A Snow Day Of Another Kind

 

Only existing photo due to camera restrictions.  But it's a winner!

We're planning our day trip to Chiang Mai Zoo.  Yupa tells me me that not too long ago, they opened a Snow Dome.  For an additional fee, "We can play in the snow," she says.   I vow to make sure it will happen, not knowing how much the extra fee will be but not caring one bit.  Give these kids a taste of winter?  You bet! 


Zoo Day is hot.  We stop for water and frozen treats half way into the hour long drive there.  We arrive slightly wilted, but still very excited.  There's lots to see along the shaded pathways.  First we visit the giraffes.

It's the closest I've ever been to one, actually.  They're very interactive since there's leafy food you can buy to actually feed them by hand.  Such beautiful eyes on these creatures.

We won't get so up close and personal with the lions or rhino, but we will be entertained by a white-cheeked gibbon who has become an expert at catching morsels tossed to him.  Hilarious!  He should be signed up for some baseball team, he's that good.

Later I will remember all of this with fondness, mostly because of the way the children are impressed with the animals, reading the information plaques, holding hands with one another, and always some little hand slipping into mine, as we sweat make our way from one exhibit to another. 

But it will be the Snow Dome where I hear Him say it.

The signs warn us that, inside, it's  -7C.   Standing in the hot long line up, this sounds wonderful to me.  We are given red jackets, and I consider refusing mine, but not wanting to push it, I settle for putting it on but not doing it up.  Even stepping into the first room, an ante-chamber of preparation to reduce the shock, there is life and vigor pouring out from behind the larger refrigerator-type door.  My inner Canadian is clamoring to get in there!  But first we listen to the rules, and the warnings about how cold it will be.

And then.

We tumble into a room full of packed down snow with blocks of ice and benches and rubber tubes for the 'sly-DER' aka a short but satisfyingly spinny toboggan hill.   Suddenly the flip flops are ridiculous, but nobody cares.  Just stepping into the cold air brings laughing and squealing and exclamations of wonder and surprise.  It's so cold!  Yes it is!!!!  Welcome to Canada, I say. 

Two by two we climb carefully up a set of stairs where an attendant (read, brave Thai person for working in -7 C all day) helps position us on the tube and pushes us off.  Commence the screaming.  Yes, even the big boys.  Yupa insists I sit at the 'front', which, poor thing, is sort of on top of her, but she's afraid and wants me, the experienced winter sports person, to sort of steer the thing, or manage the thing.  But there is no steering or managing to be done.  We are hurled off without much warning, to whisk up and sideways against an icy snow bank, and thrown, screaming, down and around to where we come to an abrupt stop, aided by yet another brave Thai attendant.

Yupa wants to do it again!!!!!!  And so it goes with all of them.  Their first ever toboggan ride, something they will always remember, because they can, because they weren't months old when it happened for them, like it was for me.

And their finger tips are tingling and their noses red and they can't stop smiling, it's that cold.  They don't mind it at all.  They are loving every single moment.  And it is joy in its purest form.

And that's when He says it to me.

I'm not sure if it happens this way for others, but for me, there are moments, like this one right here and now, when it's as if everything goes into a freeze (pun intended here) and time stands still.  And I have the chance just to look around at the faces and the joy, and I feel it in such an overwhelming sort of way that it's as if the voice of God is speaking.

"See this, Ruth Anne?  See this purity of joy?  Doesn't this, this moment of shalom, shalom (everything as I mean it to be) override all those sad things?"

Pause the pause for a bit of back story.  I think it's because I was eleven years old when, having a missionary speaker come to our church, I first entertained an idea of coming to southeast Asia.  I was just a child.  And I think it's also because because now this is all about the children, I think that's why I make so much connection, so often when I'm here, to my own childhood. 

A lot of sad things happened for me in my childhood, at least that's how I remember them.   And a lot of sad things have happened for these children before coming to live with us. 

But today, in this joy-packed moment of cold amazement, it's as if all those sad things don't matter any more.  It's not like they never happened.  They did, and they are part of our stories, becoming, under God's good grace, part of who we are in strength and compassion and capacity.  But the stink has gone out of them, the sting, the wounding.  There is such healing for me in this frozen moment.

When I was eleven, experiencing the sadness, the weirdness that I couldn't figure out then, if you had told me, don't worry, one day you'll be tobogganing with outrageously delighted children on the other side of the planet and it will all makes sense, I could never have imagined.

And that's what He gives me this day.   A beyond-imagining way of healing for me. 

Time's up for our Snow Dome adventure.  But that's probably okay because some of them are actually shivering by now.  We all reach down and touch the snow once more in fond reverence, and move back as a group to hand over the red jackets we certainly won't need outside.

The fun isn't over, and I will hear echoes of His voice at the Splash pad and also on the ride home when all the fun has napped us all out, and sweaty sleepy littles are told that we're home.  

The whole of it, the admission to the Zoo, and the Aquarium, and the Snow Dome and the Splash Pad, and the frozen treats and lunch and supper, all of it, will only have cost $15 per kid.  Didn't have to worry about the budget one bit.  

An On-Purpose Family

 Oh I miss them so much!!!

And I have to admit, when this whole thing in Thailand started in 2008, I honestly could not have imagined where it would go.  The degree to which this connection with our family at Hot Springs feels like an over the top, extra gift from a lavish God in terms of this being extended family – like very lavishly extended family – what a surprise.

I may be serving as Highview’s interim pastor right now, and delighted for the opportunity to be in the thick of that right now.  But the real calling of this latter part of my life is what happens at Hot Springs under the umbrella of New Family Foundation.

