Anne Lamott’s Conversion

May 29th, 2011

“I didn’t go to the flea market the week of my abortion. I stayed home, and smoked dope and got drunk, and tried to write a little, and went for slow walks along the salt marsh with Pammy. On the seventh night, though, very drunk and just about to take a sleeping pill, I discovered that I was bleeding heavily. It did not stop over the next hour. I was going through a pad every fifteen minutes, and I thought I should call a doctor or Pammy, but I was so disgusted that I had gotten so drunk one week after an abortion that I just couldn’t wake someone up and ask for help. I kept on changing Kotex, and I got sober very quickly. Several hours later, the blood stopped flowing, and I got in bed, shaky and sad and too wild to have another drink or take a sleeping pill. I had a cigarette and turned off the light. After a while, as I lay there, I became aware of someone with me, hunkered down in the corner, and I just assumed it was my father, whose presence I had felt over the years when I was frightened and alone. The feeling was so strong that I actually turned on the light for a moment to make sure no one was there–of course, there wasn’t. But after a while, in the dark again, I knew beyond any doubt that it was Jesus. I felt him as surely as I feel my dog lying nearby as I write this.

“And I was appalled. I thought about my life and my brilliant hilarious progressive friends, I thought about what everyone would think of me if I became a Christian, and it seemed an utterly impossible thing that simply could not be allowed to happen. I turned to the wall and said out loud, ‘I would rather die.’

“I felt him just sitting there on his haunches in the corner of my sleeping loft, watching me with patience and love, and I squinched my eyes shut, but that didn’t help because that’s not what I was seeing him with.

“Finally I fell asleep, and in the morning, he was gone.

“This experience spooked me badly, but I thought it was just an apparition, born of fear and self-loathing and booze and loss of blood. But then everywhere I went, I had the feeling that a little cat was following me, wanting me to reach down and pick it up, wanting me to open the door and let it in.  But I knew what would happen: you let a cat in one time, give it a little milk, and then it says forever. So I tried to keep one step ahead of it, slamming my houseboat door when I entered or left.

“And one week later, when I went back to church, I was so hungover that I couldn’t stand up for the songs, and this time I stayed for the sermon, which I just thought was so ridiculous, like someone trying to convince me of the extraterrestrials, but the last song was so deep and raw and pure that I could not escape . It was as if the people were singing in between the notes, weeping and joyful at the same time, and I felt like their voices or something was rocking me in its bosom, holding me like a scared kid, and I opened up to that feeling–and it washed over me.

“I began to cry and left before the benediction, and I raced home and felt the little cat running along at my heels, and I walked down the dock past dozens of potted flowers, under a sky as blue as one of God’s own dreams, and I opened the door to my houseboat, and I stood there a minute, and then I hung my head and said, “Fuck it: I quit.” I took a long deep breath and said out loud, “All right. You can come in.”

So this is the beautiful moment of my conversion.”

Later, she writes, “I do not at all understand the mystery of grace–only that it meets us where we are but does not leave us where it found us.”

An excerpt from Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott.

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Meet (and congratulate!) Tawee

May 25th, 2011

Before The SOLD Project was founded–and before our documentary had even hit the editing room–Rachel Sparks-Graeser was filming in Chiang Mai with a small crew to capture and expose the issue of child sexual exploitation in Thailand. While interviewing for a translator, Rachel met a Thai student named Tawee Donchai.

Many of you met Tawee in our film, The SOLD Project: THAILAND. When he heard of what Rachel and her crew were seeking to accomplish, he knew he wanted to be a part of it. Since leaving his village as a young man, he had always had the strong desire to return and help his home and family in some way. In the film, Tawee talks of so many of his peers leaving to “work” in the cities, only to come back a year or two later, dying of AIDS. Tawee told Rachel that an important part of the story of exploitation was to be found in his village just outside of Chiang Rai.  There, Tawee introduced Rachel to an at-risk girl named Cat. The rest is history.

