strange to us to see her participating in a Buddhist ceremony, but not so strange when we remember that she still lives within her Thai culture. It was a privilege to share in her experience of grief and to be able to comfort her.

Well this time I am definitely going to close and thank you if you have persisted this far.
God bless Ron

The 2 queens of Ban Meata

Some of the new kitchen equipment in use

Pawinee basking in the new kitchen equipment

13 on the 1st August

2 geckos in residence by our front door

Missive 11

Well I’ve started so if I can keep at it you will all get another dose fairly quickly. Colleen is making a bit of progress and is able to sit and stand for longer periods but pays for it if she overdoes it. And the health of all our kids here is on the improve and the ravages of the flu seem to be waning. In a place with 85 kids and 30 staff in close proximity there is a high risk of these things getting out of control and Glom has had the staff taking extra precautions and they are always boiling water in the kitchen to make sure the plates and cutlery and surfaces are sterilised.

For years we have only used cold water in the kitchen and our equipment is pretty basic. All this changed only last week when a huge truck pulled in and opened to reveal the most wonderful array of new stainless steel kitchen equipment and appliances. When we were building the kitchen in February this year we were in touch with the brother of Jenny Chapman, a long time friend of ours. David Kidney works in Bangkok in the kitchen industry and he has taken a keen interest in Ban Meata and our needs for a new kitchen. He has cast around amongst his colleagues in the industry and a number of international firms and encouraged them to donate a number of items to us.

We were astounded by his efforts and their response – we unloaded huge freezers and fridges, a walk-in cool room, gas stoves and grillers, stainless steel sinks, multiple stainless steel shelving and work benches – the list goes on. Pawinee walked around all this stuff and couldn’t keep her hands off it. “Thank you God, thank you David!” she kept repeating. Some of the stuff we have pressed into immediate use but David hasn’t finished yet – he is arranging with his contacts and with his Harley Davidson motorcycle club to come up and install it all. We are frantically trying to finish the walls of the new kitchen and have it tiled ready for installation – difficult with a stretched budget so if anybody …………….. !!

Sometimes it seems like roughing it in our kitchen but our older boys had a great roughing it experience recently while Damien Costanzo, a young volunteer, was spending a number of weeks here. He took them over to the fish ponds and set up a camp there with some tarpaulins. He had them prepare with a woodworking project where he collected some old planks and had the boys cut them up and make little wooden stools which the Thais commonly used. The boys worked industriously for hours, cutting the wood in pairs with a bow saw and risking life and the loss of limbs in the process. A few nails (pre-drilled holes because the wood was pretty hard) and they were the very proud owners of a camping stool.

They caught tea themselves by hopping into the pond with hand held nets and getting some fish. These they cleaned and put on the fire to grill. They had the inevitable rice and chilli brought over from the kitchen and they were ready for their meal. If you can imagine sitting outside on a warm evening with the sun going down behind the hills on the farm, a crackling fire, fish and spices with rice served on a banana leaf plucked from the nearby trees, lightning flickering over the distant mountains, then you can understand what an idyllic place this is. I can just about hear Tony Pittaway, a friend from Lucindale, packing his bags!

Damien is a real asset to the place when he is here and a wonderful role model for the boys. He is also pretty good with IT and we keep him on the hop solving our computer problems. He is such a personable young bloke that everybody gets on well with him. I have written before of the way the girls are attracted to him and although I wouldn’t go so far as to say he is a liability when you take him somewhere, you do have to wait at times while a horde of admirers all line up to have their photo taken with him!

A feature of life in Thailand is the frequency with which you come across girl-boys. We try not to do an obvious double take when the check out girl at the supermarket says “kopkun kaa” (thank you) in a deep basso profundo voice. Some are more obviously blokes than others but they often wear their hair long and have colourful head bands. At the English camp I wrote of in the last blog there was a tall bloke with lovely long hair, a pink head band, and what really sealed it, a fluffy pink handbag. When Damien was having his photo opportunities at the camp that was one he was taking care to avoid.

