Missive 2 – 2011

I’m trying! I’m trying! I’ll just sneak in a blog every 10days or so – emphasis on “or so”! This year I have a number of people who have sponsored me for a day’s work so some of you have heard from me as I have sent emails and letters after the day’s work. We are half way through the building trip now and the shape of the place is changing as it usually does when we are here. We are putting a verandah on the front of the dining room and a quite tricky connecting walkway between the dining room and the big girls’ house. Two years ago we were debating whether to line up the new dining room with the big girls’ house or the old dining room. We decided to compromise and not line up with either. Now our walkway is wider at one end than the other – hence the trickiness.
We have our posts up, the beams and rafters are on, the renewed plumbing is finished and as I write Chris and Boonsalit are getting ready for the tiles, Malcolm is rewiring the fans and lights, Deo and Sun are putting up rafters ready for the ceiling, and Richard and I are preparing the verandah and the walkway for concrete. I have just finished a day on the jackhammer and shovel (as has Richard) so we were glad to hear the knock off whistle – or more correctly Malcolm yelling out “Pack up! Go home!” in his best Thai accent.
We have been blessed with continual mild weather and cool mornings. The Thais emerge all rugged up and rush over for a warming hug and to report how many doonas they slept under last night. Today was a bit hotter – just as the jackhammer appeared wouldn’t you know it!
A highlight of the last couple of weeks was a trip to Khon Kaen where, as most of you know, we have an orphanage caring for 40 HIV+ children. In recent weeks we have finally found some land in KK on which to build a new orphanage. Our current facility is a leased property (although we have invested quite a bit in it to make it suitable for an orphanage) and the lease runs out in two and a half years’ time. The site is beautiful with a couple of houses on it and a driveway of palms with some rice paddies at the back. Buying in KK is quite expensive – a million baht per rai (40 metre square) compared to less than 50,000 baht a rai here in the country at Phetchabun. There is about 9 rai there so is costing about $330,000. The first payment was made on the weekend that we were there – and a great step of faith is required to make the remaining payments each year from now on.
Malcolm has been busy with his design programme on his computer designing accommodation and dining rooms and Eric is drawing up the shape of the land so the buildings can be placed (just so he can get out of the jackhammer work I reckon – then again, at 83 that’s probably fair enough). We are all so excited about it that we are planning to spend the 2012 building trip at KK putting up the first of the buildings – or at least enough to accommodate the kids we have at the moment. The vision is to eventually have up to 100 kids there so the plans are being prepared accordingly.
It wouldn’t be a trip to Khon Kaen if we didn’t go to the Steak House and I reckon their steaks are getting better and better. Inflation has struck though and instead of “all you can eat for 99baht ($3.40) it is now 109baht ($3.70). We have a strange and mad tradition about going to the steak house – any first timers get taken by the hand and are run back to the car. The looks of amazement on the faces of the Thais as they watch this piece of madness is a sight to behold. Again in deference to age we thought we would give Eric a break and not subject him to something which might see the end of his days.
Colleen has continued to struggle with her very painful wrist but hopefully will be on top of it soon. She had an experience the other night which took her mind off it when she stepped on a scorpion in bare feet in our lounge room. No harm done – except to the scorpion who was dispatched very quickly. It was only 5cm long and only a baby compared to some real beauties we are uncovering in our digging – some of them would be 15cm long (including their tail). We haven’t had any encounters with snakes yet in our house but that’s normal for the dry season.
Colleen has started her English classes with the older girls and they have a good time together. She is especially pleased with our Whun whose English has come on in leaps and bounds. She has become quite a chatterbox in English – she has always been a chatterbox in Thai! We have had a few other teams passing through while we are here. One team, led by Paul and Sheryll Lanham of Nambour have been here every year that we have and we enjoy a great time with them. Every year Malcolm gets closer and closer to dumping Sheryll in the dam and she spends all year plotting revenge! Colleen has also been active “selling” child sponsorships to anyone interested on these teams.
Time to get this off to my son Andrew who kindly puts all this stuff onto the blog site.
God bless till next time.
Ron


KK land - looking back to the rice paddies (note eucalypts)


KK land - Ron & Colleen in the driveway


The walkway next to the dining room


Trying to keep up with the blogs

Missive One – 2011

The building team has arrived at Ban Meata for the seventh consecutive year and now boasts only 2 South Aussies, Chris Stolte and myself. Malcolm has collected a mate from WA, Eric Withnell who can lay claim to being the oldest team member to come – he is 83. We reckon Malcolm brought him just so he would feel better! Our final team member is Richard Wray from the Brackenridge Baptist team in Queensland and he is with us for the second year.

