Missive 3 – 2012

When I last left you I was heading out to a market to get a meal. The market experience is wonderful and it is a major pastime for Thais. Hundreds of stall holders set up their tables on a piece of vacant land and there is wall to wall people thronging the walkways. There are stalls for hardware, clothing, home supplies and of course food. There is an exotic mix of all sorts of seafood, deep fried chicken, roasted pork, salads, and fruit you’ve never seen before let alone know the name of. There are potent looking brews of soups and sauces all done up in little cellophane bags tied at the top with a rubber band – put on in a nano-second by the stall holder and requiring at least ten minutes with teeth, scissors, or any other implement at hand, plus a string of expletives, to get off.
My choice was a piece of pork hatcheted into small pieces before my eyes and plastic-bagged with a bag of chili (with rubber band!). This was quite expensive at 50 baht ($1.70). I then went for some BBQ’d chicken on a skewer (10baht), also with the ubiquitous bag of chili. In an attempt to maintain a healthy diet I bought a bag of salad (20baht) containing some seafood, cabbage, green paw-paw, and some frilly noodle stuff with some lettuce thrown in, all in some sort of salad dressing. This is perhaps a risky purchase in a market but it was so hot it frizzled the end of my hair and I’m not sure any living organism could survive in there.
We have a weekly regime for dinner. Monday nights it is the steakhouse, a favourite haunt of ours from past years where you can have as many steaks as you like plus vegetables, salads and desserts for 140 baht (about $4). On Tuesdays we eat with the kids at the orphanage, Wednesdays we go to a huge shopping plaza and eat at the food court, Thursday is market night, Friday at the orphanage, Saturday back at the plaza and Sunday at the orphanage again. Lunch is always at the site, is sent out from the orphanage and is absolutely delicious – “aroi” in Thai. With a team that is a few over 20 you wouldn’t believe how many pineapples, watermelons and dragon fruit we go through.
So food is not a problem here – we are fed magnificently. On the worksite we poured our 3rd floor last week and are preparing the dining room/kitchen/laundry for next Thursday. This building is 40 metres long and 16 metres wide and will take 150 cubic metres of concrete. Malcolm is trying to get the concrete company to work to our timetable rather than the rather relaxed Thai timetable so we can finish this pour in one day. The 4 slabs will end up costing over a half a million baht ($20,000) in concrete, and about half that amount in steel. The steel that goes above ground is worth about one and a half million baht ($50,000). Spending at this rate means that we will run out of money in the next week or so, so we are hoping more donations come flooding in from Australia soon.
Our original plan was to have all 4 buildings with steel up ready for the rooves to go on, but Malcolm’s revised estimate is to have one accommodation building and the dining room to that stage and the 2 storey building up to the first floor. Follow up workers can then see what to do.
As I have mentioned before we have a rich tapestry of people on the team this year and you may be interested in their background and what brings them here. Tim and Stephanie Wade are our Irish couple and have delighted us with their lovely accents and sense of humour. Tim has worked as a project manager in the mining industry and is an electrician by trade. He has spent some time on aid projects in Africa and also in Sri Lanka after the tsunami. They found Mercy International on the internet, became interested in this project, and will continue for a while after the rest of team finishes. I reported that their son who is gravely ill had a better diagnosis but this has reverted to the original diagnosis of aggressive leukemia. Without a miracle his prospects aren’t good.
Sarah Littlejohn was with us for a week or so. Her connection to Mercy is through her brother who is the commodore of the Pattya Yacht Club which has hosted our kids on their beach trips over the last couple of years. Sarah lives in New Zealand and included a week with us in her holiday to see her brother. She may not have expected a holiday quite like that but she spent her hours in the sun and heat working on painting steel and making steel mesh for the slabs. She was one of the ladies in the photo in the last blog. She enjoyed her time with the team even though the working conditions were no doubt trying, and we were sorry to see her go.
I’m finishing this blog ahead of schedule because we have been rained out. Rain on clay means that even walking across the site is a major undertaking with huge clumps of wet clay sticking to your boots and even pulling them off. Today is Saturday and our second day of inactivity although there are plans to shift the mesh making activity onto one of the slabs so we can keep working. We have planned the final pour for next Thursday and don’t want to postpone that if we can help it.
Last night we put on a party for the kids at the orphanage. Dallas and Jenny Joseph, a Kiwi Queenslander couple brought money from their church to provide the food and Graham Wray, the children’s and youth pastor from Brackenridge Baptist prepared some games. We had a great meal sitting on mats on the front lawn and a great deal of energy was expended during the games. It was great to see these HIV+ kids looking so healthy and vibrant although we were reminded of the fragility of their health as they went through their evening ritual of filing past a table taking their medication.
I think this had better be it for a while and I will go out and brave the mud.
God bless
Ron