I want to tell you a bit about Santi who has lived at Ban Meata for all the10 years of his life – he was in fact the first orphan that came as a baby. He is probably the quintessential ADD kid, struggles with school, always in trouble and a constant frustration for his carer. He is the most pleasant of characters and helpful to a fault. He sometimes helps us carry groceries into our place and being an inveterate fiddler he takes a matter of seconds to have both our air-conditioners on and re-programmed, our lights blazing, our CD player going, and on his way to check out our bedroom and toilet. He is like living with a whirlwind. Recently he has taken up the drums (surprise, surprise about the choice of instrument) and you wouldn’t believe how good he is. Suddenly Santi, a “failure” at just about everything, was wonderfully successful at something. It brought tears to our eyes to see him playing in church and then hearing the spontaneous and prolonged applause when he finished. It was great moment for him and the perfect example of not defining people by their weaknesses.

We have just celebrated Whun’s birthday. She has been in a high state of excitement for a month when she started a countdown and reminded us every day about how long before the big day. A couple of years ago there was some confusion as the records had swapped Whun’s and Why’s birthdays and we were sending gifts at the wrong time. We have been kidding her about whose birthday is coming up and this has added to the excitement.

Pawinee wanted to do some shopping for the big Dutch team that arrives next week, and she took Santi as a gofer and to give him some much needed special attention, so we all headed off to Phetchabun for the birthday bash. We went to the Pizza Company for a treat (pizzas and pastas), did some shopping (some is a bit of an understatement because we had 4 shopping trolleys which packed out the back of our ute) and had the traditional icecream at Swensons. We bought Whun some shoes and she looked great in those at church this morning when they weren’t being worn by Why who took a shine to them. Last night we had all the girls from Whun’s house over for popcorn, lemonade, and to watch a couple of DVD’s about the Sydney Aquarium and the 2008 Christmas Pageant. It was a great day and this morning we told Whun it was only 364 (sam roi, hor sip si) days until her birthday!


When we were getting ready to head off to Phetchabun Whun came with me to get my shoes on. My first shoe had a big frog in the toe so Whun emptied him out for me. Then the second shoe had the same, so she did the honours again. There are an enormous number of frogs around in the wet season and they are always hiding in the toes of your shoes if you leave them outside. Some of them are huge, as big around as a tennis ball, and surprisingly you can sometimes get your foot in there with them, although they do look a bit indignant when you chuck them out. We have taken to leaving our shoes in a box just inside the door but this doesn’t stop them either – after the incident above we found 5 more in the box waiting their turn for accommodation in a shoe. They don’t take up residence in thongs so maybe that’s why Thais always wear them!

I’ve written before about the geckos and they are even more numerous than the frogs and they don’t mind what time of the year it is. We have dozens and dozens of the little ones living with us and they make themselves heard with a “chit, chit, chit” sound. The big blokes, called “tukus” because of their distinctive sound, can be up to 30cm long and are quite beautiful with their purple spots. They seem to take a deep breath and emit a loud “tuku”, and then repeat it up to 7 times decreasing in volume until the last one which is some sort of a pathetic groan. They breed like rabbits, and shifting some sheets we had left on the spare bed for a few weeks I uncovered a heap of eggs of the little ones. They break quite easily so I had to be careful not to get gecko yolk over our guests’ sheets.

Sometimes the Thais will eat the big geckos and they certainly get after the snakes. Glom was sitting in the dining room with a dish in front of her the other day and she invited me to join in. Someone had cooked up some frogs so I had to at least try some. They were a bit rubbery, somewhat like when they are still alive I guess, and I don’t think they’ll make it onto my list of top ten culinary delights. Eating them doesn’t seem to diminish their numbers much either.

We are up to Missive 11 and we have just completed 12 months here. It certainly feels like home to us now and we are torn between our loved ones back in Oz and our new family here. It’s going to be hard leaving here in 12 months time, just as it has been hard leaving our family behind when we come back here. But what a blessing it is to have two places you can call home. We look forward to sharing more of our adventures over the next year.

God bless
Ron

Up front at the English Camp

Hospital in Phetchabun – Whunnie as translator

The slow ride into Lomsak

A special privilege – baptising Whun

The Baptists – not a John amongst them

The fish pond where the baptisms took place

Missive 10

It is a quiet pleasant evening and the kids are playing in the quadrangle, the bigger ones very fanatical about volleyball at the moment. I have just returned from the doctor’s at Ban Klang, a nearby village, because we have a bit of a flu epidemic here at the moment – that’s the ordinary flu, not the H1N1 variety. Changing the name from swine flu was pretty important for Thailand because the pig industry was going down the chute. Glom’s husband Parnit is in the pig transport business and he was down to a couple of days’ work a week.