Tawee’s Story

Tawee’s parents worked as farmers and loggers in the foothills of northern Thailand, about four miles from where The SOLD Project is currently located.  When Tawee and his twin brother were a few years old, their family moved to the nearby village where SOLD is currently located so that the boys could attend the local public school. But Tawee’s father had to keep his job as a logger in the foothills, and he would camp at the site for up to two months at a time.

When Tawee was six, his father died from complications of the hard labor and travel; his mother was obligated to take her husband’s place at the logging site.  Being a single parent and working hard away from home, she had little time left to eat–or go to a doctor.  She died as a result of a medical emergency when Tawee was in second grade.

Tawee and his brother were taken in by their grandmother, and they studied at the local public school–the one where many of SOLD’s scholarship students attend.  But their teacher noticed how smart the twins were, so she found them a place at a more advanced school, where her husband worked.  Because of the distance from home, the boys lived on-site at the school in a dormitory for ten months out of the year.  In fourth grade, they began to work construction on these breaks to save money for their schooling. In fact, Tawee has lots of quirky stories to tell about the many interesting side jobs he held. He even grew vegetables and sold them to the school cafeteria!

Tawee’s grandmother highly valued education.  “She always told us that, without parents, education was all we had to take care of us in the future,” says Tawee.  He began receiving a partial scholarship through a Bangkok non-profit organization that would help provide for his education through college. Tawee earned a BS in Chemistry and then a Master’s degree in Biochemistry. While working for SOLD, he pursued doctoral work in HIV research.

Engaged!

This past week, Tawee got engaged to the lovely Beth Crowe! We are so happy for him. Beth is a wonderful young woman from Ontario, Canada that has been doing great work with the Shan people in Thailand. All of us here at SOLD love them both dearly and want to send a big official CONGRATULATIONS to Tawee and Beth!!!  We’re so happy for you both!

Tawee, Mike, and Kevin (By Beth Crowe)

Tawee, Mike, and Kevin (By Beth Crowe)

Tawee and Beth: Engaged!

Tawee and Beth: Engaged!

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So, Two (Kinda Major) Things:

May 22nd, 2011

Our insurance company came through!

In a surprising yet oh-so-welcome turn of events, our international health insurance company, IMG, has finally agreed to cover their part of the costs of Heather’s spine injury. They’d been denying coverage from the get-go, claiming Heather’s herniation was due to a degenerative, intevertebral disc disease—a “pre-existing condition” excluded by our policy. Despite lots of medical evidence proving otherwise (like MRI images of her healthy spine), they still wouldn’t budge. The sudden credit card debt and interest payments put us in the financial predicament that eventually sent us back to the States in December. We were beyond disappointed, to say the least.

Last month, we had one final shot at an appeal. Once again, we gathered up a stack of medical evidence, stated our case, and, for good measure, included a letter from an attorney. Wouldn’t you know it, but that legal angle did the trick! We’re still in a state of shock that they actually came through after six months of letters, phone calls, and many tears of frustration. In the end, IMG is covering about 35 percent of our incurred costs, which is great news. We’ll post the longer version of the conclusion to our insurance saga on our blog once everything is finalized. Thank you SO much for your prayers and encouragement!

We’re moving back to Grand Rapids, Michigan!

With our unexpected move back to the States, we had two goals: to recover financially and to ground ourselves in stability and community after a few years of international moves. Since we have family in Philadelphia (free housing!) and had always planned on that area being “home,” it seemed like the natural place for a transition into that next step. Our plan was for Michael to continue with SOLD full-time while Heather scaled back her hours to look for additional employment elsewhere to help us meet living expenses and pay off the new debt.  After sending out almost 50 cover letters and resumes all over, Heather got plenty of interviews—everywhere except in Philadelphia. As we looked at countless apartments, all the while calculating the cost of living here, we realized the small handful of nonprofit job opportunities that were turning up didn’t pay nearly enough to live on. Not in Philly, anyway.

