A Bunch of Burts

This past weekend I had the joy of attending our annual mission ladies’ retreat. The weekend away with our fellow co-workers for a time of praising the Lord, prayer, teaching from the Word and fellowship is always refreshing and uplifting.
Hubby stayed home with our new co-workers and he and Dad O. watched all of the kids. Thanks honey!!!

I brought a couple of games to play with the group for the opening night. We just wanted a time of fun and relaxation/decompression and decided to just have a low-key night.

One of the other ladies there shared a game that is a twist on two old ones, but was a huge hit, hilariously funny and one I am sure to use again.

Telephone Pictionary

You know ‘Telephone’ and you know ‘Pictionary’ the two together are like,… well, like Oreos and milk. Made for each other.

Step one: everyone needs enough pieces of paper equal to number of people playing. We had 16, so we each needed 16 small pieces of paper. Number the pieces

Step two: Choose a topic: such as ‘what I want for my birthday’, a movie or song title, best Christmas present, where I want to go on vacation, ect. We used the first one.

Step three: One sheet #1, each person writes down their answer. Then pass to the left, the entire stack. You look at the top sheet, put it on the back of the stack and then draw what the first sheet said. Pass to left again. Allow 30-45 seconds for each successive stack.

Step four: You now have a picture to look at. Without peeking at any previous sheets, write what you think the drawing is of. Continue passing to the left. When your stack ends with you, you will recognize what you wrote originally, the game is over.

Step five: Read the progression aloud. Some of the transformations will be unbelievable!

I asked for dinner and movie for my birthday wish. What I ended up with was a new husband and a wedding. Sorry honey, I really was looking for a date with you!

Another lady said she wanted a nice dinner out, and ended up with a moving box from U-Haul.

And the one who asked for an i-Pod? She got decapitated. Now really, who would ask for decapitation for their birthday? The roommates of that participant were beginning to feel a bit uneasy about the sleeping arrangements!

I am always looking for new and fun games for groups of ladies and older kids, so I welcome your suggestions too! One time I was in charge of games for a Valentines party with 15+ couples. It was not as easy as I thought coming up with games for a group that size. All I will say is that group games and Valentines day are NOT good keywords for a Google search.
Sooo, if you know of any other games, icebreakers that have worked well for your groups, I would love to hear about them.

This is the first week for WFMW at it new location, We are That Family. Thanks for taking this on, we all are glad to see WFMW live on!

We are pleased to report to you that we now have a definite destination and team that we will be joining at the end of our national language study.
Through a variety of ways, the Lord made clear the way for us to join the team working among the Thai Lue in the Northern province of Nan.

We currently in Chiang Mai province and will be moving to Nan. It is a distance of about 6 hours.

We will be working with a single lady and another family and are very excited to be welcomed into their team.

Say hello to our new teammates!

The Thai Lue are part of a larger group known as the Dai, originating from China. This people group is found in China, Laos, Thailand, Vietnam and Myanmar.

Our new co-workers have a couple of websites with pictures of their current village and descriptions of life among the Lue if you are interested in checking them out.

Lue Blog and Life in the Lue.

The team will be moving into a new village where there is no gospel witness in July/Aug, and we hope to be able to move in at that time as well. We have not yet been to see the village, but plan on making a trip sometime after the end of this month.
The kids are excited to see where their new home will be and we are too!

Ema in particular is jazzed about moving out of the city. She is definitely a country girl at heart and is looking forward to moving into a smaller city than Chiang Mai and is hoping that whatever houses are available for rent, we will be able to carve out a small portion of the yard (hope there is one!) for a garden for her.

We do not anticipate moving until July/August, as we still have some progress to attain in our Central Thai study.

After all the years of training, moving, waiting and uncertainty, it is a welcome feeling to have a definite destination, good teammates, and a timeline with the end in sight for a more permanent home.
Thanks for praying for this decision with us, we could certainly see God’s hand at work in the process!

After reading this article on Yahoo News today, I could not help myself, I have to make a public comment on it.

