Missive 1 - 2016

I have just sat down after returning to my “ban” (house) after a delightful meal with Mum Whun, Whun and Why, Jip and Sun (carers for the big boys) and some of the uni students.  Jip and Mum Whun went to the markets, bought some food and invited me to join them for the meal.  We had “larp” (mincemeat mixed with herbs and chilli), and a heap of squid which was cooked over a fire bucket and then cut into rings and dipped into a hot herb and chili sauce.  A few other dishes completed the menu – all made as we sat there.  It was so good to be sitting under the stars with my other family, sharing stories (some had to be retold to me), and simply enjoying each other’s company.  When I bid them goodnight and thanked them for their hospitality they said that I was like a local and one of them – a wonderful affirmation of friendship.

When Nook (once a child here and now with children of her own) saw me for the first time her first words were, “Welcome back!  I’m reading my Bible more because I know you will be telling us that’s what we should be doing.”  Pray for Nook – she has recently had a large lump removed from her breast (benign apparently) and has to go to the local clinic every day to have the dressing in the hole replaced.

All this is after a good flight over here and a night in a hotel in Bangkok before catching a bus to Phetchabun.  I had a bit of minor trouble with taxis.  The driver from the airport, although in a metered taxi, suggested I could pay 1000baht, and have a “Happy New Year”, and then on my refusal dropped it to 500.  I tapped the metre and suggested he turn it on.  Consequently the cost was only 270.  And the next morning I had a few taxis stop for me but when I said I wanted to go to the bus station they wound up their windows and drove on.  Eventually I had a very pleasant driver take me and the cost was a mere 100baht – obviously not enough for some of them.

Our job this year is to put a second storey on the big girls’ house (where Whun and Why used to live).  When I arrived the holes were dug around the house for the posts by a team from Brisbane/Nambour under the leadership of Russel Lee who has worked with us over the last few years.  A big team of Thais, several of them Ban Meata boys who have left school, were painting steel and taking the old roof off.  My first job was to knock a wall down and dig up a concrete path so I was reacquainted with my old friend Jack (Hammer) very quickly.  Later I, and a few Thai boys, put up the cement posts and welded the steel frames inside ready for the cement truck to come and fill them.

Malcolm has brought his wife Kay this year for the first time in 12 years, as well as his daughter Kathryn.  Both are enjoying their first experience at Ban Meata, amazed at the welcome and the “100 hugs a day”, and already at the school helping out with English teaching.  Last weekend we went to Khon Kaen where Malcolm was able to show off this amazing new orphanage which was just a rice paddy 4 years ago.  There is a new phase beginning at Khon Kaen with the introduction of new babies of which by next week there will be eight.  Three of them are only a few weeks old and a couple of them born to HIV+ teenage Mums.  Medication from birth and not allowing the Mums to breastfeed them is having good deal of success in the preventing of HIV+ status in babies.  I fell in love with one of these little tots because her name is Pam after the 10 year old that I had a lot of contact with a couple of years ago and who subsequently died after an infection.

We couldn’t go to Khon Kaen without taking Kay and Kathryn to the steak-house where we have been dining for the last 12 years when we go over there.  All those years ago we ate all we could for 89baht (then about $3) and now it is 189baht (nearly $8, shock, horror) but the food is the same – unlimited pork, beef and chicken steaks with numerous salads and vegetables, then dessert and icecream.  We also took them to one of the multi-storey shopping malls and also to an open air street market.  This latter was mainly for meat and fish, so we saw lots of pork laid out on tables, flanked by the heads of those poor individuals, and plenty of fish, eels, tortoises and frogs in plastic bowls either swimming, hopping or crawling around, or in a state much closer to the cooking pot.

We brought Why back with us from Khon Kaen because she had a few days’ break from Uni so this may be a good time to report on how she and Whun are getting on.  I spent a wonderful hour or so with Why one night with conversation ranging over uni results, her ambitions, her spiritual life and her history, of which she has an awakening interest.  Her results this semester have been a little better although she still finds the work very difficult.  When I raised the issue of finding a tutor she said it is very difficult to find a tutor at this level.  She has 3 semesters to go to complete her degree and she will then teach in a school for a year to get her teacher’s certificate.  She has asked us to pray for her decisions after that – whether she continues to teach in a school or go back for a Masters and teach in a university.  She insists that she wants to do what God wants for her, and not just choose for herself.  She is involved in a local church at KK, playing the keyboard and getting a lot out of the preaching there.  She heads back to KK tomorrow but perhaps I’ll see her again in the next few weeks.

Whun is going well after a very challenging year.  She has some decisions to make soon about a study regime and the best way to achieve her ambition of being a teacher.  I will tell more of her story in the next Missive.

At the time of finishing this Missive we have put up all the posts around the old building on the building site today and by the next Missive hope to be able to report the beams around and across the building being in place.  Malcolm leaves next Friday so we are going flat strap to get as much done as possible, and hope that he gets time to write down the next steps so we can continue the good work.  The top storey is going to be enormous (bigger than the dining room) and will tower over the quadrangle at Ban Meata.  The old building had concrete trusses so rather than build the next storey on the walls, it will be over the roof level.  The floor on the new storey will be between 4 and 5 metres above the ground.  I have suggested to Malc that we put in oxygen outlets for assisted breathing at that height.

Till next time, continue to pray for us.  I think of you often and am experiencing “song jai” which I think I explained last time.

God bless

Ron