Meanwhile, a recent visit to friends and supporters in Grand Rapids, Michigan—our home before Thailand—led to a surprising feeling: coming home! After that trip, Heather continued to look for work all over as we prayed about the possibility of Philadelphia not being where we’re supposed to settle right now. We’d have to take you out to coffee to share with you all the little things God revealed to us during this time, but, as more time passed, we began to feel pulled toward Grand Rapids. What’s left of our stuff is already in Grand Rapids, waiting patiently in storage. And, importantly, our support from monthly donors (like you!) goes so much further there, allowing Michael to continue working full-time with SOLD.

So, we’re moving to Grand Rapids around the middle of next week. We’re looking for an apartment in our old neighborhood downtown and are excited to return to our old church, where we gained our very first SOLD supporters. Right now, Heather has several networking opportunities lined up—and even a second job interview! While we’ll certainly miss our family and friends in Philadelphia and are so, so grateful for the time we’ve had here these past few months, we’re excited for this next step. Pray for a smooth transition.

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Her Mother, The “Singer”

May 6th, 2011

Recently, SOLD has been updating a few details in our scholarship database. When we began, we knew all the kids by name. But a lot of students and staff have been added lately–thanks to donors and sponsors like you! Most of the Thai kids go by nicknames, so it isn’t uncommon to come across what appears to be a totally new name when, actually, it’s a child that is at the Resource Center everyday, but going by a completely different nickname.  It’s often their favorite English word, like “Dream” or “Game” or, of course, “Cat.”

If you are a student sponsor, you know that a profile includes your student’s picture, birth date, some basic information, and a message from the student. My husband and I sponsor a girl whose older sister is already a prostitute. Her profile includes a picture of her with her sister, posing in a familiar side-hug. It’s a startling reminder on our fridge how close she is, like so many, to following in her big sister’s footsteps.

The other day, I was clicking in and out of profile folders on our database, marking “boy” or “girl” next to the long Thai names. I noticed a small notation at the bottom of one young girl’s profile. I’ll call her Pim.

Pim is in 4th grade. Her mother and father have divorced, which is a common story in a land of so much alcoholism and abuse. Her stepfather is in jail. Alone, Pim’s mother could not make enough money to support her family, much less her daughter’s education. So Pim’s mother left the village to find work in the big city, leaving her daughter with friends from school, an aunt, and a grandmother who is too old to work.

“I feel I have become a burden for my grandmother,” Pim writes in her profile. “I feel so bad.”

Her profile continues:

My mother went to Bangkok to work as a singer at night. She doesn’t make a lot of money as a singer. Sometimes when my mom is sick she doesn’t have enough money to go to the doctor.*

Huh. I was surprised that someone would travel all the way to Bangkok just to be a singer. I hadn’t seen anything like that before.

Only I had. Countless times. The sentence ends in an asterisk, and the notation at the bottom simply states:

Her mother is a prostitute in Bangkok.

Of course. Of course she isn’t a singer. And of course the mother would tell her ten-year old daughter that she was going to Bangkok to be a singer.

In the midst of my data entry, in the midst of the daily to-do’s of a small non-profit, I was punched in the gut all over again by what we do here at SOLD. I couldn’t help but picture how fervently Pim believes her mother is a singer, a performer in the bright lights of the city. Or maybe she knows, deep down. Or maybe she refuses to believe it at all. Or maybe she doesn’t think twice. Will she realize the truth when she is older? Will she be angry and ashamed?  Or perhaps proud of her mother’s sacrifice to provide in the face of desperation and poverty? To maybe provide for her daughter so she won’t have to be a singer in Bangkok, too?

I don’t even know which scenario is even the most desirable. They all make me sort of nauseous.

When I visited Bangkok over a year ago for the first time, I learned more than I wanted to about the nature of prostitution in Thailand. There, poverty is the trafficker. Most Thai girls are not held in brothels by some violent pimp. They are held there by a cultural obligation to provide for their family. They stay in the sex industry because they need to provide income for their parents. Or medicine for their grandparents. Or food for their children. Or education for their younger siblings so they won’t have to travel to the big city to be a “singer.”

That first week in Bangkok, I wrote in my journal, “Would I?”

