Missive 3 – 2015

I don’t want to rub it in, but the weather here has been magnificent for the last three weeks. While Adelaide sweltered in an over 40 degree heatwave we enjoyed days of sub-30 degrees and nights that were down in the teens. The mornings have been so cold that the Thais are getting around in parkas and coming up for hugs just to keep warm. To fill you with envy let me describe morning tea on the building site. Two of the Thai women come to the site bearing plates of watermelon, sliced pineapple so sweet you eat it last so all the other stuff tastes OK by comparison, cubes of papaya and refreshing pomelo. Jugs of cordial and iced water complete the table. As the girls appear the cry of “smoko!” goes up across the site and we all sit under the trees, enjoying the refreshments and the cool breeze which has prevailed during our stay. This is then repeated in the middle of the afternoon. At 12 noon “khin khow” is shouted (lunch, or literally, “eat rice”) and we all troop off to the dining room where we sit down to a beautiful range of Thai food each day, deliberately “mai phet” (not spicy) to suit the tastes of the “ferengues” (foreigners). Now that should make our building team bigger in 2016!! The work is going ahead quickly and well. As I begin to write this we have topped the walls around the outside and the trusses go up this week. Over 3,500 blocks have been laid in this time. After 7 days of block-laying I have lost the fingerprints on my left hand (I’ve taken to wearing a glove on my right) and the cement dries out the skin to the point of cracking. I asked Ben (see Missive 2) jokingly if he knew anything about safe-cracking that he could teach me now I didn’t have fingerprints. He said that would be no problem, he’d done a few in his time!! Isn’t the grace of God good?!! And now to introduce another couple of team members. Marty Kuhlevein comes from Queensland and owns a large fleet of school buses, a fleet of skip collecting trucks, and a fleet of liquid waste trucks. He is a bit over 30, became a Christian a few short years ago, celebrated by having “RIGHTEOUS” tattooed across his chest, and has taken up boxing in the middleweight division to keep fit. Becoming a Christian didn’t go down well with his second wife and he is praying for a restoration in that relationship. David Hill is an older bloke from Maleny in the Sunshine Coast hinterland. He came out of the army as an alcoholic and with two broken marriages behind him. Becoming a Christian healed him of his addiction and he is rejoicing in what God has done in his life, including meeting his third wife at church. He is an electrician and has been put to good use preparing for the wiring through the house and this week will install switchboards and wiring. He has worked mainly with Ben and it has been great to see the mentoring that is happening. He offered Ben 1000baht if he didn’t swear for a whole day – and then said if you can choose to do it for one day, you can do it for the rest of your life. I spent some time with Ben today explaining the freedom that comes from choosing righteousness. It’s great to see God’s grace at work! Whun rang the other night to say she has bought her motorbike and had quite an adventure on the first day she rode it into work. She leaves Ban Meata about 8am and has to ride about 25km into the city of Phrae. She doesn’t finish work until about 7pm so she has to ride home in the dark. On that first day she found that her headlight wasn’t working so with some ingenuity she put the light on her mobile phone at the front and rode home very slowly. Sharon and John (Managers at Ban Meata Phrae) told her where to get it fixed the next day so she duly took it in for repair. To her great embarrassment she discovered that it works perfectly but she hadn’t turned it on!! A couple of Sundays ago a few of us went up into the mountains near Ban Meata to a place called Khao Kho where there is a new Buddhist temple with the most amazing and extravagant mosaic decorations and where their signature statues of Buddha are made up of five Buddhas sitting in decreasing size in front of another. The complex, including its surrounding gardens is spectacular so we went to visit. It was the coldest day we have experienced in Thailand and the mountain on which the temple sits was in dense cloud – we were able to see the mosaics but couldn’t see the top of the temple and couldn’t see the 40 metre high Buddhas. A bit disappointing for those who hadn’t seen it and fits into the “next time” category. All of this is to a god made of stone and I was reminded of the asherah poles and the Baal worship on the high places in Israel mentioned so often in Kings and Chronicles. And reminded also that South Australia is now the proud owner of a Buddhist temple on one of the high places south of Adelaide, with a giant Buddha due to be constructed! As I write there are 3 days of work before the building team leaves – the trusses are up on top of the walls (much heavy lifting), the ceiling joists are being welded underneath the trusses (more heavy lifting because they are welded into 24 metre lengths) and I am currently laying the last row of blocks so the walls reach the ceiling. That’s it for this week – until next time ……….. God bless Ron