Anyway I took 3 kids and Sand, a carer, down to the surgery. I think I have shared before that this is a shop front under a verandah and tonight the benches were full. There was tuk-tuk backed up under the verandah and an older bloke had what I presume was his wife on the back on a thin mattress waiting for treatment. She was rather still and I was watching closely to see if she was still alive! A toe twitched so I was satisfied on that account. The doctor came out and in front of all the “spectators” exposed her back and backside and gave her an injection. She looked heavily bruised around the kidneys and had open sores which the doctor dressed. Having learned something more of the ways of Thai medicine we watched the husband pull the mattress straight, start up his tuk-tuk, and putter off home.

The big news of this missive is that Colleen has experienced a good deal of the Thai medical system over recent weeks. She was trying to take advantage of the rain by putting some plants off our verandah to get watered and as she stepped back onto the wet tiles she slipped and fell very heavily onto her back and bottom. She couldn’t move which was a bit scary and called out to one of the blokes, Deo, working nearby. He notified everybody including me up in the office and then went to the shed to get an old door to put her on. Fortunately Dianne and Wolfgang, two other volunteers, have extensive nursing experience and did all the right things about getting her onto the door.

We then put the door in the back of the ute and Deo drove very carefully into Lomsak to the hospital. I’ve driven in to Lomsak with Deo on a few occasions and I can say with authority that he set a new record that day – he has never taken longer to get there! At the hospital they took her to a building in the back yard where the x-ray machine is and took a few x-rays. The doctor wasn’t happy with them so we went out again for some more. Eventually he declared no damage but severe bruising. We came home with Colleen in a lot of pain and administered the bucketful of tablets they gave us. Another two days saw her worse so we again loaded her up (front seat this time) and took her to the Phetchabun hospital.

Their equipment and facilities are a bit more modern and obviously better because this time they found a fracture of the coccyx and a compressed fracture of the L1 vertebrae and gave her the very best possible excuse for complaining about the pain. They admitted her to hospital and there she stayed for a week. I came in each day until the doctor said that I had to stay and look after her. I thought that was what we were paying the nurses to do but things are a bit different here so I had to bunk down on the floor and spend the day making sure she didn’t get out of bed and do the highland fling. Jokes aside, they cared for her very well and the doctor’s and the nurses’ visits Colleen turned into English lessons. The doctor told the nurses to get in as often as possible to improve their English and he was thinking of bringing his two young daughters in for a lesson or two.

After a week she came home and is making slow progress back to fitness again. The doctor said it would be 3 months in the healing process so she is juggling times of walking, sitting, laying down and doing the rehabilitation exercises Rich, our son-in-law has sent.

We were overwhelmed by the support of the people at Ban Meata. Some of the staff made special efforts to arrange transport to go in to visit her. Many others who have vehicles dropped in and every one of them bought gifts – mostly food and I was sure we had cornered the local market in drinking yoghurt. When we returned home I would often come back to our house and find the bedroom packed with staff and sitting on the bed. Our little Whun was very concerned when Colleen came back from the first hospital visit and came and sat with her for an hour, holding her hand, praying for her and sharing some of the deep things of her heart. It was a very special time. It is so good to see the esteem in which the staff holds Colleen, especially her English class girls.

In the middle of this drama Pam Jardine and her cousin Sally came to visit. We were intending meeting them in Bangkok and doing some touristy things before coming back to Ban Meata but we had to change all that. They had a wonderful time with the kids, especially those from Living Waters house where Pam’s sponsored child Nam Wan lives. We went into Lomsak for a Korean BBQ, into Phetchabun to Swenson’s for icecream, and up into the mountains to see some of the sights. Sally is a dancer and we put her to good use one night teaching the kids a few moves. It was great to see the boys doing a few ballet leaps and I even had a shot at the highland fling myself – elegance personified of course!