Our biggest hurdle in coming over was to get 2 ladders weighing about 20kgs each included in our luggage. We trimmed down as much as we could and Colleen only brought one packet of Weetbix. With some extra kilos from Singapore Airlines we snuck in under the limit and we were able to enjoy the curious stares as we wheeled the ladders through the airport.

Because the team was coming from all over we arrived at different times and finally were all together by midday on Sunday. With our precious ladders and all our luggage crammed into a mini-bus we had an uneventful trip from Bangkok to Ban Meata. And what a welcome we received! They were having dinner when we arrived and they all poured out of the dining room and swamped us. Every one of us was hugged again and again by 95 kids and 20 odd carers. For Colleen and me it was such a delight to be back with Whun again and we were amazed how much she has changed since we left just six months ago. She has grown taller, filled out and changed her hair style. She is quite the beautiful young woman and we are so proud of her.

Rob Dunk is still in England for his son’s wedding so Pawinee has carte blanche for any projects for us. We will be putting a verandah on the front of the new office and already have the holes dug for the posts. We will also finish the walls, doors and windows of the dining room, put on a verandah and join it with a roof to the “big girl’s house. In the meantime we are working on Pawinee’s place. Her beautiful house is slowly nearing completion and we are putting in the ceilings, concreting the carportand doing some retaining walls. This should keep us going for a week and then we’ll start on the other jobs back in Ban Meata village.

Some of you are aware of the story about little Gedt, an 11 year old girl who has been with us for about 18 months now. 6 months ago she was diagnosed with leukemia and at her age the survival rate is about 50-50. We are praying for a better outcome than that, but it has been great to see the great faith which she has faced her illness. She is currently here at Ban Meata but sleeps in a separate room and usually wears a mask when mixing with the other kids. Just today she was due for another round of chemotherapy and she travelled to Phitsanoulok (100km) to the hospital there, but, on arrival they discovered her blood count was too low for treatment so she had to come home again. I sat with her tonight and told her that many people in Australia are praying for her. If any readers have only just heard about this please add her to your prayer list. There will be a photo attached so you can see who you are praying for.

We have started on a plan to take all the Ban Meata staff out to dinner at a Korean BBQ and we had our first group on Friday night. The meal was wonderful and the Thai girls usually look after us very well – but none more so than Malcolm. They cooked his meat on the little BBQ’s, made his soup, put his food on his plate – I believe though he had to chew it himself! He helped out though when the time came for icecream. They have tiny cups and tiny cones to get it in (so people can’t be too greedy) but Malc managed to embarrass Air, one of the carers, by bringing her back an icecream cone loaded so high it was no mean balancing feat to get it back to the table!

We are in the swing of having “smoko” every morning and afternoon and we make short work of plates of pineapple, watermelon and green mango and jugs of cordial. Today we had our first plate of pomello and it was just beautiful. We have been blessed with great weather which wouldn’t be much over 30 degrees – I guess it will get hot about when we put the roof on the new verandahs over the office and dining room.
Spare a thought for Murray Stolte who is missing the trip to Thailand for the first time in 7 years after falling off a haystack and badly injuring himself. His son Chris though is having enough fun for both of them together and is really enjoying working with Boonsilit, Sun and Deo who became his mates when he spent 6 months here. And then there is Sand, one of the carers with whom he is particularly friendly – watch this space…….!

My goal (always a dangerous thing to commit to on paper) is to get the blog out about once a week or ten days so stay tuned.

God bless

Ron


Gedt without her mask and with her hair growing back


One of our Korean BBQ nights with the staff


Pawinee's house where we are working


Screwing up the ceiling battens (in a nice way!)