Christmas Eve

Just a few pictures of our Christmas Eve at the house. Unfortunately Rusty was always the one behind the camera. We had a good time with a lot of food (as usual).

Some Holiday Laughs

Rusty was busy teaching about the Christmas story the week before Christmas as well. We played games with the students and talked a lot about Jesus and why He came to this earth and the fact that He had life before He was born as a baby. That's a very important fact here.

Rusty teaches at one school in particular that has a lot of students who come from orphanages. So these students were pretty familiar with the Christmas story so He was getting some good answers until he got to the flashcard of the wise men. He asked who they were and someone said Jesus. It's funny how quickly the students pick up and learn to answer Sunday school answers!

Every Monday and Wednesday I walk about a mile to the main road to catch a truck to go teach my afternoon classes. I don't mind doing this because it gives me more time at home to work on lesson plans and other responsibilities that I have. On this particular day I ended up on a truck with12 women total in the back. We stopped to let off one lady, and the truck driver helped the lady unload her stuff. The truck driver was female as well! I should have known we were in trouble. :D When we were almost to the school I needed to stop at, some of the other women were getting busy to stop the truck as well. But there was some confusion among them if they were going to get off at the right spot or not. They pushed the buzzer button, and I was excited because it was in the exact spot I needed to get off too. Then at the last second they decided they had stopped at the wrong place and motioned for the driver to keep going. I said hurriedly in Thai that it was no problem because I needed to get off there, but it was too late. The driver started going again, and I quickly pushed the buzzer to stop. Everyone had a good laugh, and so did Rusty when I told him the story about the truck only for women. I bet we would have really annoyed a man driver or passenger for that matter. :D

Christmas With the Schools part 1

New Year's Day is a big day around here. Christmas is not. A lot of decorations get put up in time for the new year, but Christmas is not a holiday here. Sure you'll see Christmas trees, decorations, Santa Claus, and hear Christmas music, but outside of Santa Claus and presents not much is known here. The students may know that the real story behind the holiday is the birth of Jesus, but there isn't much more than that.

We look forward to sharing with the teachers and students every year. We get opportunities throughout the year to share our faith...don't ever think that we're not busy doing that, but Christmas gives us special opportunities because people are interested in the holiday even though they don't celebrate it.

Our first item of business to get done was the gift baskets for the teachers. We always have fun getting these done for the teachers although I get the same complaint every year...my cookies are too sweet. You can tell from the pictures I kept the cookies pretty simple this year with sugar cookies, chocolate chip cookies, and a few decorated gingerbread men. There weren't any cookies that I call super sweet, but yet everyone says they're really sweet. Next year they may be getting muffins. :D

We usually throw in some fruit if they're getting a basket. Fruit seems to be quite expensive at this season, but it's something I know all of the teachers will enjoy.

Even though I bake countless numbers of recipes to give away, I really enjoy doing it. Rusty and Pawn do a great job helping me with the presentation. I've never been one to focus on presentation although I have tried to adopt the Thai culture of beautiful food presentation. It just hasn't hit me yet, but maybe if I keep noticing what they do around here, I'll finally get a creative bone in my body. I grew up believing that it's the taste that counts; here it's the taste and the presentation. :)

Christmas Happenings

I don't think I realized how close we were to Christmas when we got back from Cambodia. I had faithfully mailed my Christmas/New Year's cards before we left, but I didn't have anything else done except for the tree.
Antioch had their Christmas program on the 17th, and I was racing around trying to get some goodies made for that. Thankfully Pawn loves to get in the kitchen and help. And when she saw me pull out the red and green sprinkles she was quick to take over the sugar cookie making.
I worked on the sweet potato casserole. That's a pretty involved process as we have to make marshmallows first. Pawn oversaw that part too after I heated up the sugar and water on the stove. I also realized that my candy thermometer is off. This batch of marshmallows was a little grainy but still worked fine!We made it to the church just a little bit late because of a miscommunication. Hard to believe right? We thought Pawn was coming back home to meet Sii and Gam and to ride with us. They were all at the church by the time we finally reached someone on their cell phone.
Everyone was having fun and feeling festive.
The young people (does that make me sound old?) have been taking guitar and drum lessons on Sunday afternoons, and they performed a song for us. I was so impressed with how well they are doing!
Rusty gave a short devotional. He thought it was long, but I wasn't squirming yet so it must have been ok. :D
The final act of the evening was pretty fun. The four married Karen women did this song about Karen women going out to work and what they have in their bags. They all had lunch stored in banana leaves (or maybe what they caught to take home to clean and cook), powder (maybe in the past sandalwood), and beetlenut. Pawn called them the modern Karen women because in the past they didn't have powder compacts they just had lunch and beetlenut. These women also had fishing poles for their work. They had to do this song twice, and many were asking for a translation into Thai. :)
We finished up about 10 that night, and I think everyone was a bit tired. OK, maybe it was just me that was tired.