Missive 2 – 2015

The building work continues apace.  We are working on the walls and hoped to have them nearly topped by the time this is posted.  I have turned my hand to block laying and am finding it a satisfying job.  We are building in hebel blocks which are fairly light and of uniform shape even though they are 600mm x 200mm x 75mm.  We use a cement based glue rather than mortar.  I was doing really well up to a certain height and then my skills and dodgy spirit level let me down.  Malcolm checked one of my walls and it was 20mm off vertical at the top, so he pulled it down – much mirth about strong winds overnight and I set about rebuilding.  It took about half a day to get back to where I was the night before but now it’s a great wall – professional standard!!

Let me introduce some of our team.  After Malcolm there is Peter Lawrie, his brother, who is also a friend of ours from Lucindale days.  Then there is Richard Wray, from Bracken Ridge Baptist in Brisbane, who has been on the team for several years now.  He brought with him a young man, Ben, who was converted at his church several weeks ago.  His is an amazing testimony.  He comes from a family of alcoholics which at times was abusive and he learned to use violence as a solution to a problem.  He was also seriously misusing drugs and alcohol.  He had a son from a relationship with a girl who shared his drug and alcohol problem.  A couple of years ago his ex-girlfriend had an accident while drunk and the little boy was killed.  Ben went around to her place and in his own drunken rage beat up and severely injured her boyfriend.  He spent some time in gaol over that incident.  Armed robbery put him in there again and aggravated violence a third time.  Anyway, the saving grace of Jesus has turned his life around.  Richard practically demanded that he come to Thailand and Ben says it’s been the best thing for him.  Pray for him as the Spirit makes changes to his temper and his addictions and other aspects of his life that need to come under the Lordship of Christ. 

Whun and Why have both returned to Phrae and Khon Kaenrespectively.  Whun has started her new job in the city of Phrae and is still resolved to do it for 2 months.  She was encouraged back at the orphanage by the children she was teaching saying that they wanted her back.  Keep praying for her – in fact redouble prayer for her!  The day she went back she was on the back of a motor-bike driven by her friend Waen who didn’t heed warnings to slow down so off they came.  Whun hopped off at the last minute but Waen lost a fair bit of skin on hands, arms and leg.  Then on Saturday she was going in to her job  in Phrae on the back of a bike which another friend, Far, was driving.  A tuk-tuk turned unexpectedly in front of them and off they came.  This time Far was unhurt but Whun hurt her knee and hand, thankfully not seriously.  She rang me with this news and said that she will drive from now on because she drives slower and more carefully.  Pray that this is so!

STOP PRESS: Whun rang to say that a relative of the lady in the office there has a motor-bike for sale and Whun is very keen to buy it.  It is 10,000baht (about $400).  A mixed blessing!

FINAL BUILDING REPORT for this missive – most of the walls are up to the tops of the windows and we have begun to put up the concrete lintels.  We have made the lintels on-site and they weigh about 200kgs each.  We winch them up with an endless chain suspended from 6m ladders.

Apologies for the lack of photos but I can’t upload them onto my email website and I haven’t got Outlook working yet.

 