I was born in Omaha, Nebraska. My public school education was free. I never wanted for a thing.

Would I do that for my family? These girls do it everyday. Would I?

I never have to find out.

This was originally posted on SOLD’s official blog. Check it out at thesoldproject.com/blog

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Honest To God

May 3rd, 2011

When Michael and I first began fundraising personal support for our first overseas missions work, it was during a crazy time in America.  Remember Election season 2008?  Yikes. Long story short: I said something on Facebook about voting for Obama, which led to some of our supporters withdrawing their financial support and other potential supporters to call us and tell us why they chose not to support us. It became something of a news story in the Christian blogging world and blogs were blogged and journals were journaled for all the world to (literally) comment on. We were, at best, martyred representatives of the next generation of American Christians. At worst, we were baby-killers. It was mortifying.

That began an… awkward relationship between Heather as Missionary and Heather as Writer. There is my personal self and my professional self, and they came to a weird place on this blog and our old TWR blog. (On the other side of the spectrum, there is a circa 2004 Xanga blog out there with my name on it that is nauseatingly confessional.)

When we left for Thailand, a few friends sent us with some fantastic books about missionaries: the amazing experiences they had, the unforgettable miracles, the magical moments, etc. Those books both inspired me and drove me nuts. Didn’t these people suffer?  Didn’t their decision to leave home suck sometimes? (Case in point with my blogging issues: I’ll be falling asleep tonight and be thinking about how I shouldn’t have written the word “suck.”) Why don’t people write about that?! I resolved to not be that person. I will tell it like it is: mostly unbelievable and indescribable and, sometimes, you think you made a big mistake.

Thailand, personally, for me was one of the hardest times of my life. I can only think of one other season in my life where I have been as low, cried as hard, and felt as worse about myself. I felt like, no matter how hard I tried, I just couldn’t do anything right.

But I didn’t write about that. Not on this blog and not even in some journal hidden under my pillow.

When I confided to a close friend that we had made the decision to return home from Thailand early, she asked me:

“I was wondering about this. If you believe God is directing you around the world, why would he send you over there just to have surgery and be put in a position where you have to leave?”

This friend doesn’t believe in God–doesn’t think he exists at all–and she got it. She knew what I was thinking. She asked me what no one else had the courage to ask me, even though it was on my mind everyday. “What the heck?”

The truth is, the missionaries who get books written about them have been at it for a long time. And, when you’ve been following God through thick and thin for a long time, you have a lot of wisdom and perspective. Which I do not. They know that those moments of frustration are hardly worth a mention in the grand scheme of God’s goodness and the privilege to serve him. I know that in my head, and I am trying to learn it in my heart and in the daily physical walking around of my life.

My brother has an inoperable brain tumor and sometimes–just every once in a while–he blogs that it is really freaking hard to have a tumor taking up an insane amount of your brain. A dear friend lost her firstborn child last year, and sometimes she needs to get it out there that she still surprises herself with the depth of the pain. I know their hearts, and they don’t write it out to complain, though they certainly have the right to. They get it out there because they know that another cancer bearer and grieving mom need to read about how what they are going through is normal.

And that’s when I start to punch the “backspace” key with guilt and shame. Cancer. Loss. What right do I have to even reference that? I guess all I am trying to say is that I wish I had been a little more honest about the past year and our present circumstances for the benefit of others who might be or will be going through something similar.

I didn’t write because I didn’t want to seem like I was complaining. And I didn’t want anyone taking away their support because I said something honest and stupid. And while I’m not advocating for blabbing your every thought onto the World Wide Web, I do wish that I had shared the good and the bad. I did write a while back about a Real Simple article that encouraged me greatly through just a moment of homesick honesty. Even if it is just for the sake of some young girl overseas, feeling alone and feeling that Skype isn’t cutting it for her soul.  I think it’s only fair to her and to myself. And then I’ll write that book of all the good things and everyone can be impressed by how easy my life is.

