If you’re interested in our life in Bangkok you might like One Night in Bangkok
If you wandered over to this post after looking at a gluten free recipe, you might want to check out all my gluten free offerings on Know Gluten
It was just Irish, Dagny and I here last week while the big people help run a youth camp in Sri Lanka, so we decided that we’d rather get creative than go shopping. We made our own solar yogurt.
If you look online you’ll see alot of really confusing and complicated methodologies for making homemade yogurt. They say you need a thermometer and you need to heat the milk to exactly this temperature and then let it cool to exactly that temperature. You need a heating pad to keep it warm, but not too warm. You need to rub it’s tummy clockwise every 25 minutes.
Not so. All you really need is a little bit of yogurt, milk and a nice hot sunny day.
yogurt and milk.
There was about 1/2 a cup of Greek yogurt left in our container. We filled it the rest of the way with milk and stirred it to get the yogurt floating around in the milk.
Then we put the lid back on the yogurt and found a nice sunny spot to put our container.
Nice sunny day. Note the cover to protect it from the pigeons. There's actually a pigeon egg shell just out of this shot.
We covered the container with a dish towel, partly to absorb heat, partly so bird poop would land on the towel and not on the container.
We walked away.
About 4 or 5 hours later we checked on the yogurt. It had firmed up nicely. Not as thick as the Greek yogurt we started with, but more like regular old plain yogurt. Except it was sweeter. The fresher the yogurt, the sweeter the taste. The bacteria needs lots of time to give yogurt that tangy yogurty taste.
About as thick as regular yogurt. I'm not sure if it's a higher fat content, longer culturing time or draining that makes it thick. I'm going to experiment a bit here.
Fresh yogurt is excellent in smoothies and lassis and as a topping for hot cereal.
Our English class has been working so hard. Last we we focused on learning clothing vocabulary, the week before was colors, this week we decided to introduce body parts and have a little Cinco de Mayo party. I really know nothing about Cinco de Mayo, or Mexico, despite living on it’s border for a year, (I could have facebooked my friend Lynne, but I only just right now thought of that). So, this is what we pulled together:
Head and Shoulders Knees and Toes – only faster, and faster, and faster and faster!!!
Pin the tail on the Donkey – body parts of a donkey, and hey, they have donkeys in Mexico, right? I found an excellent free resource for a printable pin the tail on the donkey. You can get it HERE
Balloon Between the Knees Race – We all know where our knees are now! And didn’t the balloon originate in Mexico? No?
click here to see some balloon race action
Pinata!! – For sure this one is Mexican!! We had no where to hang it, and no adult was brave enough to hold it up, even from a long stick, so we put it on the ground. Sortof pinata cricket.
There it is! The pinata quivering with fear!!
It was finally whacked into the bushes where it exploded, candy everywhere!!!
Candy Scramble!!!
After that party, we headed over to our neighbor’s first birthday party!!
HAPPY BIRTHDAY SOPHIE!!!
There’s something special about our neighborhood. Maybe it’s the way we consider each other family.
We Are Family
This week some Bible college students from Canada visited and helped us show our neighbors just how much we appreciate them.
We had a “Cultural Exchange”. The students taught our neighbors English and some North American games and songs, and our neighbors (mostly the children, but not only!!) taught the students some Thai and some Thai games and songs.
Not Sure if Mrs Chicken is a Thai Game or North American..
Every day women from the neighborhood brought drinks and lunch (real lunch, fried chicken or pork or noodles) for all the participants
Our Fairy God Mothers With Lunch
Gimme Some of That Real Food
We topped it all off with a big neighborhood party this morning.
It's Not a Party Unless There's Ice Cream!!
Face Painting!!
Crafts!! Snowflakes in Honor of Team Canada!!
Balloons!!! (these boys are taking a rest from chasing Ami with the balloons.)
Whew! busy day! Any body else tired?
'Cause a chicken is a person in our neighborhood
An adventure walk across the street with Dagny to see chickens and doggies.
A trip on the busy BTS Skytrain to see a movie with the littles;
A walk home under a beautiful sunset, only to run into a balloon vendor half a block from home.
"Pooh Bear is smiling, Mommy"
A new floaty friend.
YUM!! Best noodles around, for only 25baht
All followed by a late snack at the noodle stand on our street.
It was everything good about Bangkok.
And it would have been the perfect day if I’d just stayed home. But I had to run out to the corner store for peanut butter.
