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"And wherever you are when you catch glimpses of heaven, you are home." ~ Ann Voskamp

Heaven can be seen in the beauty of majestic African mountains...

Or in the sweet face of a redeemed child...

It is in these moments even when you are a world away from the land of your birth, when you catch a glimpse of what heaven might be like and truly feel home.

Overview of Our Trip to South Africa

South Africa was absolutely beautiful, words and pictures do not do it justice. Even though it was a land of great beauty, like any land, it also holds much brokenness. During our time there we were able to see much of the beauty, the brokenness, and the ways God is bringing hope and light through His people.

The following pictures are just a few of the memories from the trip. I hope you enjoy seeing this land which actually felt much more like home than anywhere I've been recently.

This precious boy was one of the many kids in the hospital without family or friends. Just trying to survive. We were able to take some puzzles and toys and visit the hospital for awhile with a ministry that consistently visits the children and builds relationships with them, and shares about Christ's love.

This was one of the animals we saw on our drive through a game reserve. The weather was freezing!

This is from the sweet time we had at a Children's Village. They also have a school there for the children and they teach them in English. It was similar to what we are trying to do over here in Thailand.


These little girls are also at the Children's Village.

This is a gorgeous sunset at the game reserve.

I just think this picture is so funny. Please notice the man in the bright red cowboy hat with a white fuzzy rim.

This is the view from the Drakensburg mountains where we did some hiking and camping.

Another view of the moutains. The sky there was soooo blue. At night we could even see the stars!

This picture is from the beach near the airport right after our arrival into SA.

Shiny Green Paper

I have a sweet little girl yes I consider her, in a way, mine. She rides to school with us every morning because, well if she doesn't she can't always make it to school. Something to do with a father, who shall we say, "falls short in the parental realm". Anyway, she sticks with us. Last week she didn't have a ride home from school so we took her with us, stopping at a cafe run by a ministry down the road. She got a special treat from us and from one of the people working. She does really well holding her own among people she doesn't understand very well. Although now I do expect her to understand much more English (however, in new circumstances we'll talk with her in Thai to make sure she understands what is happening and why.)

This is background on the girl who spent her early morning at the school picking flowers off a bush as a gift for her teachers. She and another sweet student came to the classroom while I was still getting things set up for the day. They told me to close my eyes and after a minute told me to open them. When I opened them they were standing there looking embarrassed and called out, "Just a minute!" as they ran back out the door. I smiled and continued with my work. They approached a couple minutes later with shy smiles and held out their offering. Some freshly picked flowers wrapped in shiny green paper (paper that I had the day before seen blowing around the schoolyard.) She proceeded to explain that they picked these beautiful flowers and she wasn't sure what to wrap them in but that she was so excited when she found the paper wrapped around a tree trunk. She also excitedly declared that she had cleaned off the bird poop too! I smiled at them and told them that they were so sweet and that the flowers were beautiful. And they were. Who can't help but feel loved with an offering like that. :)

Psalm 103:1-5

Children of Light

Our school this year is super small...which I love. One of my favorite things about the smallness of the school is the close knit group of students that has been created. We have thirteen students and it isn't uncommon to see sweet scenes such as the following:

The fifth grade boy racing a first grade girl...

The fourth grade girl giving a piggy-back ride to a first grade girl...

Brother and sister laughing together...

Girls from every grade being silly together...



The whole school chasing some poor frogs around the pond area...

These pictures represent to me something beautiful...life lived together. Not caring about the distinctions of age, or economic class, or religion. One of my prayers for these precious students is "for you were formerly darkness, but now you are Light in the Lord; walk as children of Light (for the fruit of the Light consists in all goodness and righteousness and truth), trying to learn what is pleasing to the Lord." Ephesians 5:8-10

I pray that in living life together with us they may desire to come out of the darkness that claims their country, into the Light of our loving Father. I pray that together we would all learn what is pleasing to the Lord that we may glorify Him.

On Beauty in the Ordinary

Today struck me with the beautifulness of life. Kind of. It's a Wednesday which means it I am at school earlier than I need to be because one of my roommates has monitoring duty. That happens on Mondays and Wednesdays, I love those days. They allow me to grab my Bible, journal, and prayer list and head to "my" bench (which I discovered today I'm pretty sure I share with a mouse). The space that has heard my prayers for the people I love, the space that has seen my tears, and the place where I gaze into the sky knowing that my God is out there and is listening. As I pray I see the huge green trees, the blue sky sometimes angry sometimes calm, and the rooftops of the nearby houses that remind me I'm not in the States anymore. I hear the children chattering in a language I don't claim as my own. I walk down the stairs to pray with our team to the beat of Thai music from the community loudspeaker. I sing praise songs in two languages. As I'm walking back to my bench for the remaining fifteen minutes or so until the official start of the school day, I pause to be still for the national anthem/king's song that is played over the loudspeakers every morning. All motion stops for those minutes and then the hustle and bustle starts up again.

As I travel to the cafeteria for snack time I stop for a conversation with one of the Thai teachers. A conversation switching between Thai and English sharing hearts across cultures. In the cafeteria I discover our cook frying chicken and she asks if I'd like to help. I wash my hands and then pick up slimy raw chicken pieces and roll them in bread crumbs. Khruu Ooy comes in and sits for awhile asking Joy to make som tam with lunch. As Khruu Ooy speeds off on the motorcycle to buy the ingredients for the papaya salad I'm summoned to a meeting. A meeting with a generous Australian woman who has come to teach us some of her plentiful knowledge gathered from decades of teaching children just learning English.