Some of the orphanage kids (some are 18 now) preparing the BBQ



Rained out on the site

Missive 2 – 2012

It’s a quiet Sunday afternoon as I write after church with the Ban Meata kids this morning. I was the speaker today and it was my first experience with Dtim (the KK manager) as a translator. It went very well and Dtim translated very quickly which keeps the flow going. It was a story followed by a simple message so there weren’t too many complicated concepts.
Last weekend we travelled to Phetchabun after knocking off at 11am on Saturday morning. It was a wonderful “homecoming” and such a delight to see Whun running from her house to greet me – followed almost as quickly by Why and Big Whun. The first time visitors on the team were amazed at their reception and Stephanie, half of our Irish couple, was almost in tears when she said she could feel a spirituality about the place.
Big Whun and the big girls organized a party at the back of their “house” and it was very much like home as we sat around the firebuckets cooking chicken, pork balls and bananas to eat with rice and som-tum and bowls of chili of course. The girls had their karaoke music hooked up to a lap top and some speakers and sang non-stop for hours. There are some young blokes on the team so the girls were very keen to get them involved. Pawinee sat with us and it was good to catch up with her and all that she is doing. Our next trip there will be for her birthday and her housewarming on the 28th.
I found out on Saturday morning via a phone call that I was speaking at church on Sunday so the trip over there in the hired bus was put to use in preparation. Whun translated as usual and it went well. We travelled back that evening ready to get on the site on Monday morning.
We poured the floor on the first of the houses this week and it came up like a dream. Graham Wray (Richard, his Dad has been on the team for a couple of years now) had a good idea for the mesh on the floor of the second house. For the first house we sat in the sun and twitched the 6mm steel rod together for hours. Graham wondered if we could weave the rod into mesh so a team set about doing it. It worked a treat and although it takes about 15 people to move it onto the floor it is now in place for the second pour tomorrow (Monday).
Our team has reached its maximum size – well over 20 – and we are a league of nations. Two Dutch blokes(Edelbert and Hennie) turned up yesterday, a Singaporean lady (Claire Ng) also yesterday, a New Zealand lady (Sarah) last week, an Irish couple (Steph and Tim) – and of course we have a lot of Queenslanders!! Some team members have had their share of problems. Tim and Steph received word during the week that their son (estranged for a number of years) has just been diagnosed with an aggressive form of leukemia. The news this morning was a little better – it is a more manageable form of bone marrow cancer. A positive outcome already has been the first steps of reconciliation.
Jason, a young man who is a long term volunteer at the KK orphanage, bought himself a new motorbike to get around on, and the following day he T-boned another motorcyclist doing a U-turn in front of him – many abrasions for him and the motorbike. His dad and brother were over to see him and are working on the team. A couple of days after the accident his Dad’s Mum collapsed from a brain tumour so the three of them have flown back to Brisbane. On the positive side worksite injuries are low – a few steel cuts, a bit of sunburn, and some stomach upsets.
I am staying very healthy and the only mishap has been going head over turkey over one of our new wheelbarrows which is poorly designed with the front wheel guard so low it too readily digs into the ground. A fearsome crack on the shins and wounded dignity were the only injuries and both are fading fast. Keep praying for the safety of the team.
We are getting ready to walk down to the local markets for our meal tonight so must close. Maybe BBQ’d chicken and sticky rice. Maybe som-tum with seafood. Maybe pad thai. Drool with envy all you out there.
God bless
Ron