Posted by: collettostories Category: thoughts on life Tags: , , ,

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Life, the Soundtrack

April 14th, 2011

Today I wrapped up my appeal letter to the insurance, getting ready to overnight it to make the Monday deadline. I have continued to put it off because it makes my heart rate immediately skyrocket. In my mind, I go back to lying in the hospital bed, pleading through tears in the middle of the night to the insurance company. (You know, because that was the only time they were open in the U.S. Funny, what with them being an “international” company and all.  Ugh, see? There I go again…) I go back to talking with Mike on the porch, realizing that with this new financial burden, we couldn’t stay in Thailand, both of us feeling like failures. So when I try typing the appeal, I get teary and feel all levels of anger and confusion and injustice and misery at what a small problem it really is.

Today, sitting at Cosi for the free WiFi, I wrapped up a near-final draft of the letter and put my head down on the table.

“Cheer me up,” I said to Mike across the table. “I just finished that letter.”

“I’m trying to upload this big file for the fourth time,” he calmly replied, “so I might not be the best candidate at the moment. But…. I think you’re pretty!”

Just then, Cosi’s acoustic singer/songwriter station began playing Train’s “Hey, Soul Sister,” and a smile crept across my face in seconds. Before the second verse, Mike and I were both lip-syncing and shaking our booties in the faux leather chairs, drawing a few stares. And I felt better. Dancing like a fool in public with your lover has that effect.

Before Michael and I even started dating, we could have filled an entire mixed CD with “our songs.”  Before we were “boyfriend and girlfriend,” we had already exchanged at least a dozen CD’s with songs for each other. In the first few months of our friendship, we embarked on a roadtrip and flipped through each others CD cases. (Kids, that’s like scrolling through a really heavy iPod.) We had almost entirely the same music collection. Much to my brother’s satisfaction, after he’d laid kindling for years, Michael got me officially into Wilco and Josh Ritter. I got him to embrace some new singer/songwriters. I credit one mix Mike called “When I Go Down” with being the soundtrack of my return to a relationship with God. Every so often, our three-year age difference would show with bands I’d never heard of or original EP albums I had never come across.

Note: To this day, Mike still won’t even listen to early John Mayer and I gag every time I hear Counting Crows.

A few weeks after our engagement, I was driving home in my first car, my dream car: a beautiful 2002 Honda Civic that had been mine for about a month. I was listening to Perfect, by Jon McLaughlin.  It was in that beautiful July afternoon that it actually hit me that I was going to freaking marry Michael Colletto. I was singing the song to the whole world at the top of my lungs, and there was a man next to me in a red convertible, laughing. “I’m getting married!” I screamed, and he shouted “congratulations” through my open window and out the other side, into the blue, blue sky.  I like to think he kissed his wife a little longer than usual when he walked in the door that night.

In our three years of marriage, there is always a song or two that we play on repeat during a season, which I usually include in our anniversary slideshow that I throw together with iPhoto at midnight each January 4th.  Last year in Slovakia, I’m Yours, by Jason Mraz was everywhere. Before it was a hit in the U.S., Europe had fallen in love with it, partnering the tune with at least three different cell phone commercials. and, embarrassingly enough, some of those lyrics resonated with me in that time of transition:  Open up your plans and, damn, you’re free.

In Grand Rapids, no song was more fully appropriate for that season than Labelship Down, by Josh Ritter. We’ve got enough so who needs more of what we never really had? On our Driven by Freedom tour, we must have listened to Josh Ritter’s old “Hello Starling” album 100 times.

This year in Thailand, it was What I Wouldn’t Do, by Ingrid Michaelson.  Her uplift beats and happy, thoughtful little lyrics were perfect for life out at the Resource Center.

But consistently for the past few years, we’ve always had this song playing: You and I, by Ingrid Michaelson.  We hop around whatever little kitchen is ours at the time, daydreaming.

Don’t you worry there, my honey.  We might not have any money, but we’ve got our love to pay the bills. Maybe I think you’re cute and funny.  Maybe I wanna do what bunnies do with you, if you know what I mean.