Because of the missed sightseeing at the outset we decided to drive to Chiang Mai for a few days. Colleen was determined to be in on it and was certainly not going to risk asking the advice of the doctor. Armed with cushions and giving the driver minute by minute instructions to dodge the bumps we made the journey. A stop off at the Indra pottery in Lampang delighted the 2 girls and Colleen can’t go past without boosting their share prices. The next day Colleen laid low and the rest of us went to see all the handicrafts. Another stop at the ATM kept the girls in the world of commerce and in the evening we had a meal in front of some great Thai dancing. We went back to Lampang to the elephant centre where we enjoyed the elephant show and Pam bought a painting done by one of the elephants. The girls enjoyed an elephant ride but Colleen passed on that one and looked for a more comfortable seat. That night we farewelled the girls who flew back to Bangkok and the next day we made the drive back home.

Another great event since the last missive that we don’t want lost in the above drama was our baptism service. We haven’t had any baptisms for a few years and we have had a number of teachers, Ban Meata staff and children give their lives to Jesus. For a few weeks we asked for those who wished to be baptised and make a declaration of their faith to let us know. Over 50 responded so we set aside a Sunday where we all went up to the fish pond on the farm to hold the service. The setting was just beautiful looking out over the farm and with the lotus plants on the pond. Rob invested his authority to baptise on Wolfgang, Damien (another volunteer) and me. We learned the baptism words (“I baptise you in the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit”) in Thai, hopped into the pond and in groups of four they waded in to be baptised. What a privilege it was to baptise our Whun, Why, big Whun their carer, Dtoi (the lad healed of HIV), Parnit (Glom’s husband) and many more. There was a special moment when Boonsilit, one of our builders who was helping people in and out of the water and hadn’t intended to be baptised, saw a gap in the procession and quickly waded over to Rob and asked to be baptised too. Wolfgang and Dianne had organised some donors in Australia to supply a full Thai Bible to all those baptised and it’s great to see these all turning up in church on Sundays.

Another event occurring about the time of the baptisms was our attendance at an English Camp. An “open school” similar to our correspondence schools was holding a 3 day camp in the mountains nearby, and hearing there were some English speaking “ferengues” at Ban Meata they approached Pawinee to ask if we would take some sessions. A group of 5 of us prepared some resources and with three kids and the English teacher from school we went up there to take a 3 hour session on Saturday morning. There were 90 odd adult students and it went excellently although we had to modify our resources a fair bit because their English was not as advanced as we thought. Their hospitality was wonderful and they fed us a fantastic meal in the open dining room with lovely views across the mountains. We discovered that they were hoping for us to spend more sessions with them and would have quite happily had us teach for the whole camp.

There’s lots more to write about but this is turning into a novel. My aim is to write the next missive quickly so watch this space.

Bless you all
Ron

Colleen, art and artist

5 day old baby elephant at the Lampang Elephant Centre

Silk weaving in Chiang Mai

Jenny and Steve arrive in a tuk-tuk instead of the bus

Missive 9

It’s been another long time since I have put finger to key and the eager readership can wait no longer. I had a wonderful time back “home” for a month in April-May where we were fortunate to have the use of an upstairs granny-flat belonging to Janet, a friend of Michelle’s. Her generosity had enabled Colleen to have a place to stay for her time in Adelaide.

My first delight was meeting our new grand-daughter Gemma in the flesh. (Actually I really should say the first delight was being reunited with Colleen after our biggest time apart in 40 years!). It was also good to spend some time with the other grandchildren and to see how much they have grown and matured even over the last few months.

And of course the crowning moment was the wedding. What a great day it was for Michelle and Yevan. The bride was stunningly beautiful – an opinion shared more widely than just the proud father!

So now we are back in Thailand for the second year of our commitment to Mercy International. The welcome, particularly for Colleen, was rapturous. Her girls were over the moon to see her back. And even after only a month I was so pleased to see our Whun whose happy face I missed more than I thought. Colleen is delighted to be back in our house and has already been busy changing it from a bachelor’s pad into a home. There are now curtains on all the windows so if I want to get all the waves and greetings from the kids as they go to school while I’m eating breakfast I have to get the curtains tied back.

I’ve re-started my morning run (or more correctly my every other morning run) and I’m usually out by 6.30am. My track takes me around the school (a handful of kids are there at this hour) and around our farm which is really picturesque and lovely at this time of the day. It’s usually 28 degrees at this time with high humidity so throw in a few daunting hills and by the time I get back I am losing some serious sweat. If I sit or stand in one place for too long I literally stand in a puddle!

