A Bunch of Burts

We have lots to share with you!

If the last few weeks are any indication of the future, we will be busy indeed! The next year and a half before we head back to the States on furlough will indeed speed by.

After Greg got home from his trip he went right into some other adventures, a men’s retreat with a group of guys from our church, and then out to Maesariang to spend a day with his friends out there who were graduating from the Bible School program we began with them last May.

While he was out there, a young man from our church happened to be getting married in a village near by. OK, and hour and half away, but that is fairly nearby.
The kids and I had really wanted to attend as the village is one that many of our friends from church are from, but we could not sneak away during the week. So Greg went to represent all of us.
This village is way up in the hills, water actually freezes there in cold season!

This is the wedding procession up to the church. Many in this village are Christians. This people group is one of the first ones that NTM began working with more than 30 years ago. The man at the back in the suit is the pastor of our church and friend, Boontip.

Yo and his new wife.

The next week, I took my own trip back out to Maesaring. I had been invited to attend the annual Lawa ladies gathering that takes place out at the Bible School campus.

No, I do not speak Lawa, but some of the teaching and meeting times were conducted in Thai.

For the other times, sometimes my friend Philene translated for me, and sometimes I stole away to visit with my friend Beth whose family serves at the Bible School. Leah went with me and enjoyed an extended weekend with her friend Jane, Beth’s daughter. Leah tried something for the first time that weekend. Can you guess what it was?
I will put the picture at the end of the post.
No peeking!!
But definitely a sign of things to come in our family.

Can you find me in the picture? hint: I am dressed like a Lawa lady >

Here’s a close up of me in my outfit and my friend Gaysawn. Does that help?

The ladies meeting was a very good experience, even though I understood absolutely no Lawa. It was encouraging to see this group come together, to hear the Word, to encourage each other with what the Lord is doing in their lives, and to see the representatives and leadership from several churches that are the direct fruit of the lives of previous missionaries and their diligent work in discipleship and teaching and translation. One day, I hope to be granted the privilege of seeing such a gathering of Thai Lue men and women gathering to worship the living God and study His Word together in a similar way!

The next week, our co-workers called and told us that a big Thai Lue gathering/celebration was happening up in their village. Of course we jumped at the chance to get a sort of sneak peek. One of the events was a wedding ceremony at one of the oldest houses in the village. As we checked the house out ahead of time, one of the organizers asked Greg if he would like to get married again as well. He wisely answered that one wife is enough!

The ceremony was very interesting and I have lots of questions and took many pictures which I hope to be able to use later when we actually live among the Lue. They will be a good tool for us to ask questions about the culture and gain language and vocabulary.

There were two couples getting married. The one in the pink headscarves is the dress of the village that wedding took place in, and the other is from somewhere else. The piece of embroidered cloth is a sort of wedding certificate.

Whew! Enough for now?
The next post will be more manly. And include things like gunpowder and explosions. Seriously.

OK, did you guess yet what Leah did for the first time?

She can get her license when she turns 15 this year. But definitely needs more practice before then. Mom too. I can’t let Leah get her motorcycle license before me!

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!

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!

After a summer-long hiatus from WFMW, I am soooo glad to see that my re-entry is a backwards edition. My current state of mind is What Does Not Work for Me. (Can you tell we began our homeschool adventure last week? ) I have a whole list of things that are currently NOT working.

I may be breaking/tweaking the rules a bit, but I have two bits I would love some bloggy advice for.

First one is easy. I have been looking for a good, a really good oatmeal raisin cookie recipe. The ones I have are not it.
In fact, I recently tossed a good portion of my recipe box and currently have no recipe for oatmeal raisin cookies at all.
Bring on the recipes, I am ready to mix up some cookies!

Second one, not so straight forward.
We are now in our second week of homeschooling. This will be the first year we are truly homeschooling. (Not to say we have not done something that could be called homeschooling, but previous years were sort of like those “Magic Eye” pictures. Squint your eyes and look cross-eyed long enough and any picture will appear, even adequately educated children.)
So even though sending kids to school really does work for me, it is not where we are right now. Since the kids are now too old to let any school years slide by, we need some help.

I am looking for some really good paper organizational ideas. How do you keep track of the work each child does and how to prep it a week in advance for them to access without me having to hand them each sheet of paper each day.
What do you decide to keep and what do you toss? How long do you keep it?

Also, what are some ways you motivate your kids to do more than ‘just enough’. Motivation that does not involve candy or trips to places that do not exist in Thailand, like a dollar store.
(kids are 8th, 6th, and 5th grades)

How about filler activities, when one has to wait while I am working with the other, perhaps for as long as 30 minutes?

Glad to be back and eager to check out what you are asking. Thanks to Shannon for hosting WFMW each week, see you there.

During our time in the village this past month, we had a chance to participate in some of the daily life of the villagers. The ladies of the village spend a good portion of their time weaving.

This grandmother is weaving cloth on a hand loom. To make the whole length, it will take her between 2-3 months!

Weaving cloth is a huge undertaking, and so I did not get to do any of that, but I did learn how to weave grass mats. These mats are used for floor coverings, and often in place of chairs.

Many of the houses have thier communal or ‘living room’ in the open part of the house and instead of sitting in chairs or other furniture, you would sit on the floor, on one of these mats. The mats are also often the ‘table’ for meals as well. Although they are pretty sturdy, they do wear out, so they need to be made over and over again.

The grass had already been cut and dried for me, but I was able to do all the other parts of the process.

The dried grass tassels needed to be folded up so they could be dyed. We are doing the dyeing at Mae Phet’s house. She is one of the ladies who taught my friend to make mats, and now she is teaching me.

We are dyeing the grass in an old metal bucket. The dye is just some crystal dye we bought at the little store down the street. Each packet of color was only 5 Baht.

Aren’t the colors pretty? Now they just need a day to dry. Or two, it is rainy season.

Of course the next step is stringing the loom. The comb, the part with the slats that I am sitting nearest, is usually bought from a specialized craftsman, but the rest of the frame is made by each family for their own use. We are doing our weaving at Christiane’s house, the other lady you see with me. She is one of the two NTM families who live in this village full-time.

Each slat of the comb has a little hole to thread string through. I admit, I made a couple of mistakes and we had to start over. ooops.

The girls took their turns weaving too.

After a while, you can no longer reach sitting behind the loom, so you have to sit on it! Took me a while to find a comfortable position on those boards though.

Finally! A finished mat. And yes, I am cutting off the edges with a machete. That way everyone has to tell me how nice my mat looks. After all, I am holding a big, sharp knife.

One of the best things about work like this, is you cannot do it alone. This project has to be done by two people. One to work the loom and one to push the grass through. The village ladies can do up to three mats in a day, and are able to spend the time chatting and working at the same time. Although my first mat took almost three days, by the end we were able to do one a day. Not bad for a novice mat weaver, right? We also had many visitors who wanted to come by and see the two foreign ladies weaving a mat! So we had to stop and chat and that added time too.

As I worked with Christiane, we too had the chance to get to know each other better, as we worked together. I imagine, and hope, that one day, as this team in Dong Noi begins to teach the Gospel, perhaps the ladies of the village will spend mat making time talking about the lesson they heard, the truths presented and the ways they are begining to understand the Great God who made them and loves them enough to give His own life for them.

Would you pray for this village? Please pray that the team learns the language and culture quickly and that the Holy Spirit would work in the hearts of the villagers that they would be open to the Gospel and the Truth of God’s Word.
They are beloved creations of God, just as we are.

Tina