Whun at the party



Karaoke at the party



The old way - tying mesh



The new way - Alex and Sarah weaving mesh



The first slab-with the boxing still on

Missive 1 – 2012

Well, it’s on again! I’m sitting in our accommodation at Khon Kaen and gathering a few thoughts for my first 2012 missive. We have a team of around twenty, most from Queensland and the land we are building on has 2 houses but insufficient to house us all. We have therefore rented a property next door which has a large house but in poor condition. When I arrived the Thai girls had done a wonderful job in cleaning it up, putting in a heap of beds and turning it into quite comfortable quarters. My first surprise on arrival was to find Why (our Whun’s sister) as one of 3 girls from Phetchabun who came with Jip to clean up. We had a lovely but tearful reunion and the chance to spend a little time together before the 3 girls returned to Phetchabun for school after the new year break.
My trip over was uneventful and all transfers went smoothly. My extra 12kgs of shovels made it onto the flight from Bangkok to KK without so much as a comment. On this flight I sat next to an Australian bloke who works at a gold mine in PNG but flies back to KK to see his wife and child every 2 weeks. He had bought his child a trampoline for Christmas so he had marched up to check-in with 50kgs and they didn’t turn a hair at that either.
My first day here was a Sunday so we had no work but went to the orphanage for church. They normally attend a church in KK but the pastor was away so we had it at the Centre. It was delightful to see that the service was run entirely by the kids. They had a couple on guitars and one on the inevitable drums and 2 girls were the lead singers and kept the worship rolling. The music was not broadcast standard but they certainly made a joyful noise! They had some prayers and a Bible reading and although there was no preaching it was a great worship experience.
And now to the building. As most of you know we have a huge project this year with a 2 storey living quarters for the kids, 2 single storey quarters and a huge dining room/kitchen/laundry building. In the last couple of days an excavator has prepared the slabs ready for the concrete pours, the first of which will be Tuesday (Week 2). Our first jobs have been all to do with steel. Part of the team have been painting steel non-stop for days – 900 six metre lengths so far. I have been helping the Thai welders put together 10 metre lengths of steel rod in a frame of 4 to use as reinforcement for concrete beams in the floor. And then for the last 2 days it has been work on a jackhammer preparing the holes and trenches in the pads for the floor slabs.
Malcolm has been flat out like a lizard drinking redrawing plans to cater for some changes of mind about design, trying to organize excavators and backhoes so we don’t have to dig them by hand. And he is coordinating the large team so he has hardly swung a shovel yet but is doing some long hours regardless. It’s hard to believe that we’ll achieve our goal of all buildings with a roof on, but once we get out of the ground things should change rapidly.
Chris and Murray, our other genuine South Aussie builders, are currently working on a new toilet block at the back of our rented volunteer house and Chris has been in Thailand for so long now he is enjoying the status of knowing where everything is in KK, shopping for hardware supplies and being the “on the ground” expert.
One thing we can’t help noticing about our accommodation is the mosquitoes. And they hunt in packs of hundreds. We have spray which fixes them but it is so strong when we use it inside we have to go and brave the outside mosquitoes before returning to sweep the dead bodies off our beds. After one night of hearing them fly in formation past my ear I got out my mosquito net and now sleep without fear. All I have to put up with is the jibes of my “mates” who call it my “princess bed” and wonder when I’m going to get my embroidered flowers put on it!
Malcolm hasn’t missed out on the chiacking. He finds the beds too hard so he hunted around to find several soft mattresses to put on top. Of course we reminded him that you can’t have that many mattresses without putting a pea underneath them to check whether he is a real princess. (As a matter of interest that comment was completely lost on some of our younger team members who had never heard the story of the princess and the pea – what is the education system coming to!!)
At the close of this missive we have just returned from our trip back to Phetchabun. Later this week I’ll get to sharing some of that visit – it was great.
Until then
God bless
Ron