We are stalled on our building programme at the moment for lack of finance so we are eating in the half-finished dining room built by the South Aussie builders. We are able to make maximum use of any breeze passing through but we can’t wait to put up a ceiling to keep the temperature down a bit, screens to keep the flies and birds out, and a few more walls to keep the rain from blowing in. The other day we watched a spoggy at the servery selecting his lunch from the various pots. It was interesting and perhaps predictable that he showed absolutely no interest in the chilli!

Today I had my first experience of taking some kids to a doctor in a local village. The surgery was an open shop front with a few plastic chairs in the waiting room which had a concrete floor covered with what they call lino but is so thin it is more like contact. The doctor is a lady who is very pleasant and seems quite competent. It was a slow day so she was having a snooze on the table but after a minute of getting her hair tied back was ready for business. We had a little boy who had stitches in his chin which had given way so she dealt with that first. The other kids and I were able to wander in and out to watch proceedings. I think there was a door on the consulting room but it wasn’t used. There was a fridge, an old desk, a few shelves and a typical doctor’s bed. Why (Whun’s sister) has a possible broken toe so she was given a few tablets, and Cheewah got some too, but as she’s a teenage girl I didn’t press with enquiries about what for. Although it was a bit rough and ready and not like our sanitised and clinical surgeries it was good to see the sort of care that our kids get when they need it.

We were blessed by a visit from our friends Steve and Jenny Chapman last week and we took the opportunity to get up to Chiang Mai. They arrived in Lomsak by bus from Bangkok and it was with great excitement that we saw them come in. It was then with great dismay that we saw the bus not stop but continue on to the next town! We were in mobile contact so we used a shop assistant who had enough English to understand what the problem was and arranged for them to get on a tuk-tuk (motorbike taxi) and travel back. A highlight for them at Ban Meata was meeting their sponsored boy, Gunhar, who although initially shy warmed up to them and they became very close. By the time they left there were tears on both sides. One of the special things that we love about Mercy International is the close relationships that are built between the kids and visitors and especially their sponsors.

We drove up to Chiang Mai and on the way dropped in to the delightful Indra pottery in Lampang. Jenny’s eyes lit up at this place. She has been accused of being a shopaholic and although she denies it, the evidence is sometimes to the contrary! We booked in to our hotel in Chiang Mai and went out to the famous night markets where Jenny did not take long to engage in her first haggling experience. The Mong women, dressed in their national costume are an institution at the night markets and are always selling the same things – wooden croaking frogs and jewellery. Jenny needed some frogs so the delighted seller suggested a laughably high price. The proper response is then a laughably low price, but Jenny countered with something too close to the first offer so the deal was closed half way between. The seller couldn’t believe her luck and I think has now retired to a condo in Phuket. Another Mong lady saw all this happen, couldn’t believe her eyes, and followed us for ages offering more frogs at much more reasonable starting prices to this obviously very wealthy woman. Jenny was a quick learner though and she was soon haggling with the best of them.

We visited a mountaintop palace and temple and spent some time on the crafts strip where there are gemstone manufacturers, silk and cotton weavers, woodcarvers and bamboo umbrella makers. Most want to rush you past the craft side of things and into the more lavish showrooms to entice you with rather highly priced products. The exception was the umbrella making which was a genuine cottage craft, done under bamboo shelters and included making the paper and handpainting the finished product.

We spent a day back at Lampang where the Royal Elephant Conservation Centre is. Colleen had her first ride on an elephant – only 10 minutes but long enough to be lurched around she reckoned. It was only a 10 minute ride but they still had the obligatory framed photo ready for sale by the time we disembarked. The elephant “show” is always fascinating and for the second time now Colleen bought the painting done by one of the elephants during the show. There paintings are very good but they haven’t taught them to sign their own work yet! We were also fortunate to be able to see a recent addition – a 5 day old baby elephant whose big brother painted our picture.

Jenny and Steve flew back to Bangkok to stay with her brother and we drove back to Ban Meata the next day. Jenny’s brother works in the kitchen supplies business and has generously agreed to source the equipment we need to fit out our kitchen. We are delighted and looking forward to a state of the art kitchen thanks to the support of lots of suppliers both Thai and international.