Missive 1 - 2015

Missive 1 – 2015 We’ve been doing this every year since 2005 (bit different last year because of health issues) but it never seems to get old. The same enthusiastic welcome, the same hundred hugs a day, the same gratefulness for what we come to do. Our flights went well and our plan for the parts of the team from Adelaide, Brisbane and Perth to meet at a preordained spot at Suvarabhumi airport nearly went well. Eric, an older bloke (87 – doesn’t do any work on the jackhammer but has been very generous to House of Mercy) from Perth got his wires crossed and after searching all three levels of the airport amongst about a million people we finally found him waiting outside. We had a mini-bus waiting for us and set off on the 5 hour journey to Phetchabun with just a couple of comfort stops and to stock up on Coke and other health foods. We arrived at 2.30am and that’s where a minor problem began for me. Our house, creatively called “Ron’s Place”, is used spasmodically when Colleen and I aren’t here so we suggested it might be a good to use it for girls who are attending university and need to develop independence by not living under the direct control of one of the “Mums”. To make this possible and still be available for our use they have been working hard for a couple of months modifying the house with an extra room and making the bathroom facilities suitable for joint use. I knew all this, but not what the modifications looked like. We received a text message the evening before saying which rooms the other blokes were sleeping in in the guest house, and that my door would be left unlocked. So I dragged my luggage down to “Ron’s Place” (gravel path), tried the door and found it locked, and noted that there were girls’ shoes on the front verandah. Unperturbed I took out the key which I carry with me and went in. Presuming our room was still our room I went in and turned the light on – two of the girls were sleeping there! More cautious this time, I looked into our second bedroom and found the third girl sleeping there. So I went out the back and found a new room, finally found the door – and it was locked! So I dragged all my luggage back to the guest house, found a bed a grabbed a few hours’ sleep. I was let in the next morning and the room really is lovely with a new bathroom independent of the rest of the house. All credit to Chris Stolte, an old building team member who is now married to one of the Thai girls. Our body clocks had us up reasonably early and although the plan for day one was to take it easy we were on site, and I was on the jackhammer, by 10am. Our task this year is to build another accommodation building on a slab that has been unused for 12-15 years because of a mistake that made one end 200mm higher than the other. In the ensuing days we have jackhammered through the concrete to put in the plumbing, completed the plumbing, boxed up around the slab 250mm out, barrowed in 20 cubic metres of sand to save concrete on one end, dug a trench 80m long and 600mm deep for the power, woven 10m by 10m squares of mesh for reinforcing the floor, and washed and painted the steel for the trusses and door frames. It is the New Year school break at the moment so Glom (manager) has been very keen to have the kids come out and help us. For some of the above jobs that has been very helpful. I had a group of the older girls and some of the boys to do the weaving. We lay out 10m lengths of 6mm steel rod 200mm apart, then weave other 10m lengths through it – much coordination and teamwork required. We then shift the resultant square of mesh onto the slab – a great sight with about 40 kids and workers holding it above their heads carrying it to the slab. On New Year’s Eve we had a big party on the quadrangle with each house set up with their bucket barbecues and a supply of charcoal. We were just about to get started when we got a phone call from Why who had bussed across from Khon Kaen. I went into Lomsak to get her and to enjoy a warm reunion. When we were driving out of the bus station Why received a call from an upset Whun who had gone into the Phrae bus station to try and get down to see me but all the buses were full. She had to get back to Ban Meata (Phrae) and try again the next day – this time she was successful and another great reunion occurred the next evening. It was so good to see her again. Why is doing much better at her studies this year although I want to talk to her about good study habits before she goes back after the New Year break. Please keep praying for her, that her dedication will see her begin to excel again. Whun is not in a good place. She is finding it very hard doing the teaching that is required of her as well as the other duties that go along with teaching 3 year olds as well as some 2 year olds – this includes changing nappies and toilet training. “Why can’t they sit and listen like they do in Gemma’s class?” she asked. When in Australia she spent a day observing a JP class at St Michael’s where our grandchildren go. I have spent some hours with her talking through a few problems and re-setting some goals. She has become so disenchanted she has gotten a job in Phrae (25kms away) selling phones. The road in and out is notorious for drug deals by the roadside so please pray for her protection and for her future. She has agreed to do this job for 2 months and then go back for a fresh start and enrol at Uni for some study. As expected Glom asked if I could preach on the first Sunday we were here. Thanks to Ps Mark Schulz for his idea of wrapped gifts to explain the gifts that come with Christmas – love (a heart), the Cross (a Cross!) and new life (egg). It was well received in Thailand as well as at Glenunga UC! A final building update – the slab has been repoured, the boxing has come off, the walls have been marked out on the slab, the corner blocks have been laid, and half the door frames are standing in place. More news next week.