Well, you might be a bit confused and you might be a little bit bruised, but, baby, how we spoon like no one else. So I will help you read those books and you will soothe my worried looks, and we will put the lonesome on the self.

Oh, let’s get rich and buy our parents homes in the south of France.  Let’s get rich and give everybody nice sweaters and teach them how to dance.  Let’s get rich and build a house on a mountain making everybody looks like ants.

You and I, you and I.

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On the Road: One Year Later

April 3rd, 2011

If combining possessions with a new spouse is difficult enough, you can imagine the challenge Mike and I faced when we downsized and packed for an international move before your first anniversary.  We are both planners, organized in our own way.  Mike might say I am not as orderly as he is (who is, really?). But there is detailed inventory on each cardboard box we’ve packed away, compliments of my love for all things Sharpie. Before we moved, Michael sold his first car with a tear in his eye, and I would be lying to say we didn’t sniffle a little bit when we gave away that hamster.

In Slovakia, we were within walking distance to an IKEA.  (I know, right?) Our apartment was only sparsely furnished, so we decided to invest a good $50 for our 6+ months there and get ourselves a shower curtain and dishes.  (I use the word “dishes” loosely, as any IKEA shopper would understand.) We loved that goofy attic apartment, its cool tiles and natural light. It was there I learned you can bake anything with only a 1/4-cup measuring scoop in the kitchen drawers.  That place was actually my first apartment from my semester abroad a few years earlier, when I had sipped red wine during a long hot bath, forgetting all about that Michael Colletto character back home. The first night we fell asleep next to each other in that apartment, married, I was grinning like a giddy fool.

After an unexpected move back to the States, we arrived in Grand Rapids, Michigan only intending to visit, but God had other plans. For about a month or two, a friend hooked us up in his empty condo with a steal on rent until we found something. We fell in love with Grand Rapids that way: sitting in the empty dining room on bar stools overlooking the city’s skyline. We watched the sunset from the air mattress in the bedroom.

Soon, we rescued our stuff from the pre-Slovakia storage unit in Philadelphia.  We settled in to a small one-bedroom just outside of downtown where the ancient homes had been split up to accommodate the young families forming just after World War II. We unpacked our wedding gifts, still shiny and new, and it felt like Christmas.  Or, perhaps more accurately, the day after our wedding. I am a nutcase about getting books on the shelf as soon as possible, so there is a picture somewhere of our living room a total mid-unpacking mess, mostly empty, with perfectly organized books on the shelf, as if they had been there all along, waiting for us to arrive.

When we packed to leave for Thailand nine months later, the move was once again not what we had anticipated. We were packing for a three-month road trip across the country to save money on rent, but we were also packing–in a Michigan winter–for a year in Asia. It seemed just wrong to pack away our gloves as we shivered! That last morning, as the last ready-to-go piles from each room crept to the front door, so did our cat, who refused to enter any rooms that had been completely emptied. I think he was sincerely worried he would be left behind.

I have felt like that recently. In my mind, creeping from each blank room into the present, afraid I’ll get left behind in the emptiness.  It has been a year since we’ve been in our own home with our things. When we visited our storage unit in Grand Rapids a few weeks ago, I wanted to crawl over those damn Sharpied boxes until I reached our plastic-covered mattress. I wanted to fall asleep in my own bed.

Recently, while staying with my best friend, she mentioned that they had chipped or broken nearly all of their plates from their wedding registry.  I thought about it and, with genuine surprise, noted that I don’t think we’d broken more than that one wine glass. In the loving and annoyed tone only a best friend can appropriately muster, she replied, “Well, that’s not fair. Your stuff has been in storage more than it has been out.”  Touche.

I get hit with waves of homesickness that are quickly followed by confusion. Because I’m not quite sure where I am homesick for. Our life together began in Philadelphia, but it was in Slovakia we found ourselves. I think it was in Grand Rapids where we stood our ground for whatever it was worth, and it was in Thailand that it all seemed to fall apart and get put back together again. When I left Nebraska for college just before my 18th birthday, it was the last time I would sleep in the same place for more than one year until…. well, I still don’t know.