And just to remind us, or in case anyone new to what we're doing is reading this:

New Family Foundation is the name of the charitable organization set up by Pastors Suradet and Yupa with their own Thai Board of Directors beginning in March of 2018.  Highview Community Church in Kitchener ON Canada came alongside Suradet and Yupa in their care of orphan and at risk children in northern Thailand for the first 10 years under a different organization.  When Suradet and Yupa made the change, we made the commitment to continue that support and remain the Canadian connection.  That’s when I stepped into the position of being the Canadian Representative for New Family Foundation under the umbrella of Highview where I serve as Missionary in Residence. 

Now, for clarity sake, you will also often hear us refer to our family there as being at Hot Springs.  That’s the name of the Church Suradet and Yupa planted about 15 years ago and where the children were first welcomed to come live with them on the property.  So New Family Foundations/Hot Springs, we often use that interchangeably.

That means each child we care for has a Canadian Sponsor.  And it means that, under normal circumstances, I travel there two to three times a year.

But then came Covid.

 It’s a remarkable thing to realize how much into ourselves we’ve been here in the West as a result of Covid-19.  Understandable.  This pandemic has disrupted our lives for a long, long time, and we’re focused on what our own governments are doing, how it impacts our own kids at school, our own case numbers, our own rolling out of the vaccine. 

But it’s called a global pandemic for a reason, and in fact one of the first cases of Covid-19 outside of China was identified in Thailand. 

That was back when Megan and Norma and Esther where there with me.  The last time we were there back in January 2020. 

Since then Thailand has reported remarkably low numbers of the virus.

And I won’t give statistics because they are changing all the time.  But if you look it up you will likely be quite amazed at the comparison of case numbers and deaths between Canada and Thailand, especially considering that Thailand has approximately twice the population as Canada.

How do we account for this?  There will be studies I’m sure.  And it might be impossible to be able to determine every factor.  I think a few big differences between Canada and Thailand that may account for their better success in handling the pandemic would be things like having a very compliant culture that listens to public health restrictions, having a no-touch greeting, a practice of already wearing masks to guard against pollution in the cities, and most importantly, the fact that they do not care for their elderly in institutions but in their own homes. 

Take all that for what it might mean.  Just an interesting study on how culture may affect human experience during a pandemic.

For our kids specifically, during the initial wave, the children were already on their school break from mid March to mid May, when most of our kids go back to spend time with any family they still have, many in the mountains.  This was actually a safe place for them to be, remote and unexposed with everyone in the village staying put.

At first all they did was delay the start of school, but by the end of May the Thai government was able to switch to online learning, and our kids were called back to Hot Springs.

I will let you know that we lost two our kids in that space.  One Praweet, his grandmother was too afraid to send him back to be ‘close to the city’, and kept him home.  Makes me sad.  He was just a little stinker.  Another, Min, had been staying with her brother the whole time, and was not able to adjust to the back and forth of schooling online and then in the classroom.   

I tell you that so you can know that our Sponsors sign up to give a piece of their hearts away to children whose circumstances can often be unpredictable.  In the infrastructure that we’re working with, there is no legal custody situation here.  Just need to be reminded of that.  Full disclosure.

So for the first part of this school year for them, which began in May, Suradet and Yupa were doing remote learning for 20 kids (18 Sponsored children and two Staff children). 

Just let that sink in for a second.

No laptops were being supplied by the school boards there.  We were able to get them three extra computers, since the one school computer we have there in the study room, and the one computer Suradet and Yupa have for their own ministry and personal use, just wasn’t going to cut it.  This money came in so quickly when we put the word out.  Thank you so much for those who made this happen. 

By July the children were back in class.  Early in January there was another two week stint of remote learning.  But right now, as of this taping at least, the children have once again returned to in class learning.

Whew!

The situation with Covid is a constantly changing dynamic, as we all know.  So we will keep you posted as much as possible as things change.

Next...the New Property Development.

Just a quick back story.

In 2014 there was a military coup in Thailand that remains in effect with ongoing challenges to the monarchy and protests and all of it still being a ‘thing’. 

One of the changes in this new regime was to crack down on charitable foundations, especially ones that claimed to be supporting children but were actually using that as a front for the drug industry and child sex trafficking.  So a good clamp down.  But what it meant we have to get these kids situated on ‘deeded’ property, and the sooner the better.

That new property is basically down the road, closer to the schools and only about five minutes away from the church.

The story of this property and how we have obtained it is rather long and convoluted, and I have been keeping everyone up to date through blogs over the past four years.  Yes, that’s how long we’ve been working on this.  Thank you for everyone who has prayed for us to receive the deed, and to Evelvation Church in Waterloo for partnering with us in building the road.

We have already received some funding towards digging the well, installing electricity, and building the required wall around the property from Grace Presbyterian, C3 Kitchener.

These are good starts.  But we need to finish paying off the property and get started on our building.   That’s going to take a hunk of money, and the final amount keeps changing based on inflation and other factors.  Sometimes, if I let myself forget that God’s been all over this from the beginning, and He’s way bigger than any challenge, I can become a tad intimidated.

But I am encouraged that recently we received the opportunity to do a dollar matching deal.  We have a donation of $20,000 that the donor will match dollar for dollar.  That would give us $40,000.00, hopefully by August, to make a good dent in the total amount.

I won’t get into the details quite yet about how you might participate, except to say, please be watching for that communication.  So for every dollar you give, it goes twice as far.

Where does all this lead us during a global pandemic?

Achy.  At least I am.  There's no end of work to do on this end, so I'm not bored or restless.  

Just...

I miss them so much.

Or did I say that already.