We have had some wonderful times in our worship services recently. We haven’t been in the practice of having Holy Communion so a couple of weeks ago I preached on the topic and we shared communion afterwards. It’s also been a while since we baptised those who have become Christians so next week we will go up to the fish pond on the farm and baptise 50 people – kids, carers and teachers. They are very excited about it and we are looking forward to a great day. As I write we have just enjoyed a worship service where Rob Dunk preached on the Holy Spirit and afterwards he prayed for a few people. One of our carers who didn’t go out for prayer was deeply moved and Rob, Colleen and Kerry (another volunteer) went and prayed for her and she was filled with the Spirit and spoke in tongues. God is good to us and it’s a privilege to be here.

Keep praying for us and the work here. We still have many needs and Pawinee is currently deciding whether we are able to take another 2 children – a 2 year old and a 3 year old who have been abandoned by their parents and left with their grandmother who is a priestess in a nearby temple. Tragic circumstances – exciting opportunities!

Until next time
God bless
Ron

Planting pangula in our paddies

Dung beetle Grand Prix

Handling dangerous weapons at the museum

In the gardens at the International Library

Missive 8

This should be a brief one – I’m off home in a couple of days so this will have to keep my massive readership satisfied for a while. We are at the beginning of “sonkraan” here in Thailand – a huge nationwide festival celebrating, I gather, the Thai new year, although fun, games and shenanigans with water seems to be pre-eminent over the real purpose. Not a lot different to our Easter I suppose where eggs and buns and booze swamp the real thing. Just like Easter is a danger time on our roads in Australia, the road toll during sonkraan is horrendous.

But the fun continues unabated. An enormous number of water pistols and buckets are sold and an enormous amount of water is thrown over everything and everyone. It is wise to keep your car doors locked while driving in the street – it is not uncommon for someone to open your car door at traffic lights and throw a bucket of water in. The kids here are very excited and are looking forward to getting themselves and everyone else wet.

A downside (for me) to sonkraan is that everyone in Thailand is going somewhere else and the buses are full. I haven’t been able to get a ticket to get to Bangkok to fly home so it looks like I’ll have to drive my ute there and park it at Rob and Jean’s place.

We don't usually celebrate Good Friday here, so Thursday night I organised everybody to tell the Easter story. We started in the dining room where we had bread and grape juice and we remembered the meal Jesus had with his disciples. We then went out under some trees to represent the Garden of Gethsemane where Jesus prayed and some of the kids acted as the sleeping disciples. Jesus was duly arrested by the big boys and we then went to another place where I had a fire and 3 of the girls asked Peter if he knew Jesus - which of course he denied. I then told them about the trial and had a crown of thorns and a whip which one of the boys wielded with relish. I had made a big cross and one of the boys dragged this to the front of Ban Meata. We then put some nails in the cross and stood it up where we’ll leave it at least over Easter. It was a special time and everybody got into the spirit of the story really well.

Bit by bit we are getting the old dining room ready as a pre-school before the new school year. We have put in toilets and a shower, tiled that area, taken the ceiling tiles down and painted them, painted the walls throughout in some bright colours, put a verandah out the back (no old rocking chair yet!), and put in some drainage ditches. There is still a bit to do but I think it is on target.

Last weekend I took the remaining big girls, Whun, Why, Waen, Joop Jang and Far, and big Whun of course, up to the mountains and we had a wonderful day. We visited an enormous temple at Khao Kho and the girls had a bit of a go at ringing the 108 brass bells hanging outside. We didn’t wake up any of the gods and were grateful that ours doesn’t need to be woken up! We then went to a war memorial in a spot where there was a good deal of fighting against communist insurgents coming down from Laos in the 70’s. The marble memorial lists hundreds of names of those who died.

Nearby was a weapons museum and we had a good time looking over old helicopters and tanks and guns. From there we went to the “International Library”, rather incongruously perched on top of a mountain. What it lacked as a library (some fairly old, dusty books) it made up for in the beautiful gardens in which it is set. From there we visited the Prince’s holiday palace, sitting on top of the next mountain, and then drove down into Phetchabun where we had a meal and did some shopping at Tescos. I think the girls enjoyed the last visit as much as anything else!

I’ve had the chance to get out of the office in recent days and up to the farm. We are planting a pasture grass in our rice paddies and to do this we brought 4 ute-loads of the grass, spread it on the mud and pressed it in where it will grow in a similar fashion to couch or kikuyu. I spent a day or so up to my calves in mud – not as hard as planting rice though because we did not have to bend over as much.