Our permanent address throughout all this has been my parents’ home in Nebraska, where I grew up; my mother has been the self-titled postmistress of our lives. One day, our kids are going to think we’re telling lies. They’ll look at our records and think I never left Nebraska.  That, I think, will be the most ironic of all.

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Teaching the Thai Kids to Trash Talk

March 16th, 2011

This blog post by our roommate in Thailand, Deirdre Flynn, is about one of my (Heather’s) little getaways while on bedrest post-surgery.  Sure, it was only a walk down our street and across the main highway, but it was an adventure nonetheless.  Especially with little munchkins at foot, kittens not included.  We took

Deirdre, affectionately nicknamed “P’ Dara” by the kids, writes:

“One of my legacies as an English teacher for the SOLD kiddos may be how effectively I taught the meaning and pronunciation of the word “mean.” The kids loved it. All the time I would hear them yell ‘Mean! You mean!’ They got a huge kick out of telling me I was ‘mean.’ One girl would frequently announce this and then give me an impish stink eye, daring me to disagree. She was a huge fan of trash-talking Heather and I while we played badminton with her. [For example]. ‘P’ Wen, khun len anii mai de MAAAAAK.’  Translation: ‘P’ Wen, you play this like crap!’  We would tell her she was mean, which then set off a nice round of ‘You’re mean!’ ‘No, you’re mean!!’”

In Thai language class one day, Khruu Ploy was teaching us adjectives.  Tall.  Short.  Fat.  Thin.

“The Thai word for ‘kind,’” she says, “is jai dii.” This literally translates to good heart.

As we scribbled in our notes, she began writing the opposite on the board: EVIL.  Jai rai. We had a good laugh about this and explained there was some gray areas between kind and evil. But, later, when the kids would laugh at us or cheat at a game, we would shout jai rai! It was then Deirdre taught the kids the word for “mean.”

In the video below (which starts where Deirdre and I are taking about this scary white cat that kept stalking our house and attacking the kittens), we’re on a quest for ice cream and the name-calling begins.

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Learning Thai: Our Journey

March 12th, 2011

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Grand Rapids

March 7th, 2011

We’ve been planning to come back to Grand Rapids ever since… well, ever since we left. All of our things are crammed into a 5×10 storage unit, and post-Thailand “the plan” was for me (Heather) to get a job, then we’d get an apartment, then we’d go to Grand Rapids to rescue our material possessions from storage.

The best part of that plan was going to be seeing old friends. Our church, Vineyard North, is here. Many supporters–our first, actually–are here. My brother and his wife are here. Our friends are here.

As the whole “get an apartment/job” plan is dragged out, we started to miss Grand Rapids more and more. We also began to realize that, once I get a job and its time to retrieve our things, I won’t have time to visit as I begin my new job. So Wednesday night we decided to leave Friday morning for the 12-hour drive to Grand Rapids. And here we are, warm in my brother’s guest bed and warm in our hearts after two days of reconnecting conversations.

It’s strange being back almost exactly one year after leaving. The weather is the same and, in a surreal way, it feels like we never left. We drove to church this morning and walked in, greeted with many hugs. We went out tonight with two women from Vineyard who just returned from a trip to Thailand, and how strange to was when they pulled out Thai baht (currency) from their wallet at our favorite GR restaurant. Tomorrow, we’re having breakfast with Rusty and Lynette from Thailand, and I’m pretty sure my brain will have trouble computing the worlds collinding.

As we drive the roads and visit with friends, we are reminded how blessed we were to fall in love with this town in such a short amount of time. We really weren’t here for long, but this feels like home on so many levels. The decision to move here was such an unexpected one, such a frustrating and outside-of-our-plan one. What a good reminder of how plans work out for the better even when they are so confusing and scary at the time.

Now if only Mozno the cat were still here! Then it would really feel like home. Don’t worry Granny and Grandpa Wenzel, we hope to be taking him back soon!

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