The article claims that evidence has come to light that whales were once land mammals. Apparently a fossil has been discovered that shows s a momma whale with her unborn baby whale.
They claim this fossil shows that whales used to give birth on land and so therefore is evidence of evolution.
The ‘evidence’ they are excited about is that this poor baby whale was positioned with the head first, instead of tail-first as they are normally born.
The conclusion these people are jumping to is that obviously a whale cannot be born head first in the water, as it would drown, therefore, whales used to give birth on land. The article also mentioned that head-first is the preferred method of birth for land mammals.

I guess whales are exempt from the unfortunate occurrence of breech births. Poor Momma Whale, who may have even died from this birth complication ( since we all know whales still have not developed thumbs or hands to aid in a breech birth), is now going to be hijacked into being a poster child, or poster mother if you will, for evolution.

That is insult to injury.

One of the best perks and blessings of living and serving the Lord in this fascinating country of Thailand is the fabulous food available here.
No offense to my dear friends in PNG, but your sago grub worms:

eeew

and taro roots cannot compare to the tantazling variety of spicy, savory, intensely flavored dishes we are enjoying here. There is such a variety too, we keep discovering new foods and generally like most everything. Of course, we have found dishes that are one-time only experiences too, but I have ‘falang’ food that I choose not to eat too!

Today I want to share how to make one of my favorite dishes, Sabueak. It is a traditional Lawa dish, served at special occasions such as weddings, but it is easy to make and very tasty!

Ingredients:
Chicken (1 whole one cut in large pieces, or enough for your family. It is good to have some pieces with the bones still attached to make a tastier broth)
Lemongrass–5 stalks (slice 3 stalks very thinly and cut the remaining two into three large pieces each)
small red onions or shallots –5, sliced thinly
fresh cilantro –2 large bunches with roots attached if possible
green onion –1 large bunch
mint leaf –1 small bunch
small piece of galangal (similar to ginger)
2 bouillon cubes or soup base of an equal amount
salt
dried peppers (the large red kind)

Cut off the roots from the cilantro and gently pound to release the scent.
Boil enough water to cover your chicken and add the pounded cilantro roots, one third of the cilantro leaves, large lemongrass pieces and piece of galangal.

When water is boiling, add chicken and slowly simmer until chicken is done.

While chicken is cooking, slice up cilantro,mint, lemongrass, red onions and green onions.

You can see my handy chopper in the background, but do not try to chop your lemongrass with it! Lemongrass is sort of hard and woody and really need to be sliced as thin as possible.

Clockwise from the top, cilantro, red shallots/onions. lemongrass, and in the little bowl, the mint leaves

After chicken is done, and cooled enough to handle, coarsely chop. You want the chicken to be in small pieces, not shredded.

The truly authentic way is to chop up the skin too, to make it ’softer’, but I left it out of mine. You can do whichever you prefer. The skin does add extra flavor though, but unfortunately, extra fat as well.

In a large bowl, mix the chopped chicken with the sliced vegetables and mix together with 3/4 tsp of salt and finely chopped dried peppers –how much you add depends on how spicy you want it!

Tada! This is one thing everyone in my family likes to eat. Hmm, I think I need to add it to the menu next week, looking at these pictures is making me hungry!

(The pepper can also be used as a garnish, so each can decide if they want spice or not.)
Add one large ladle of the chicken broth at a time, mixing it in until the chicken mixture is thoroughly moist, but not so there is ’standing water’.

Serve with rice and the rest of the soup.

Enjoy!

P.S. If you prefer to have the chili peppers as a garnish instead of mixed in, here is a tasty
way to prepare them.
Grind up the pepper in your blender or hand mill.
Heat a small amount of oil, maybe 2 tsp to quite hot, nearly smoking. Pour into the
pepper and mix until thoroughly combined. Use as much as you can handle!

Shannon’s already has lots of other posts up, if this is not what you were looking for, I am sure someone else has posted something just for you!
Happy Wednesday!

The book we are reading aloud right had a wonderful quote in it.

“Here, we all learn by the honorable path of horrible mistakes. ”

Hope that includes language blunders.
Ok, so maybe we have not had a horrible mistake yet, but I am sure our time is coming. Remind me then that mistakes are the honorable path, assuming of course that we learn from them. hahaha.