Missive 6 – 2013

Life takes on a different shape as we are back “home” at Phetchabun. We are in our house, “Ron’s Place”, and enjoying the growth of the plants around it. The frangipani has grown and a bush/tree with beautiful red flowers that Colleen nurtured through a few setbacks with whipper-snippers is now huge. Another agave type of plant that had a slow start is now monstrous and we’ll have to cut some of it back to walk past it. We usually eat with the kids but on a couple of occasions we have cooked in our house and there-in lies a funny story. We were having pork chops and some stir-fried vegetables and Colleen poured some oil from a jar on the sink cupboard into the frying pan. It bubbled up straight away and we wondered if it was fresh so we used more oil from a new bottle. We sat down to a huge pork chop each and a beautiful pile of vegetables, but the first mouthful was absolutely awful. We had to leave the vegetables and persevere with the pork because although it was not good it was at least bearable. We concluded that the oil must have been rancid so before throwing it out Colleen put some on her fingers and then under water. It frothed up beautifully – just like the detergent it was!! For the Jews pork is unclean, but these couple of Gentiles had ensured that theirs wasn’t! Colleen had a great birthday made even better by Mum Whun, who was having her day off at her parents’ place in a nearby village, inviting us to lunch there. We love going there because it is a piece of genuine Thailand with traditional wooden housing set amongst coconut palms and “fair-dinkum jungle”. They, and mainly Whun’s Dad, had prepared a beautiful meal of soups, lap (spicy minced pork) and sticky rice. We sat outside on a wooden platform with the food in bowls amongst us, although Colleen was given a chair to sit in. A couple of dogs were in attendance as were a number of chickens who scratched around blissfully ignorant of the feet of one of their number sticking over the edge of one of the soup bowls. Whun’s Grandma, all of 84 years old, was eating with us and she chatted on endlessly telling us about various recent incidents, including falling over and hurting her arm. Much of this was obvious but Whun chipped in with a bit of translation here and there. We talked tobacco farming with Whun’s Dad in the shadow of drying tobacco from the recent crop, and her Mum shared a few health woes as well. They love to have us come and the language difference doesn’t seem to matter. It was such a special time and one of the reasons we love Thailand – don’t you wish you were here? That night we took our Whun and Why, Joop Jang (another girl from their house), Mum Whun and her sister Tip (who is now a carer at Ban Meata) into Phetchabun (40kms) for a birthday tea at the Pizza Company. The meal for 7 cost us about $50, pretty good by our standards but nearly a week’s wages for Tip. One of our reasons for being here is to attend the graduation ceremony for Why and 5 other of our Year 12 students attending the Kanchanar School in Lomsak. It is one of about a dozen of the “King’s Schools” and although there is a cost to attending this has been made possible through each student having a generous sponsor. Somchai and Cheewar had their sponsors here for the ceremony and of course we have an interest in Why. We were so proud of all them. The ceremony is held in a large elevated hall with fans all way round which have jets of water making a cooling mist in the hot conditions. Up the front there was a row of Buddhist monks and a podium lavishly decorated with flowers for the Headmaster to sit in. The school orchestra entertained the waiting parents with many tunes recognisable to Westerners. The students, about 150 of them marched in, spectacular in their dress uniforms and were seated in rows in alphabetic order. The top few students were seated in the front row, including our Why who was equal second. They began with a short Buddhist ceremony and while everybody held their hands in the wei position our 6 students stood with their hands by their sides declaring that they are