Malc & Ron in a hole



Lunch in the house next door where we sleep



The end of a day on the jackhammer

Missive 4 – 2011

Life has been a bit different over the last week. We waved goodbye to the builders on Sunday morning and they are all back in the bosoms of their families as I write. Richard was especially keen to get home because he was seeing his first grandchild for the first time. Cooper Wray was born a couple of weeks ago and although he was kept informed by phone and photo he was looking forward to getting the little bloke in his arms.
I have abandoned the Thai builders who are still up on the platforms plastering the joints in the ceilings we have put up in the dining room and the kitchen. There are a couple of jobs left to do – putting in some basins on our plumbing, putting up the last of the lights in the kitchen, and putting some lead sheeting on some roof joints. We have some Thai contractors finishing the walls in the dining room and then the windows will be put in. I will organize the Dutch team coming next week to do some painting.
In the meantime I have resumed my old seat in the office and I’m trying to do a few things that have been in abeyance since I left. I have been doing a bit with the asset register, drawing up some maintenance schedules, collating some feedback information for the sponsors of the Year 10 kids attending the Kanchanar school and trying to get my head around the financial management stuff which has been rolled out on a new version of MYOB. Sounds exciting doesn’t it, but I have been enjoying catching up with where my “old” work is up to – or not up to as the case may be!
There has been a very exciting development here in the last couple of days. Bruce Garvie is a long term volunteer from Queensland and is very good with the kids, especially the boys. He has a background as a chaplain in high schools and as a Youth pastor. For years we have been praying for a man to be a role model in the house with the older boys. This has been a problem area for us, and the ladies who have worked there have found it very difficult indeed – teenage boys seem to be the same the world over! Bruce has moved into the house with Sand as his offsider and “official” carer. “Mum Bruce” just doesn’t sound right so maybe they’ll think of something else. Bruce is very difficult to say for Thais and what he gets sounds very much like “Boot”. Kampat who has labored there for 3 or 4 years has gone to look after the youngest group of children with a heartfelt sigh of relief. Bruce will be on a steep learning curve trying get his Thai up to scratch and Sand will help with some of that.
I haven’t said much about Sand in these Missives but now is as good a time as any. Chris has been a interested in Sand for 2 or 3 years (and vice versa) and the building team has been giving him a hard time about for quite a while – although the Thai girls give Sand heaps as well. Developing a relationship here is very public and there has been plenty of advice flying around for Sand and Chris. Despite this – or perhaps because of it! – the relationship has “moved to a new level”. There have been lots of hints about jewellery and many nudges towards shops that stock such goods, but nothing quite as final as that has occurred. Chris hopes to return in June or July maybe with Ruth and Murray – watch this space!!!
I haven’t mentioned one of our earlier social life experiences. We all attended a housewarming party for one of our Thai couples. Sun and Jip are wonderful husband and wife team – Sun is one of the builders and Jip looks after the guest/visitors’ house. They recently completed their own home, a beautiful place built of bricks and painted up a treat. Heaps of people come to a house warming and the hosts provide a meal. Canvas marquees are erected in the yard and we had “lap” (like mincemeat mixed with chilli although they had some that was not so hot for the ferengues who couldn’t cope), sticky rice, “som tum” (grated green pawpaw with tomatoes and chilli) and soft drinks to douse the fires. They wanted us to come and pray for their house so Rob did that. Part of the deal is you take a gift (usually money) so we pitched in a gave the cost of a kitchen cabinet which they bought the night before the housewarming and we were able to admire on the day. It is a lovely tradition and we were honoured to be included in their special day.
On Saturday just passed we had another celebration for Colleen’s birthday. At one stage we were going to take a drive to Phitsanolouk and pick Gedt up from her latest treatment, but those arrangements changed and instead we went up into the mountains and had an iced mocha and iced chocolate at a coffee shop. Rob loaned us his Nissan Tearna so we went in style. Our friend Alvin Tan (JoopJang’s sponsor) was here and it turned out his birthday is on the same day. Further to that, Suriporn, the trainee manager of the Pizza Company in Phetchabun also shares a birthday with Colleen. We have befriended this lovely girl over the last few years so we had a party at the Pizza Company with 3 guests of honour. It was a great night. We were very proud of Whun who sat next to Suriporn and helped us communicate with her. Suriporn’s English doesn’t go much beyond “Scallop marinara with cream sauce” and “salad bar” but we get along with her minimal English and our minimal Thai.
A few days ago we went to see Glom’s house – she is also building a house although she will still live on site except for her day off. So far she only has a heap of holes with steel ready to pour some posts but she is pretty proud of it all. Whilst there we went over the road to visit Mum Whun’s family, and especially to see her grandma who lost her husband last year. She is always pleased to see us and we spent a spent a pleasant half hour there eating tamarind and trying to chat. She is a tiny frail little lady but such a dear. The rest of the family were sitting amidst piles of tobacco leaves putting them on a stick ready for drying
Well, seeing as today’s news is tomorrow’s fish and chip wrapper, I’d better close. Not sure what the digital equivalent of that homily is – today’s email is tomorrow’s spam?
God bless
Ron


