This is My Family

With long anticipated joy, I am delighted to announce that, shortly after her 18th birthday, my granddaughter Abby will be travelling with me to Thailand this summer to visit Hot Springs!!!

Yes!!  It's really happening!!  We have our tickets already, and she's getting all the preparation done (sorry about the vaccinations, Honey), and working on raising funds.  She's asking all the right kinds of questions about culture and customs and how we will interact with the children.  She even has a "job description" because this isn't just a fun little outing with Gramma.  This is a full on missions trip and she's jumping in with both feet. 

What a missionary-pastor-Gramma's dream come true this is, on just so many levels.  I've been travelling to Thailand since Abby was two, so there's really no time in her memory when she didn't hear all the stories and begin her own imaginings of what it might like to go there one day.

It's interesting, then, that I have separately-in-my-mind chosen the theme of "This is My Family" for our Bible lessons when we're there.  We'll be looking at Paul's instructions about living together in community from Ephesians 4:25-5:2 as our spring board.  From there we'll be talking about the importance of truth-telling to build trust, healthy and unhealthy ways to express anger, the give and take of relationships, and making sure to use our words to speak life into one another, among other important choices.  It will have an extra special family flavour for me, I know, to have Abby there.

And "family" is really what this is all about.

According to an article from Psychology Today entitled "Understanding Family Dynamics"...

In a functional family, parents strive to create an environment in which everyone feels safe and respected. A positive home requires parents to set and uphold rules, but not resort to overly rigid regulation of any one person's behavior. In a healthy household, slights and misbehaviors are readily addressed, and boundaries are clear and consistent, all of which help avoid disharmony in the longer term. While this sounds easy, it can be hard to achieve in practice.

I don't know....does this sound easy?  It hasn't been, not in my experience.  Not in my experience with the family God gave Ken and I as we raised our two children.  Not in the context of being actively involved with our grandchildren.  And not in the realm of this large gathered family we now are part of in Northern Thailand.  In every iteration, we are together as imperfect human beings.  The balances are tricky.  The harmony sometimes hard to achieve.  

But I would still say that family is what this is all about.  It's worth it.  It's all worth it.

Thank you to everyone who went out on dollar store searches for some of the particulars I needed in putting together our "Family" lanyards.  And to Sharon Ogilvie who is, as we speak, fussing with the creation of all the 'fobs' that go with.

The idea here is that each child will receive a lanyard with the wood cutout and a tag to write their name.  Then, for each lesson there will be a fob to hang on the lanyard.  As we go, and we add more and more fobs to our lanyard, it will get a little more difficult to manage the clip.  That in itself will be a teaching point.  We have a large family, and the more we have in our family, the trickier things can be.  All the more reason to work together for each other's good.

And I'll just put it out there, that as the cost of travel is increasing, any and all specifically-directed donations towards that for me in my role as Missionary in Residence is most appreciated.  Email donations@hcckw.ca. designated "Ruth Anne Breithaupt, MIR, trip costs."

Thank you everyone for all the ways you help make it all possible!

In so many ways, 'family' has such a generous meaning in my life!

What's That There You're Playing With? Oh!

Trigger warning, for real.

Those who are squeamish about insects might want to skip this post altogether.

Fun fact about Thailand:  It has big bugs.

Fun fact about childhood everywhere:  Kids play.

Pictured above is a fine sample of the Rhinoceros Beetle (aka Hercules Beetle) that lives and thrives well in the jungle-forests of Northern Thailand.  Despite its rather intimidating appearance, these beetles are slow and sluggish with no stinging or biting mechanisms or instincts.  They are herbivores and have no interest in chomping on people.

As such, they make happy little play things for our children at Hot Springs.  

Apparently there's a whole gambling side hustle with these beetles, but we won't be mentioning this to our kids any time soon.  It was enough that one of our more entrepreneuring young boys took advantage of how many beetles he could gather from our property, and smuggled them in to school to sell to his friends.  Yes, they are that popular.

I don't know about you, but a large, clutchy beetle isn't the first thing I think of when I make a list of fun toys for children.  In fact, there's a part of my Western rescue instinct that wants to 'fix' this.

Are you kidding me?  Let's get these kids some 'real' toys!  

As if the absence of 'real' toys is a problem that needs fixing.

But what's more real?  I think of my own childhood, summers in particular.  I had the privilege of family property that took us out of the city where there were just a lot more critters.  And while my little Canadian psyche would have likely freaked out to see a bug this big, we still played with the frogs and caught fish in a pail, and fed the chipmunks.  We stopped to watch where the ants were going, marveled at the display of moths against the windows at night, and even gathered tent caterpillars and kept them in container for a while, and gave them names.  

These were our summer toys.  Toys of nature.  Toys of wonder and discovery.

And what if summer was always?   Wouldn't kids do this all the time?  Find the wonder and delight and playfulness in what's around them?

So, yes, at Hot Springs we have skipping ropes, and table tennis, and soccer balls, and now Jenga blocks (thanks to the happy project of our Team last November), to play with.  Sponsors send along Lego and games and such, all of which are received with delight provide much play value.

But the giant beetles remind me that not all that I see as poverty is poor.  

Now of course, if you don't have enough to eat, or if you are cold on those chilly nights up in the mountains, and if you don't have enough clothes in your house to send everyone to school on the same day, or if there's no school in your village at all, or if you're afraid that your Mom's new husband is going to hurt you, it's just harder to be a kid at all.   Play itself becomes a luxury.

That's why we need you.

“The mission of New Family Foundation is to provide a loving home for at-risk and orphaned children in in Northern Thailand to help them achieve their best potential in education, vocation and service to society.”