It's Beginning to Look A Lot Like Christmas

Since we had the girls with us this weekend we decided to put up the Christmas tree. I guess it's tradition for us to do it the Sunday afternoon after Thanksgiving since it's not traditional for us to have Thanksgiving on Thursday. Things have changed over the years and among the places we've lived, but one thing I've learned--you can either wallow in the despair of what you're missing out on or you can give thanks to God in all things. There's something to be thankful for and some way that God is working.
Pawn was trying to orchestrate the unpacking of the Christmas decorations. She kept telling Sii and Gam to quit playing and get to unwrapping, but Gam and Sii were having fun looking at each individual piece. After all, this was their first time to do this.I think Sii must have some of my personality traits. She was grouping Christmas ornaments according to their theme or characters. She has quite a big collection of Snoopy ornaments started over there.
At first I wondered what in the world this picture was about since I didn't actually see Rusty doing this. Then it hit me that he may have been dancing to the new ornament Rusty's mom sent us. It has Snoopy and Woodstock outside of the doghouse, and when you push the button it plays the Peanuts theme and the characters dance. It goes nicely with the Charlie Brown Christmas clock we have. :)Every year we have a few problems remembering how the Precious Moments mini nativity tea set is put together. But every year it gets put together. We should make an instructional video to play each year.
I think Gam was a bit disappointed that she wasn't getting to do more with the pieces under the tree. Pawn referred to them as Pawn's items. Then Gam said, "Oh, so if they're Pawn's things only Pawn gets to play with them?" It was so funny!Pawn ended up re-arranging how it was setup under the tree, but originally the Precious Moments nativity was in the middle. Gam hung one of the star ornaments over it just right. She was being pretty creative.
Gam tried to set up this house using her imagination. She put the girl with the stocking inside the house. She said that way she could wait for Santa inside, and he would fill her stocking when he got there. Pawn saw the girl in there and told Gam she did it wrong. She couldn't put the girl in the house. So funny to hear all this talk and discussion going on and so funny what Sii and Gam were coming up with. Sii doesn't talk a lot, but both girls said they really enjoyed doing it.We took 10 group photos, and I chose this one to show what kind of characters we had with us. We couldn't keep Gam still for the photos. Rusty's trying to hold her down to keep her from jumping, but it obviously wasn't working.After we finished the tree it was time to put the lights and ribbon on the banister. We also take down the rice hats that are hanging up along the stairs to have places for some stockings. I heard giggling and talking about the rice hats, but I didn't know what was going on. I was off looking for more Christmas items.Just us girls with the finished product. We all had fun, and it looks very festive around here.

Gam and Sii both know about the true meaning of Christmas. They knew about the nativity sets and Gam was oohing and aahing over the baby Jesus figurines. I was pretty impressed about how much they had learned at church and such when all of the sudden Gam pulls up the Precious Moments figurine and says, "Who is this sleeping?"I just laughed and then I could see the light bulb pop up over her head. :) She figured it out.

One last thing...Rusty and I saw a local classified ad a couple of weeks ago where someone was selling a nativity set, but it was missing the baby Jesus figurine. What's the point? But then I figured that's probably how most of us celebrate it. We focus on everything but Jesus. We get caught up in preparing for this party, making sure we have our entire gift list covered, making sure our houses are decorated perfectly, listening to all of the fun Christmas songs, and we forget Who it should really be about. Let's make it different this year!

Gifts for the Schools

We are often asked by the schools for help in various projects. Obviously we are not able to respond with money to all of the requests, but we feel it's important to help out when we can. We had several requests to help out with donations for the school libraries at schools where we teach. This seemed like a worthy project as we could donate books that taught about Jesus, taught good moral lessons, and would help the kids with their English as well.

The fun began as I checked out bookstores all over town for the right books. It was really a lot of fun. We bought a huge selection of Thai, English, and English-Thai books.We had books that taught several Bible stories, a Thai set of the Chronicles of Narnia, videos of Max Lucado's You Are Special, and several timeless literature classics such as The Gift of the Magi.
We presented the books to two local schools and adopted two schools in the Isaan region as well.We were also able to purchase individual copies of Jesus Is Born for the 181 students at this school. We were able to be with them for their Christmas party and had a good time being with the kids.
We presented the donation to the teacher and then began handing out the books to the students.

We saw many kids reading the books after they were dismissed. They enjoyed hearing us read in Thai as well. They were good patient teachers for us. :)

You Just Never Know

After we finished up our Christmas festivities at the house, I asked to go downtown so we could see if there were any lights. Earlier when I was out running errands I had noticed people hanging lights on the bridges downtown, and I knew it often looked festive here for New Year's celebrations. We don't get out much at night due to traffic and the busy-ness of everything, but this was going to be a special treat.