We have just put in another large dam on the farm and are hoping that this will help us have enough water over the dry months to be able to keep pasture going as well as the fruit trees and the vegetables.

Some of the routines of Ban Meata are relaxed during the holidays and as I write there are kids at the dam by the visitors’ centre with bamboo poles and hooks doing some fishing. They also like to sit outside after dark and catch flying beetles. They set up a light on a pole and catch the beetles and drop them in a bucket of water. They then cook them and eat them. The other day I found them playing with beetles very creatively. They had a number of dung beetles which they put behind their toy cars and “raced” them. Another highlight has been collecting ants’ eggs. The rather ferocious red ants live in large leaf cocoons in the trees and the kids climb up and knock them down or hold buckets under them and knock them off with a bamboo pole. The ants aren’t all that keen on the idea and the kids do a fair bit of hopping and jumping about. They then shake the eggs into a bucket with some flour so the ants will walk away. And what do they do with the eggs? You guessed it, they are a delicacy and they are eaten as they are or put in some of the dishes at lunch time.

Well, while it is still fairly brief I’ll end. We will be leaving for Thailand again on May 14th, a few days after our daughter Michelle’s wedding. I have an exciting month ahead – back with Colleen again after our longest absence in 40 years, seeing our new grand-daughter Gemma, spending time with the other grandchildren, and of course Michelle’s and Yevan’s wedding.

Bless you all
Ron

Monks in song

The new office block

The new dining room next to the old one

The Graduation ceremony

Joop Jang

Missive 7

It’s been a long time between blogs and I fear many people will have stopped looking so I may well be writing to nobody!

I returned to Thailand in mid-January with the South Aussie builders, leaving Colleen behind to await the birth of our fifth grandchild, dodge the hottest of the Thai weather, and help prepare for Michelle’s wedding in May. Pitching in with the building team meant that I was doing little of the admin work so it got a bit neglected although lunchtimes and evenings were usually spent in the office. One thing that was sacrificed was the blogs!

Our building team had the usual faithfuls, Malcolm, Murray, Chris and Gordon with one newcomer, Bob Pettit from Bordertown. The task this time was to demolish the old dining room and kitchen and build a new one with an attached office block. The plans changed a few times in the first few days and the final decision was to leave the old one there, turn it into a kindergarten for the school, and build a new dining room next to it. The office block was split off and built at the end of one of the kids’ houses.

Six weeks of hard work in the blazing sun and we had both new buildings up with the rooves on and most of the walls up to waist height. The other blokes all left and I waved them off and for a week or so was the only “ferengue” at Ban Meata looking after dozens of lovely Thai ladies (more correctly they were looking after me!).So it is back into the routine and trying to catch up a backlog of work I planned to have finished by this time.

It’s been great having our house completed and having somewhere to call home. There have been a few challenges that have slowly been solved. When a Thai team came in to cut down some trees to make way for the new dining room, they dropped one onto the power lines. We pushed the post up again and replaced the fittings on the end of the big girls’ houses, but from that point on that house and my house had power problems. If I put the electric jug on my lights dimmed and my CD player stopped. If I put the hot water tap on to have a shave, the lights went down so much I couldn’t see to shave! And the tapware in the shower was “live” which led to an interesting experience when I backed into it! On top of all that we had a new electric cooktop which was “live” when we plugged it in.

Malcolm got to work on all those things (man of many talents) and fixed most of them by finding a fault in the neutral wire in the big girls’ house, and fixed the cooktop by plugging it in the other way round. All those professional and amateur electricians out there will no doubt understand why all this fixed the problem.

Back at home Colleen’s adventures bear mention. The wait for our grandchild was over on 6th February when Rebecca gave birth to a large (8lbs 14oz) but beautiful Gemma Grace after 20 hours in labour. Colleen’s attempts to escape the ravages of Thailand heat were ironically thwarted as Adelaide sweltered its way through record breaking heatwaves. She and Michelle though have been successful in making good progress with wedding preparations. I will return to Australia on April 15th ready for the wedding on May 9th and we will both head back to Thailand a few days afterwards. The Thai girls with whom Colleen is working in her English classes are missing her greatly and are already excited about the prospect of her return.

