Wardrobe Wow!

Ruth Anne: In the back seat, driving through Chiang Mai today, Starr and I agree; we sure feel like we've seen and done way more than a normal 48 hours worth, since arriving Thursday.

We are on our way, past dirty sidewalk stands and glorious golden wats (temples), to order wardrobes. Wardrobes, cupboards - who knew such a rather mundane sounding thing could have so much energy in it, but it does. There are THE Wardrobes! The ones we've raised money for throughout the past several months so our kids could have a place to put stuff, hang clothes, keep it all up and off the floor. We take it for granted, but up until today, our 15 kids at Hot Springs had no hope for such a thing. All their early belongings, not much by any standard, were stored in baskets on the floor and a bamboo stick propped across the corner of a wall. So, in the grand scope of all things Hot Springs, this is big.

Tutu pulls over to the left hand curb to park. An Indian man smiles broadly from inside an unusually bright and airy sidewalk store full of desks and tables and storage cubes. We are shown the wardrobes, two different colours, and we choose the brighter wood-coloured units.

There is some confusion at first. The language barrier, even with Tutu's excellent English, is pressed while we attempt to barter a reasonable price, one within the limits of the actual funds we have brought with us. In addition, there is the option of including a bookshelf for a package rate, and we aren't quite prepared for this. Trying to explain to Tutu that we'd like to, but first we need to determine if we have the money, and next we need to be sure Suradet has the room.

A phone call and some careful communication between George, a calculator, a piece of paper with all this written down so we're clear, and the store owner reveals that Suradet certainly has space, will make space if bookshelves are included, AND the final translated costs is LESS than what we had originally been told! I make George check it over and do the math twice. It's true!

So in the end, we will have 8 wardrobes and 8 bookshelves delivered to Hot Springs sometime next week!!! Wow!!!!

And that's just today's adventure.

Yesterday we went out shopping with Tutu to "Makro" - think Costco only bigger and Asian - to pick up a "few things" for about 160 or so orphans. I thought my shopping was a chore! Tutu's list? Soap (8 packages of 6 bars), toothbrushes (lots), laundry soap (three huge bags of it) and noodles and cookies and cooking oil and chicken (all large quantities). That's two big carts worth, which we then drove out to Doi Saket.

Home 1 is the biggest, and I got to show George and Starr around - the room the Highview Team painted our first visit, the boys' and girls' dorm, the education centre, the nursery. I let Starr hand out the Werthers and she was very popular (not that she isn't anyways :).

Birdie was there, taking care of baby Joshua. It's fun to show her that I'm wearing her beaded bracelet, and to laugh at the height difference between her and George. Ashely was there and we had a drink of cold water with her under a shelter while we waited for Birdie to wait for her son Zachary to arrive so they could....we're not sure. That's how it is, even when it's explained, you're never quite sure, but it's okay, because it's hot and we're on Tutu's time line anyways in these days before Hot Springs.

Very quick visits to Home 2 and Home 3 (Doi Saket) followed, to drop of the rest of the grocery items and take some pictures and hand out Werthers. There was an "orphan moment" when one little guy in particular gave evidence that this might have been the very first time he's ever received a candy. Having trouble opening it, as if he didn't know how, wildly excited by the look and feel of it, almost overwhelmed with delight by the taste, pulling it out and taking another look before popping back in his mouth again, squealing. Beautiful and hard to watch at the same time.

We came back to the Flinchums for some down time, making futile attempts NOT to nap. And after supper we experienced the famous Chiang Mai Night Bazaar. Only about 15 sermon illustrations right there. And it was great fun to try to work through the language and currency differences, bartering when we could. Picture to the left is of a tribal woman (Lisu I think) with her baby tied to her back. Tribal women come to the Night Bazaar to sell their home made crafts.

Today, on top of the wardrobe order, we stopped at a large Thai bookstore for an English-Thai dictionary for Suradet, visited a very large wat (temple) where we were able to see some funeral rituals (an important monk had died), ate out at a Thai-Western restaurant for lunch where Starr was served a true coconut drink and the smallest cheeseburger any of us has ever seen. Then we spent about two hours at a botanical garden and resort area complete with a museum of really, really old Thai stuff.

Which brings me right back to the moment Starr and I looked at each other in the back of the seat and said, "Wow...we've done a lot!"

Tomorrow I'm preaching at the service at Doi Saket and George will lead in Communion. In the afternoon we will make our final preparations - both our luggage and our souls - for the main reason we've come. Those kids are waiting.

So am I. Not well, I admit. I'd like to be there by now, although I am very aware of how important these very full 48 hours have been. We're rested now. We've eaten well. We've had the time to process things so far. The Team has traveled well together, and done these past two days well together. We've spent good time with Tutu and other Asia's Hope Staff and orphans.

But the main reasons we're here are waiting for us up on the mountain. Tomorrow I will take my heart and put it back together, up on the mountain, where I left a piece of it behind.