Christians. It is good that the school, and the Buddhist society generally, is tolerant of other beliefs. In a highly regimented fashion and row by row the students made their way to the front and received their graduation certificates in a special blue folder. The Thais love photographs and it took about an hour after that to get the whole school photo as well as the little groups that gathered in front of the i-pads, the mobiles, and the more conventional cameras. After processing out of the hall they all made their way up to the quadrangle in front of the multi-storey school and marched in military fashion in front of the staff and dignitaries, all of whom were dressed in what looked like naval officer uniforms bedecked with medals and other regalia. The marching style is reminiscent of what we see on TV when the North Koreans parade although the leg does not go as high at the front. Eyes right and the salute happen as the parade passes the teachers on the steps of the school – very spectacular but maybe a bit over the top in our Western eyes. We took the kids out to lunch at a restaurant afterwards and we feasted regally on fish, tom yum soup, rice, and a variety of tasty pork, chicken and vegetable dishes in lovely sauces. The kids were very pleased to get out of their formal jackets, buttoned to the neck for the boys and worn with a tie for the girls. Each of the 6 kids is currently sitting what seems like an endless stream of exams, mostly entrance exams for university. I still haven’t come to grips with the complexity of the university entrance system here although every conversation I have reveals another nuance which makes it a bit clearer. Why is my best bet in this – she takes the time to patiently explain how it works with a dictionary in one hand to sort out the technical stuff. She is a marvel and we love her dearly. The very next day we prepared again for feasting at a gathering of Mercy International leaders and sponsors where we looked back over and celebrated the enormous changes and achievements of the 3 orphanages over the last 5 years. Colleen and I were charged with the table decorations so we went into Lomsak with our Whun to negotiate for 10 floral table arrangements and 2 large sheafs of flowers. We needed to pick them up on Saturday morning so we waited with some trepidation to see if that part of the negotiations had been understood. We needn’t have worried, they were beautifully done, looked stunning and the whole lot cost $60 – similar stuff in Australia we estimate would cost over $300. Colleen ended up supervising some of the food preparation to match the menu - the concept of separate courses is a bit lost on the Thais. It was a good night though, interrupted by a blackout because there was a rainstorm happening so for a while we ate by “mobile phone light” – torchlight is much easier to say! We started with some traditional Thai dancing by some girls from our school – their dance teacher is a man, well, at this stage he is but I understand he has other intentions and certainly his eyebrows and make-up indicated that he plans to bat for the other side! We then heard the stories of how each orphanage is going and how the farm, the community outreach programmes, the English language school at Sisaket, our own school, and the recently begun uniform sewing project is progressing. Unfortunately our time here is drawing to a close. We will be home in less than 2 weeks. Our Whun will graduate next year and she is eagerly looking forward to us coming for that. “If you do not come I cry, if you come I smile”, she is saying. We are so proud of her and her English – everyone in her house and in her class at school look to her when they are struggling with their English. So that looks like it as far as blogs go for 2013. If you have kept up, thanks for travelling the journey with me. I have appreciated and valued your thoughts and prayers. God bless Ron Colleen's birthday at Mum Whun's Colleen's birthday at Pizza Company the 6 graduates with one of their teachers We are so proud of them! The headgear of one of the Thai dancers