2 beautiful girls on a shopping trip to Phetchabun



Colleen, Alvin and Suriporn cutting the Swensons icecream cake


Iced mocha at the coffee shop in the mountains


Visiting Big Whun's little grandma

Missive 3 – 2011

Our time is drawing to a close and there is still so much to do – it seems to be the same every year. The verandah and walkway on the dining room have been concreted and the roof is nearing completion. Chris has been working mainly on this along with Boonsalit and Sun. Malcolm has been rewiring the dining room and putting in power points, lights and fans – and trying to do all this alongside the wiring Deo has done and keep the power on so we can use the power tools and the cooks can get the meals ready. Now the concreting is finished Richard and I are putting up battens in the dining room and kitchen ready for the ceiling. Cordless drills are marvelous for this and we have put in over 4000 steel cutting screws over the last few days. What isn’t marvelous is the little bits of hot metal that fall down from the drill onto your arms and down the front of your shirt. My chest looks like I’ve got a rash from all the little burn marks.
We’ve managed to get by without any serious injuries although we’ve had a couple of amusing near misses. Equipment is at a premium when there are several jobs happening at once so Chris was using a very decrepit old ladder. He got half way up and the ladder, true to the piece of rubbish it was, twisted and crumpled and landed Chris flat on his back on a sandy spot ready for concrete. No great harm done (except to the ladder after Chris kicked it clear into next week!). He did however fall on the new plumbing on the way down and snapped off all the waste pipes for the new basins so we had to dig it up and do it again. We then decided to get some new scaffolding particularly as we had to put up so much ceiling which is over 3 metres up.
And therein lies another story. We put the scaffolding up and started work on the battens. The cross bars stabilizing the structure are held on by little toggles and after moving the scaffolding around the toggles allowed the cross bar to slip off at one end. I had finished putting in screws at one end and moved to the other end and the whole thing collapsed underneath me. Platform boards, spare battens, screws and drill came down with a huge clatter. Because I was near a truss I grabbed hold of it and was left hanging there until Richard and Malcolm rushed over, grabbed my legs and lowered me down. No great harm done but we set about wiring all the cross bars so they wouldn’t come off again. Word spread like wildfire about this spectacular event and when the staff came to lunch there were many references to Spiderman!
Our social life continues apace and although we have finished taking all the staff out to the Korean BBQ we all went to a restaurant in Phetchabun for the great event of Pawinee’s birthday. It was a beautiful meal and all paid for by a friend of Pawinee’s who owns a hardware store and sells concrete. In 20 days in January she sold over 25 million baht of concrete (close to a million dollars)! On the next night she was having a dinner with some friends and because she knows we do a bit of dancing at Pawinee’s birthday (and on a few other occasions) she wanted us to come to partner some of her friends and particularly wanted men. I was happy to show off my skills with the Queen’s Waltz and the Military 2 Step but some of the others weren’t too keen. Malc said he had no long trousers (pathetic excuse!) and Richard went on a trip to Phrae (better excuse!). Chris was happy to take Sand (but not too rapt in the dancing part) and Eric was pretty keen. Colleen, Pawinee and Marni made up the rest of the party and in we went.
Again the meal was beautiful and then the dancing started. We firstly did some Thai dancing which involves a lot of specified hand movements which look a lot better when a girl is doing it. We then sat down and the ballroom dancing began and I prepared myself to teach a few skills to a few Thai ladies. They all hopped up and started on the most amazing ballroom dancing routines I have ever seen. They were competition standard and their simplest moves put me in the shade. A lady came over and asked me to dance and it took about 3 bars to work out that I wasn’t in her league. It turns out that they belong to a sort of dance club and many of them come from all over Thailand to do their thing. They took us in hand though and taught us a heap of steps and we had a lot of fun. Eric, for all his 83 years, was the star of our group and he showed off his “misspent youth” as he calls it.
Break for Weekend
And now, back after the weekend break we are flat out like a lizard drinking trying to finish the ceilings and the electrical work in the dining room. We went to Khon Kaen on Saturday armed with bamboo stakes and long tapes and on the new land we pegged out the buildings for the new orphanage. Everyone has been in deep discussion for the last couple of weeks about how many buildings are needed, what they will look like and how they will fit. This week Eric is up to his eyeballs in set squares and fine point pens as he draws up the plans. And we got 2 experts to make us some models of the houses – JoopJang and Giv are the “neat freaks” of the big girls’ house and do beautiful intricate work.
It is now firming up that the South Aussie builders will be starting the new orphanage at KK in 2012. Malcolm hopes to have the water, sewage and electricity services in place for the whole site, and then build 3 children’s accommodation buildings (one is 2 storey) and the dining room/kitchen/laundry. It sounds very ambitious for 6 weeks but Malc is hoping for a bigger team. If you know of plumbers, electricians, brickies, welders or handymen (or handywomen for that matter) then please encourage them to consider a very fulfilling 6 weeks in Thailand.
The blokes go home on Sunday but the blog will continue. Colleen and I are staying on until 9th March so put www.roninthailand.blogspot.com into your favourites.
God bless
Ron


Richard, Ron & Chris pegging out the land at KK



Ron & Boonsilit putting up ceilings in the kitchen



Tripping the light fantastic



JoopJang and Giv helped us make models for the KK plan

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!)