Life changes a bit when the building team go home – Malcolm, Peter and the Brisbane people all left over a week ago now. I was left with a fistful of notes from Malcolm about what to do next. I was left as the expert on where to put the purlins and how to put the valleys in the roof – fortunately Malcolm explained it all clearly and the Thai boys have pretty good idea of what to do, although I had to ask Deo to do one of the valleys again. We had another church team from Brisbane turn up and one bloke in particular is keen to pitch in with the building so he has helped me set up the boxing to build a retaining wall on which we will pour the verandah.
We poured the concrete for the retaining walls and the verandah support posts late last week. I was saved an embarrassing mistake that day when I calculated the amount of concrete. I measured all the holes and boxing, and one 6 metre length of the walls was 300m wide and 300mm deep. On my scrap of paper I wrote down .3 x .3 = .9 (I wouldn’t be happy if my Year 6 Maths kids made that mistake!). That made 5.5 cubic metres of concrete rather than about .5 – a truckful! When we were nearing the end of the second truck load and the job was nearly finished, I was starting to panic and wonder what we would do with all that concrete (about $300 worth). We were fortunately able to cancel the third truck and avoid an expensive disaster. I couldn’t work out how my estimate could be so far out and a couple of days later I found the scrap of paper - and the mistake.
I need to introduce you to some international members of the building tam. For a number of years a group of Dutch peoplehave joined us. They are usually reasonably elderly but that is no reflection on their doggedness in working out in the sun and doing some of the less glamorous building jobs like washing and painting the steel, weaving the mesh for the floor, painting the welds and so on. This year there were only two, Adelbert Hesseling and Annette Doorn. Adelbert had had a pacemaker put in last year so he wasn’t in peak condition but he did a great job. They have raised large amounts of euro in the Netherlands by doing all sorts of fundraising activities including cracking the ice off the river in their town and being sponsored for going swimming (I would have thought that would do the job of a pacemaker!). They left a couple of days ago and they went away with the challenge of raising 20,000 or so euros to renovate the big girls’ house and put on a second storey. That may be our job in 2016 – book your holidays now!
It’s this time of the year when I usually pack away my building clothes, resort to shorts and a t-shirt and work in the office on some admin stuff. That’s not going to happen completely although I have some things I am doing for Rob that I am fitting in between building jobs. He is being awarded an honorary degree from Phetchabun University for his contribution to Thailand and this province in particular. I have been putting together an acceptance speech supported by photographs of his and House of Mercy’s impact on the area. And the Rotary Club at Khon Kaen is keen to support us to develop a TAFE-like skills training centre here and at KK so another job will be helping to prepare a proposal to present to the Rotary Club in a couple of weeks.
On top of that I have preached at worship here for the last 2 weeks so a bit of time has gone into preparing for that. I usually try to use something visual and today I talked about branding cattle in Australia to show ownership. I had Boonsilit weld me a branding iron with JC on it to illustrate, and then I explained that Jesus doesn’t use a branding iron but we have the “mark of a Christian” on us to show that we belong to Jesus – fruits of the Spirit, loving one another (John 5:34, 35) and loving our enemies (Matt 5:44). After that I conducted communion and that was a special time.
Last week I was invited to a meal at Mum Whun’s grandma’s house. Grandma is 84 and hasn’t been well for a while so that day she had been to the doctor. She had a few tablets and was told to drink and eat more. Probably good advice as she is such a tiny sparrow of a lady. I have shared in past missives of the rather idyllic, quintessentially Thai backdrop at her house. When we got there and Whun went off to help with the meal, I was assigned to talk to Grandma who firstly wanted to know where Colleen was. We then conversed for a while, her in fluent Thai and me in fluent English but I think we agreed on most things. Whun’s Dad eventually came home from work on his all-purpose tractor/cultivator/pump/family transport and set about preparing the meal along with Whun’s brother (a truck driver). A few aunties turned up as well to make a goodly number for the meal. We had laap, finely chopped meat with herbs and spices, sticky rice and a plate of herbs and weeds on the side. The meat was pig intestines and pig liver. The sticky rice was cooked outside in a well-used basket over a boiling pot of water on a fire. A couple of chicks, appreciating the extra warmth (not sure why, it was pretty warm any way) were snuggling in a hole under the stones holding the fire. We ate of course on the floor (there are no chairs in the house) and I was rather ashamed of my inability to sit crosslegged through the meal and then be able to stand straight up afterwards. The meal was delicious although there was plenty of pizzaz from the chili.
We acquired two more children tonight in rather heartrending circumstances. The father of 3 of our children by a variety of wives had a Cambodian lady as his next wife. She has twin boys about 4 years old. The father died in a motorcycle accident last year and the Cambodian wife is not wanted by the rest of the family and has no citizenship papers. She brought the twins to us tonight and she will either return to Cambodia (with a consequent problem for the children) or get “lost” in Thailand to try and survive (with the consequent problem of looking after the children). It was heartwrenchingto see her hand them over, she was in tears and remained in that state while Mum Whun drove her back to her village. One of the boys is particularly upset and I could hear him crying inconsolably in his house later this evening. Your prayers for these two kids would be appreciated.
Speaking of accidents we have had stories of some near misses in recent days. There seems to be no requisite for a brain when they give out licences to drive a tuk-tuk here. On the weekend Rob and Jean drove around a blind corner to find a tuk-tuk parked in the middle of the road. A four wheel lock up stop had them finishing centimetres from the vehicle. Last week Glom narrowly missed an unlit tuk-tuk at night on the nearby Ban Klang road. It too was stopped in the middle of the road. A 20 year old uni student returning home was not so lucky. Blinded by oncoming headlights he ran into it and was killed. The funeral procession passed Ban Meata yesterday on the way to the burning house at the local temple.
Less than two weeks to go and plenty still to do. Your ongoing prayers are really much appreciated. Please pray for Colleen too who has to endure these long stays of mine and is struggling with considerable back pain at the moment.
God bless
Ron