At first I was a bit disappointed because I wasn't seeing much. Then we made it to the moat (the water that surrounds the old city) and realized they had some kind of festival going on. So we slowed down and listened to the music. This is what we heard...

After hearing familiar music we decided to find a place to park and go enjoy the music.

I video taped this song called Texas Bluebonnets. It was kind of funny when a British guy walked by and said we were having a real hoe-down.

After reading the pamphlet about the festival we found out it was Chiang Mai's Countdown 2011 Festival. Each night they would have different acts, and a different culture would be showcased. It was Korean culture night when we attended. So we got to watch a couple of Korean magicians and some Korean dancing.

We all decided that it had been a fun evening out. It's not something that happens often but is usually fun when it does.

Cooking and Eating

After we opened the presents it was time to spend some time together cooking and then eating. Here's what was made...
We had to make the marshmallows for the sweet potatoes. It can be a messy job coating all of them in the powdered sugar, but Hope kept the mess to a minimum.Pawn's grilled pork has become our standard holiday fare for the main meat dish. We had to increase the amount of pork for this Christmas because we wanted to have some left over. I think she likes it that we enjoy it so much. Turkeys are rather expensive here--about $5.83 per kilo at the current exchange rate. If I ever start craving one I might shell out the money, but until then I'll keep enjoying the grilled pork.
When I found sweet potatoes at the market this year I was buying them 2 kilos at a time every time I saw them. I only have the purple ones left in my freezer. I had trouble finding them at Christmastime the first year we were here so now I buy early, cook, and then freeze.
The grilled pork was excellent as usual!
We also had green beans from Pawn's garden. I think these turned out better than my green bean casserole at Thanksgiving.
Hope's rolls were a nice addition to the feast.
We finished off the meal with some corn with zucchini and the chicken and dressing. I guess the proper pronunciation of that would be chicken 'n dressin'. :)
Let's eat and watch Rusty's new Christmas Carol DVD!

Celebrating Christmas

A couple of days after Christmas we finally got to celebrate the day here at the house. Here are a few pictures from our Christmas morning.There were so many gifts that were a huge hit with all of us. We had gifts from each other and a box from my mom in the States and a few gifts from Kim and Kenneth's family and Rusty's mom and dad. Rusty was fixed up on Coke and Snoopy items, and I received several Precious Moments items. We had a nice cool morning and enjoyed spending it together.

Christmas Eve

Christmas Eve turned out to be a very busy day. Rusty left out to teach in the schools, and Pawn and Hope were getting ready for their trip to the village with Antioch Church. I was busy getting ready to go to a Christmas Eve party/program at the big school Rusty teaches at. It was probably unlike any other Christmas Eve, but the holiday season turned out to be exactly what we needed.

There are 1500 students at this school. When Rusty was invited to come to the Christmas program we really had no idea what to expect. You can see that there were a lot of students present and one dog. There always seems to be a dog involved here.
The program began with the Christian group presenting the Gospel and several Christmas carols. We were really impressed that one young man stood up on the stage alone and shared with his classmates the true meaning of Christmas. I'm not sure if it was the emotion of the season or the emotion of the Christmas program, but this brought tears to my eyes. I was completely humbled that a young man would stand up in front of his peers in a country where fewer than 1% are believers and proclaim the Gospel boldly. Then to see a group of young people sing praises in front of their peers was absolutely wonderful! It encourages me to remain faithful and be bolder in my daily witness. I was also blessed to see so many students in the Christian group. When we found out there was a Christian group who would be presenting we really had no idea what to expect.
As always Rusty was put to work. He got to present the gift to one of the groups. Rusty was off getting ready for another part of the program when this group presented the Doraemon song. I'm always teasing Rusty about Doraemon because he doesn't get too excited about seeing this character everywhere. It is a Japanese character. The storyline involves him getting sent back in time to help his owner's great-great grandfather so that the family will have better circumstances in the present day. Doraemon has a pocket where he can pull out gadgets from the present-day in order to help. It sounds like a cute storyline, but I seriously doubt that we'll be purchasing any items any time soon.

I'll close with a video that shows how many students were in the Christian group and how many students attended the Christmas program. Hope you enjoy!

Time for Christmas!

I'm probably the house grinch until we get past Thanksgiving. Since Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, I tend to hold off on Christmas songs, decorating, cards, etc. until after we get to eat a Thanksgiving meal together. But once Thanksgiving is over, I'm 100% into Christmas. Let the festivities begin!

We decorated Sunday evening and had a blast.
We got really tickled at Pawn. Last year we had given her a Christmas ornament of her own. As soon as we had the lights and tinsel on the tree, she placed hers on first.
The tree started filling up. Here is Rusty with one of his Snoopy ornaments. Our tree is a mixture of Snoopy, Precious Moments, homemade ornaments from friends, and ornaments from exchanges.
Hope and Pawn are really getting the hang of the Precious Moments mini nativity tea set.
Here we are with the completed tree. I think it gets better every year!