Missive 5 - 2013

One thing that is slowing us down and is frustrating the life out of Malcolm is the Thai contractor for block laying, rendering and tiling who doesn’t pay his workers so they don’t turn up on site. Pawinee has therefore arranged for a team to come from Phetchabun to render and tile the dining room/kitchen/laundry and they are making progress. There is something quintessentially Thai about them and it is interesting to see how they live. They camp on the site in little tents and seem to live off the land as well. They have nets in which they catch small fish from the dam and they cook their meals over a fire behind the building they are working on. One of the women has already levelled a small patch near the dam and planted a few things which are no doubt destined for the cooking pot in a few weeks’ time. There are at least two families living there including a couple of children, one maybe four and the other only one. The one year old has a sleep in a hammock strung between two posts on the building and Mum, who mixes mortar for the tiling, dashes over every now and then to give the hammock a swing. There is no day-care for working Mums in Thailand! It was a delight to watch the father, as fathers do everywhere, take the kids for a ride around the site in a wheelbarrow and to hear the squeals of delight as he went through mud, over some bumpy bits and up onto the building slab. As we walk the streets around the site we come across a range of homes from the obviously wealthy to the obviously poor. Just down the street there is a family that owns a couple of cows and they are housed at night in the most ramshackle shed you can imagine with a drinking trough, straw on the floor, and a number of ducks bedded down with the cows. I reckon you could plonk the baby Jesus in there and have a pretty genuine nativity scene. Last Sunday I visited an Australian Dutch bloke and his Thai partner in a neat little house in a back street behind the site. I met Ben (75 years old) and Rut (in her 40’s) last year when I was out walking. I took Alan Baker with me and we were welcomed like old friends, given a cup of tea, and we spent an hour and a half chatting with them. As a result of my visit last year they came over to the site a few months ago, made themselves known to the small team that was here at the time (some Queenslanders with Richard) and cooked them a meal. Ben migrated to Australia in the 50’s, lived in Perth and trained race horses so we had a long conversation about drugs in sport! He is also an acquaintance of Brian Cousins, Ben Cousins’ dad, so that was more grist for the mill in our conversation. Just a little sideline here. We worked a bit late one night this week and there was a beautiful red and purple sunset and overhead were thousands upon thousands of white cranes flying in V-formations and taking several minutes to complete their “flypast”. It was a wonderful sight not to be missed. Now where are we up to with the building? – and this is pretty much the final report as we all pack up by the middle of next week. We have poured more square metres of concrete this year than last when we poured the four building slabs. We have poured verandahs front, back and sides on the 3 houses, verandahs on the front and side of the dining room, a basketball court size play area, a road through the middle of the site, and a path along the front of the buildings. The big pours, 4 and 5 truck loads, are proving quite difficult as the concrete goes off quite quickly in the heat and we struggle with our numbers to get it floated off while it is still workable. Without the helicopter we would have no hope. We have put ceilings in the dining room and bottom storey of the 2 storey house, flushed and painted them. The electrical work has been done in the 2 storey house, and a huge amount of plumbing has been completed – there are blue PVC pipes everywhere. A local Rotary Club has offered to put in a water filtration system so we have been working frantically (mostly Richard) to get another few hundred metres of pipe in under the paths before we poured so we could get the filtered water to each of the houses. All in all we have made a huge difference to the site in 6 weeks notwithstanding the comment at the head of this missive about the hold-ups. Our bodies are showing signs of weariness and there will be a certain pleasure next week in not having to get up and go to work shovelling dirt in the sun in 37 degree heat. But the sense of satisfaction is enormous and there is a real sense amongst the team of serving God as we give these special kids “Life, hope and a future” as Mercy International’s vision statement says. Colleen arrived in Thailand yesterday and today (Friday) she travelled to Phetchabun by bus and was met by Mum Whun, our Whun, and all the girls from the big girls’ house. On Sunday I travel there in time for her birthday – it will only be the third time I have been with her on her birthday in the last 9 years! The next missive will be of a different flavour as I change gears and spend 4 weeks at the Phetchabun Ban Meata and get involved in some admin work – as yet undefined! Until then God bless Ron The difference we've made in 6 weeks Manger scene The ramshackle cow shed The 3rd house going up Ben & Rut

