This year has been pretty crazy for us! A lot of stress trying to figure everything out with home-school, learning centers, and Non-profits. A lot of craziness in everything! We have been learning about IQs, cognitive flexibility, and learning disabilities, it is enough to drive you crazy!

I must say though, the problems we have now are much better than the problems we have had in the past. At least now we aren't worried about anyone dying, anymore! We have also been learning about attachment styles, sensory disorders, empowering principals, and how to more effectively help our kids heal! All the while we have been trying to stay sane in spite of smoke season with AQI hitting 300 multiple days, instead of rainy days inside, we have smoke days inside, with temps reaching about 105 F.

We having been trying to get to the south of Thailand but we have had too many things that need our attention in Chiang Mai, homeschool testing(march 14th), Chompoo’s wedding(March 24th) and finally my visa approval(April 4th). All these things make it impossible for us to get to the south unless we want to spend a few hundred dollars to go back and forth, we don’t. So, hopefully we will be able to get out of here for April, March and April are the worst months for AQI.

There are a few other things that are happening that I would like to keep you informed with:

1. We applied to training to be TBRI practitioners.

We have been learning TBRI and can really see the benefits and how it helps to be effective in helping our children heal. This is something that we have struggled with. Yes, we pray and we read the Bible with our kids and we believe that they will be healed. TBRI gives us a practical approach, now we are not just flying by the seat of our pants, reacting to everything that happens. Now we are on the offensive and we are seeing greater change! We meet with our practitioner every week. We have noticed in the kids that it is very hard to believe that God cares about you, when everyone who has been in-charge of your well-being has been mean and looking out for themselves and not really cared about you. Our kids find it hard to believe that God cares what they think or say, because they do not have a voice. God has really blessed us by allowing us to learn TBRI and use it on our kids.

Now we have the chance to be practitioners of it and we will have the ability to make money teaching it in Thailand, which will allow us to survive with less support for donors. We find out this week if we will be accepted. If we are accepted the training is late July, in Denver. We will probably spend a month or 2 back if we do and probably do some more cooking classes! We will keep you informed! You can also learn more about it here:
TBRI

2. MORE KIDS!

We will be getting 2 more kids next week. They are Preaw’s younger brother and sister, Wind and Sky. Preaw has been saying for awhile that she wanted her brother and sister to stay with us but we have not been in the right place to do it. They have been staying with the Norton Family in Sukothai, Thailand. They started with a children’s home and have moved towards a traditional orphanage. As the dynamic has changed Preaw and her siblings have said more and more that they all want to be together.

*From a few years ago when Preaw found her brother and sister!*

Since we have been back we have been praying about it and we finally got the confirmation from God that now was the time. Wind and Sky will put us at 8 kids! We have also received calls for an undocumented Vietnamese Hmong family with 8 kids that need help. As well as, another Hmong family (Thai) with 2 kids, 5 and 7 yrs old, whose parents are in jail for the rest of their lives because of drugs.

Please pray for us because we are trying to figure out how we help the undocumented family and we are being convicted to help the other 2 kids. We are still praying and trying to understand if 10 kids is past our point of sanity. With the parents being drug addicts we can almost guarantee these kids will have many problems, spiritually, mentally, emotionally and probably physically as well. We will home-school and not sure if we can handle 10 kids with learning disabilities and keep our sanity. Please pray for us with this!

*Such a common thing to see people world-wide throwing away their lives for drugs!*

3. All of our kids passed this year of home-school

We are just so amazed and shocked that everyone of them passed! The people at the Thai homeschool we super nice and helped us a lot navigating the how-to of our situation, which is rare.

*All of our kids and my wife, as well as teacher Wow and teacher Wanida*

The government even decided to interview us about what the holes in the system are and our kids loved holding a mic thinking they were on TV. Too bad they froze up when it happened!

Along with all of the growth our children have been going through, have been growing pains for us as well! Sounds fun right? Nope! It turns out that when you start learning about healing in children, you start having to heal yourself as well. Which, in the context of an overworked, over-stressed, over-needed, intercultural couple dealing with 1 child with a life limiting disease and countless kids from hard places, it has not been fun! It has been really hard for us to go to these places of trauma and hurt, you know it won’t be fun!

Our marriage counselor said to us on our first meeting, years ago, “It’s very easy to see that God is with you, because according to all the research, you should be divorced. You are doing marriage the hardest way possible.”

That seems more true now than ever. But by the grace of God, He is carrying us through. We are growing and trying to do our best in everything we do. Trying to honor God with everything. We believe that if we acknowledge God in everything we do, that He will direct our path, and He has! It is hard when you want to help everyone but your mental capacity for stress is limited. We have learned many times that we have to say “No”, or even better, “We would love to but we just can’t handle it!” We have made the mistake of saying yes too many times and have learned many hard lessons as well.

GROWTH

Surviving to thriving

Kids from hard Places