And I came across the woman and the little boy on the bicycle. She was on our street because Dag and I had been on hers with the DeWits. We were offering to teach English to whoever was interested. She needed more than English lessons. She was looking for a job. Her boyfriend had died and she just needed to do enough work to get 250baht to pay her rent or she and her little guy were out on the street.
There is one very lucrative option for her if she doesn’t find work. This is, after all, Bangkok.
Verge 50, the church plant we’re a part of, has the goal of facilitating microloans so women in this situation will have more options.
Until we have this in place the memory of this young woman is going to keep me up at night. Like it did last night.
It seemed like we were always waiting. Waiting for Scott to come home for the weekend. Waiting for our approval from Thailand. Waiting for funds. Waiting (and waiting and waiting) for our visas. Waiting to move to Bangkok.
So it was fitting that one of the last church services of 2011 was spent WAITING.
Church starts, is supposed to start, around 10:30. At 11:00 Alyse calls out “While we’re waiting, I have a game for everyone to play”
um, what are we waiting for?
While we’re waiting, why don’t we sing some Christmas carols? Sure the kids can play the drums. We’re not really doing anything. We’re just waiting.
Why are we still waiting?
While we’re waiting, Beth has something to share about what God is speaking to her.
Do you know what we’re waiting for?
While we’re waiting, why don’t we see some cool dancing?
Church “ended” ten minutes ago. Are we still waiting?
WAITING. We spent the whole time waiting. From 10:30 until almost 1:00.
We talked, we sang, we ate, we shared. We laughed at babies playing the drums.
What were we waiting for? We were waiting to realize that even while we wait, important things are happening.
And I realized, while I spent 2011 waiting, things were happening. While I was waiting for Scott to come home, I was becoming independent. While I was waiting for our visas, I was learning to trust God for my future. While I was waiting to move, I made some wonderful friends and spent time with my family right where I was.
Some of the most important things happen while we wait for something else.
Are you waiting?
I haven’t really written anything since arriving in Bangkok. I’ve even really been awol from Twitter and Facebook. Not like me at all. Writing for me comes out of thinking. I usually wake up with three or four blog posts and twenty-five tweets pinging around in my brain. It could be the coffee. I’m usually a very caffeinated person. Not here. Haven’t found a great brand yet. I haven’t had the pinging thoughts here. My thoughts seem to sort of wade through my brain. Never really forming a perfect post. Just sort of slogging around.
Thoughts are heavier here. Thoughts are really heavy after yesterday. Yesterday I visited with Rahab Ministries. Rahab Ministries is an outreach to women and girls who work in the bars as prostitutes. They have a Bible study, English classes and a business making jewelery and crocheted stuffed animals so that girls who want to leave the bar scene can make an income. They don’t make alot. In the bars, the girls can make a whopping $10 a day. At Rahab, they only make minimum wage. (These are the numbers they gave me, not sure what minimum wage is here). After a girl has been out of the bar scene for six months, Rahab invests in retraining, education or trade, so that they can go on to support themselves. Slow thoughts here. A group of us went yesterday. We got to hear the testimonies of two of the women who had left the bar scene.
Outside Rahab
A better life
Reading this a few weeks later, I realized that I should include some contact information for Rahab. If you’d like to learn more about this ministry, support them or order Jewellery or some of the stuffed animals, you can contact them here: Rahab Ministries
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Dagny doesn’t realize that we’re on the border of a military dictatorship, or that she’s the only white kid, or that the playground is made of wood and steel, or that the houses are all bamboo, or that there’s dust everywhere, or that families live on two dollars a day. Nothing seems different. Nothing’s out of place. There’s a slide and friends and all seems right with the world.
We drive down to Toronto tomorrow (Monday) to catch our flight, so we need to pick the straws up in Cobden today. We are looking for people to sponsor at least ten straws at $6 each. These straws will open amazing doors into bringing the gospel to Bangkok. The more straws we have, the more people we can help. If you would like to sponsor the purchase of these straws please email us at JustLoveMinistry@gmail.com
We are packed! Everything fits into some hockey bags and back packs. This is actually a pretty easy move for us because we’re not really bringing anything. The only things I’m really not looking forward to is the 20 hours of travel with a two year old.
This week has been full of goodbyes. And parties. And more goodbyes. And tears. And time for just one more coffee or one more dinner. Since Friday, we’ve:
Our house in Bangkok is, at this time, still not flooded. Flood relief work has started in Bangkok and we hope to be a part of this as soon as we hit the ground.
Welcome Home
the government can't reach everyone affected
Hundreds dead, thousands displaced
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