Missive 4 – 2013

I thought a word picture of a typical day might give you some of the flavour of our stay here. I wrote earlier that the day seemed to start at 5.15am when Jai starts rattling the pans, but I must confess that it is 7.45am before I, and all the others appear for breakfast. Most of us live in the “yellow house” (very creatively named as you will see from the photo). It is a rented property to cater for teams on the site just 50 metres down the narrow street. It has several bedrooms upstairs and a large living area downstairs which has beds for 3 people. This is where I sleep with my mosquito net (my princess bed according to the others) and Trevor, my travelling bear in pride of place on the pillow. There is a lounge area where we sit and eat or read at nights, and over a serving bench there is a fridge, cupboards and a sink. The kitchen is attached at the back and is typically Thai with slatted walls – Thais hate cooking smells in their houses. Back to breakfast. I usually have a bowl of cornflakes and toast with vegemite and cheese. The toaster is a high-tech looking thing but makes the slowest toast in the world – it’s hard to tell whether it’s cooked or just went stale waiting. Actually Thai bread never goes stale because there are enough additives to keep it going for weeks. Before 8am it’s on with the work boots and over to the site to continue with a job or get a new one from Malc. This week I have been relieved of channelling conduit and spent the time boxing up for concrete. We have large steel frames with a timber face which we use and re-use for boxing and these have to be manoeuvred into place, pegged or fixed to a verandah post for example, the dirt levelled inside, steel mesh laid inside, steel pegs drilled into the walls to tie the slab to the building if it’s a verandah, trenches dug at the edges for a thicker edge, and level pegs put in with a laser so the screeding can be done accurately. At 10am we take 30 minutes off for “smoko” back at the yellow house where we are served with cordial, pineapple, watermelon, papaya and some uniquely Thai little jam filled biscuits. We are then back on the job for another two hours before repairing to the yellow house for lunch. This is a highlight and we have been served some wonderful Thai dishes, prepared with minimum or no chilli. The Thai workers sit down in the kitchen and I usually go out there to get some chilli or to try out some of their spicy dishes. The two afternoon sessions, split by afternoon smoko, are only one and a half hours which is great because the afternoons can get pretty hot. As I write this we have finished a day’s work in 37 degree heat and everyone drinks copious amounts of water to replace the copious amounts lost through sweat. We have actually been blessed with some pretty mild weather with a few weeks of temperatures in the high twenties. We knock off at 5pm and head for the showers to wash off the grime of the day. You wouldn’t believe how nice a cold bottle of Coke Zero is at the end of the day. We then organise ourselves for our evening meal. Sometimes we go to the little local eatery for the world’s best pad thai, sometimes we drive to the steakhouse, sometimes we get food from a local market, and sometimes we go to Central Plaza, a huge shopping complex with a whole floor of food outlets like KFC, Sizzler, Maccas (expensive) and a food court (cheap). The evening at the yellow house is made up of sitting in front of laptops (emails and writing blogs!), and in my case working through my crossword book, doing my Bible reading and devouring a number of novels. Everyone wanders off to bed at various times (they are nearly all old people here!!) and I am usually the last go at about 10.30pm unless the novel is very gripping. Well, that’s the shape of the day for 6 days and we have Sunday off, going to church with kids at the Ban Meata centre in the morning and then lazing around for the afternoon. We have just about exhausted the tourist potential of Khon Kaen – that took up the first Sunday afternoon! We received some sad news this past week. Some of you would remember Tim and Steph, the Irish couple, who worked with us last year and who received news while they were here that their son had contracted leukaemia. After all the usual treatment over the last 12 months he died a few days ago. There was some good news in that he had been estranged from his parents for a number of years and that situation was resolved. He also went to church with his parents in the last days and heard the gospel clearly which Tim and Steph believe had an impact on his life. As I conclude this missive the Dutch people are leaving us so we are a much depleted workforce and our chances of finishing some things in the original plan are fading. The last event for the Dutch was to bring all the kids out from the Ban Meata centre to witness the unveiling of the marble plaque announcing that the first completed house (well, almost) is designated the “Dutch House”. I have mentioned before that they raise enormous amounts of money doing lots of normal things (eg, Thai dinners) and a few bizarre things (eg, breaking the ice and swimming in the river, 24 hour stationary bike rides). As I conclude this missive it is a lazy Sunday afternoon and getting very warm again. The last few days have been over 35 degrees so working out in the sun getting ready for concreting tomorrow has been a hot business. A few of us went over to Tescos (large shopping centre) for lunch at their food court today and tonight we will wander over to the market on the local school grounds and pick up a few items for tea. For me that will be some chicken pieces, maybe some chopped pork, a spicy salad in a plastic bag, and some sticky rice, also in a plastic bag. Don’t you wish you were here?! One more blog next week before I head back to Phetchabun to meet up with Colleen who is leaving Australia this Thursday and arriving at Ban Meata on Friday. God bless Ron