School finishes for the “end of year” break this week and the kids have 7 or 8 weeks’ holiday. Those from Ban Meata who have suitable family members will spend a few weeks away for the holidays so it will be a little quieter around the village. On Friday I attended the graduation ceremony for the school. Those in Kindergarten (Anuban) graduate into Primary (Pratom) while the Year 6’s graduate into Junior High (Matiom). You would not believe the pomp and circumstance which surrounds all of this.

The graduands (180 of them) are all seated in one part of the dining area and the parents in another. There is a stage bedecked with rows of roses and other flowers and the tables and stage front are hung with gathered silk. As with all Thai events there are banks of speakers and enough microphones to accommodate the Rolling Stones. Each of the Kindy graduands (all of 5 years old) are dressed in academic robes, a hood and a mortarboard hat. For some reason the Year 6’s have to make do with their uniform. Thanakorn (Principal) and Rob Dunk are also decked out with academic regalia.

We watched some elaborate Thai dancing, Rob made a speech which Pawinee translated and then the presentations began. It was amazing to see these little tykes, schooled to the nth degree doing a slide step, right foot first, across the stage, turn, do a deep curtsey or bow, hold out the correct hand to receive their graduation certificate, step back, curtsey or bow, then walk off stage. There was lots of blue tape on the stage so they would know where to put their foot next!

They then returned to their seats where they stood and sang the national anthem plus another song. The Year 6’s sang a beautiful chorus and it was great to hear the name of Jesus being proclaimed to the hundreds of parents there. There was still more to come with all the little ones lining up again to receive a large framed photo of themselves in full regalia. Round after round of photographs of anything that would stay still long enough completed the ceremony.

A day or so later I was able to attend a ceremony of a different sort altogether. One of our farm workers who is Pawinee’s nephew is to become a Bhuddist monk for a few weeks. Pawinee’s Mum was the driving force behind all this and she was pinning a lot of hope on this grandson “doing the right thing” when so many of her family had turned to this Christian stuff. The celebration, even for such a short stint at the temple, was enormous, and Pawinee was in a bit of a bind, not wanting to support the decision, but not wanting to offend her family and Mum. So I went along as a bit of insurance – she could stay a while and then have to take the “ferengue” back when she wanted to leave.

The party was just down the road a bit and there were half a dozen marquees set up under the trees, the usual stage with huge speakers and lots of microphones, tables and chairs, and a low platform to accommodate the monks who have to be there (all paid a retainer for their presence). Lots of the women were cooking under one of the marquees and when we arrived we were sat down and a huge number of plates of rice and Thai food were pressed upon us. After a while the monks arrived in the back of a ute and they sat in a row on the platform and lit up some bowls of incense or something. For the next hour they stirred their bowls and chanted into the microphone and I can say with good authority that being a great singer is not a pre-requisite for being a monk. I went and got a few photos but could not find Kim, the new initiate. I discovered that he was there (not contributing much to the singing – guess he didn’t know the words!) dressed up in his orange robe with all his hair and moustache shaved off so I didn’t recognise him. I met a large number of Pawinee’s brothers and sisters (she has 8) as well as her Mum and then we came along home. It’s interesting that every Sunday Kim is in church amongst Christians worshipping God and for the next few weeks he will be worshipping Lord Buddha – we are praying that the influence of the Holy Spirit will be stronger!

Our Whun is going very well and has been very excited about the results of her end-of-year tests. She has passed all her subjects, all very well, but not with the distinction of her sister Why who managed 100% again for her Maths! Whun and Why along with Joop Jang and Fa will be the only girls in their house who won’t be going to family for a few weeks of the holiday so I’ll organise a day with them up in the mountains where we have discovered some wonderful places including the Prince’s palace, a monument to the fallen in the war against communist insurgents, and a military museum.

Joop Jang is a delightful girl in the big girls’ house and we got to know her better when we spent time in Bangkok last year with our girls. She is here because her Mum, Dad and brother were killed in a car accident when she was about three. A few years ago a grandfather was killed in a car accident, and just last week her sole remaining grandparent (grandma) was also killed in a car accident. Please pray for her – she is a precious young lady.

Don’t give up on the blog site – keep checking and I’ll try to get a few more pages up over the coming weeks.

God bless
Ron