Upstairs in the heat of our teacher room our boss creates some visuals for class which he is now teaching. As he struggles with our finicky laminater, paper cutter that doesn't cut straight, and the everlasting problem of the necessary fan blowing papers in every direction we laugh. It's terrible but we laugh, and good man that he is, he laughs with us. At one point he comments on how the laminater sounds like a whole colony of insects being slaughtered. The day is not yet over. There is still dinner with a Thai friend, some more lesson planning/preparation for tomorrow, and blessed sleep on the horizon.

Today...is beautiful. Beautiful because of the unfamiliar becoming familiar. Beautiful because of friendships created through intentionality and hard work. Beautiful because of the peace in the lack of comfort. Beautiful because of shared struggles. Beautiful because God in His grace has redeemed us and called us His own. Beautiful God has brought us together here to learn how to love Him and love each other. Beautiful.

Royal Flora

Saturday some of our team took a trip to the Royal Flora Gardens. The Royal Flora is in the foothills of mountains that border Chiang Mai. A tram takes visitors to various stops around the garden where people can walk around, enjoy the scenery, and take pictures. They have gardens decorated to represent various countries around the world, a huge temple up on a hill, different greenhouses, and various other attractions. As always I'm amazed by the beauty of the land in Thailand, it points me to our artistic creator God who has blessed us with such beauty.

Some photos of the day...

Beauty

"Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God has shone forth." Psalm 50:2

Splendor and majesty are before Him, strength and beauty are in His sanctuary. Psalm 96:6

I just wanted to share with you one of my favorite things in Thailand right now. Chiang Mai always has amazing flowers but this tree is my new favorite. They have started to bloom everywhere and they make me quite happy.

This morning we walked a to a restaurant a couple miles from our house for a Western breakfast as a special treat. Our walk took us past rice fields, cows, dozens of terracotta shops, temples, and my favorite kind of tree. So much fun! Thank you Lord for creating beautiful orange trees!

Road Trip

Every three months our little group makes the four and a half hour trip up to Mae Sai (the border into Burma). This time our good friend Khruu Ooy (who usually does most of the driving) decided to turn the ritual into a girl's road trip. So at 6:30 am on a Saturday morning we raced around our house packing snacks and grabbing all the pillows in our house. We (our group of five housemates) and four of our Thai co-workers piled into a rented van which comes complete with a driver. The van was so comfortable, and with air conditioning and comfy reclining chairs it was even more comfortable than our house. We started off the morning with barbecued pork on a stick with sticky rice, one of my favorites that I will really miss when I come back to the States. We had such a leisurely trip laughing, talking, and sleeping. We reached our more anticipated destination at about 11 am, Doi Tung. Upon arrival we made trip to the bathroom where we all paid 3 baht, took off our shoes for the trip down the stairs, and then put on the special bathroom shoes which everyone shares. I'm not sure I'll know what to do in the States where one does not have to slip off their flip-flops in exchange for a pair of questionable community shoes, roll up their pants, and carry their own toilet paper into the bathroom. Anyway back to the actual story.

Doi Tung is called the "Switzerland" of Thailand. It was the former residence of the late mother of the King. We were allowed to walk through her beautiful yet simple villa. She had spent much time in Europe and the house and gardens reflect that style. We ate a quick lunch of mixed fried vegetables with rice (another of my favorites) and even enjoyed one of the best cups of coffee I have tasted in Thailand. Then came the highlight of the day...the garden. Picture the most gorgeous garden ever set in a hilly landscape with many fun details which really add to the effect. We spent quite awhile walking around and taking over one hundred pictures.

I would like to live here. :) It is surrounded by gorgeous mountains.

A picture with all the housemates before we go our separate ways.

Us being silly girls and imitating the statue behind us.

Under the waterfall.

My lovely roommate and I "fighting."

My sweet friend Brittany.

All of us at dinner.

We encountered our semi-normal situation where random Thai people take pictures of us and ask if we will take pictures with them. One might think that as the farang (foreigners) we ought to take pictures of the people here, however, the opposite is true. (When my parents were vi sting we went to the Royal Palace. While walking around the grounds several of the gardeners whipped out their cameras and asked to take pictures with us.) Anyway after our adventure in the gardens we climbed back into the van to drive to Mae Sai.


Mae Sai is a hard place to visit and is never really a pleasant experience. I am always confronted with the dilemma of how to love the overwhelming number of people who are in need. I struggle within myself to justify my un-Christlike attitude towards these people all the while knowing I should do something but never quite knowing what that thing is. I am always convicted in that city of what God's love for every person looks like and how I should be living it out, which is something I pray the Lord grows in me because I am not very good at it.



After Mae Sai we drove to a restaurant and ate dinner right next to the water. I am going to miss the Thai way of eating dinner where everyone orders a wide range of things that sound good and as they arrive at the table one at a time everyone shares them. Several hours later the van brought nine weary travellers back to our house around 10:30 pm where we promptly dropped into bed. So ends one of our more memorable and enjoyable border trips.