The Yellow House

My bed

Yellow house kitchen

Dining room before the next round of concreting

Missive 3 - 2013

Let’s start with our trip to Phetchabun last weekend. It was a flying visit as we left on Saturday morning and came back on Sunday afternoon. One of our neighbours here at the building site runs a 12 seater minibus so we hired that for the journey and we did the 200km journey in about 3 hours with a stopover at a huge service station with shops and food outlets. The toilet stop was made interesting by some new signs which we have not encountered before - there are now 3 choices, Men, Women and LadyBoys! Our arrival at Ban Meata was hugely anticipated by me as it was the first time I had seen my Whun for nearly 12 months. It was worth waiting for and we both shed a few tears over each other’s shoulder. Teams that arrive there receive a rapturous welcome and this was no exception – those who have come for the first time are always impressed, fall in love with the kids, and find it hard to leave. It was the Australia Day weekend so on Saturday night we had an Aussie BBQ Thai style at Pawinee’s house. We got out the little earthenware buckets the Thais use as a BBQ, loaded them with charcoal and a couple of us sat over them for most of the evening with hamburger patties, pork pieces, chicken legs and some prawns. It was idyllic – sitting outside on a warm evening, eating our fill as it came off the BBQ, consuming many bottles of Pepsi Max and a few of the blokes had some bottles of Leo, Thai beer. The older girls joined us (Mum Whun’s house which includes my Whun) and they sat cross-legged around the BBQ’s as they love to do and polished off any of the food we hadn’t eaten. As I said in an earlier missive, this is Thailand and I love it! We had worship on Sunday morning and it was wonderful to be back with our Thai family. I was preaching (4 days’ notice which is pretty good) and spoke on listening to God, using the story of Samuel and Eli. I dramatized the story and they responded well. After lunch Richard and I took the big girls (13 of them) to the Than Thip waterfall for a swim and it was great to spend some more time with Whun. We were back by 4 o’clock and left for Khon Kaen ready for the working week. A word about the Dutch. We met the Dutch team of four at Phetchabun and they came back with us. Annetta, Adelbert, Hennie and Corrie actually raise our average age. Corrie is 78 years old and is up a ladder painting, and when the concrete trucks came in she grabbed an implement to drag the concrete around! She stays with us on site and the other 3 stay in a hotel and travel out daily, much to her scorn. But they do a great job and later this week before they leave there will be an unveiling ceremony of a plaque on the “Dutch House” with all the Ban Meata kids out at the site for the occasion. There has been great progress on the site in the past week and a panoramic view in an accompanying photo will hopefully give you an idea of where we are up to. We have a concrete road that comes from the back gate and is now nearing the dining room. The third house is beginning to go up and concrete is coming again on Tuesday for the verandah. I have spent the entire week (with time off when the concrete trucks come) chasing walls in the upstairs house for conduit. This week I will chase walls for co-axial cable and then I will chase walls for the plumbing. I have been going to bed with the taste of dust in my mouth it looks like that will be true for this week as well. Our 2 young girls, Jade and Tori, have been putting up the ceilings in the first storey house on their own. Great progress from never having done anything like that before. They are anxiously watching for any untoward muscle growth! They will gain some notoriety through a journalist friend in Kingston who is publishing their story in the Kingston Leader and a couple of other SE papers. Some of you who have been reading this blog for a number of years now may remember that our first impressions of chicken being BBQ’d between bamboo sticks was that it looked suspiciously like flat rats. You will be delighted to know that when we visited our local market to get our evening meal the other night we came across the genuine article. Two rats, skinned but complete with head, ears and giblets were laid out on the slab. We didn’t ask what they were worth because nobody in our group had any desire to buy them. The accompanying photo shows Richard looking a bit interested. Right next door to the rats was a sort of porta-cot teeming with what looked like cockroaches but were obviously edible because the deep fried variety were for sale in a basket along with grasshoppers and other insects. There was a piece of hard plastic fixed around the top of the “cot” so although these bugs swarmed up the sides they couldn’t get out. Not wanting to be a latter-day John the Baptist (no honey available!) we gave all this a miss. And to finish with some news about Murray. Those of you who know him know that he has a huge bushy beard, Ned Kelly style. On Sunday he went down to a local hairdresser and said he wanted nitnoy (little bit) off. He came back with nitnoy left on! He just looks as if he hasn’t shaved for a few days and I don’t think he even recognised himself in the mirror because it hasn’t been that short for 25 years. He thinks he’ll have stay in Thailand for a while or they won’t let him out with his current passport photo. Enjoy the read and until next time God bless Ron Richard and the flat rats Boonsalit with the first bite out of a tortoise found on site Panoramic view of the new Ban Meata Ron with Giv, Why and Mum Whun at the top of Than Thip waterfall