Yes, it’s the middle of July 2019 and I’m just now catching my breath to remember that seven months ago in January, I wrote out some memories and thoughts from the end of 2018 that I never posted. As so many of you reading this already know, 2019 has been really really hard to say the least. When I came upon these reflections from the end of last year, it was such a joy for me to read and remember God’s goodness. 2018 was wildly joyful and exhilarating. It’s interesting for me to read it now, in a season I feel more worn down than joyful most days. But I am all the more grateful for years like 2018 to remind me to hope for the coming seasons.
OCTOBER
To be honest, it was such a magical summer at the apartments creating so many incredible memories in our apartment backyard playing chi loh, gardening, hacky sacking, swimming and so on every day with everyone, that it was a difficult transition to move into the Fall months and have the kids go back to school. I adore Autumn just as much as the next basic white girl, but I dreaded the end to a season I felt like couldn’t be beat. But October came and it was a special month, as it seems to always be ever since Robbie and I met and got married in that month. October brought about the excitement of colorful leaves and sunshine with just the right amount of coolness in the air. It meant leaf fights with all the fallen tree leaves after church on Sundays with the kids. It meant three pre-teen girls with high anticipation for their first time going to the pumpkin patch. And it was the first time since moving here that Robbie and I took a full week away. We camped for a week in Arizona and Utah and it was glorious.
Chat Htoo, Hser Gay Moo, and Eh You Paw had the best night at Vala’s Pumpkin Patch with Robbie and me. I truly understand how a parent must feel in the way that if you can live vicariously through the magic a child feels through new experiences (even if the experience is old or dull to you), the experience suddenly feels new and fresh and vibrant to you just being with them. They loved everything from the cute haunted house, to the corn maze, to the pig races and trampolines. They talked about the pumpkin patch every day for weeks leading up to it and I’m thankful it didn’t fail their expectations. I always love watching the love Robbie and those three girls share. As soon as we got inside the entrance, Robbie immediately got out his sharpie, wrote his phone number on each girl’s hand and announced, “If you get lost at any point, you show this number to someone and they will call me and we will find you. Everything will be totally okay! Okay?” And they graciously understood and thanked him.
One Saturday towards the end of October, it was the most stunning weather fit for short sleeves and jeans. We gathered up our crew of ten of us and drove to HyVee and had everyone pick out their perfect pumpkins. I love knowing each of them so well; being able to predict who will pick their pumpkins out with no hesitancy and who will take their sweet time to find the perfect one. Our teenager boys are so sweet that even they get amped for experiences like these.
We brought home ten plump pumpkins, sat out in the sunshine at the apartment playground, and got busy for the next few hours outlining different designs and faces and words on our pumpkins and then with much difficulty, trying to carve away at them. Ler Htee Moo did the most complicated design and I teased him for it, not believing it would turn out at all, but I was pleasantly wrong and it was great. Everyone took pride in making theirs unique and great. Even their designs showed so much of each of their personalities too. I loved that. Robbie’s was so so unripe that a knife would barely go through it even with the utmost force, so he settled for a very simple yet very adorable little face that actually stole all of our hearts with its cuteness.
It was so much fun and we had lots of apartment visitors throughout our time creating coming out and checking out our works of art. People loved them and I think the kids felt proud of what they made. When they were all complete after many hours of work, I ran to Walmart with the girls and picked up a dozen tea light candles to turn them into Jack-o-lanterns that evening. One of our American neighbors had decorated for Halloween with fake spider webs all over the railing in front of Robbie and my apartment window. It was the perfect place to display all of our pumpkins. We lined them up at sunset, lit them with their candles, and sat in awe of how beautiful they turned out. I’m constantly reminded about how experiences really bond people. When you do activities together, it really brings you together and everyone feels great after it all. We had neighbors looking through their windows to see all the pumpkin faces aglow in the courtyard. Many of them came outside and complimented them and even after we had all gone into our apartment to hang out for the night, we heard people through our windows talking about how it made everything more festive seeing the pumpkins out there. I loved how this small thing could even bring other neighbors together.
Finally, the anticipation of Halloween was wild. The kids actually had trick-or-treated in past years so they knew what they were getting themselves into and they were excited. You have to understand the way I was raised… which is to not get excited for this holiday. It just means nothing to me (which is ironic because it’s the day I met Robbie, so without a Halloween party six years ago, I maybe wouldn’t be married to him, so I guess I’m kinda grateful for that. haha). I do not dress up. It’s just not my thing at all. You know I must really really love these people if I was willing to dress up with them.
A few days prior, I took a hoard of kids to a Halloween store and they got money from their parents to buy some costume supplies. I decided to be a cat, not trying to be a stereotypical sexy cat or anything, but mostly because it would be the easiest, cheapest, most thoughtless thing I could be with such little time left to think of or make a costume. I’m so glad I did because it really ended up fun again to experience more of the magic together with the kids who are experiencing it so fully. The girls were all SO glad I dressed up also. They loved having me participate.
From the very moment they all got home from school, I had about 20 people in my apartment including moms and their toddlers and all our youth doing makeup, doing hair, and putting on costumes. I made a big pan of frozen street tacos and got everybody fed that wanted food before we started our trick-or-treating adventure. Hser Gay Moo was a little Hermione Granger in her Gryffindor robe, Chat Htoo was a cat with me, Eh You Paw didn’t dress up (if you know her, you wouldn’t be surprised by this), Robbie was his classic shark for about fifteen minutes before realizing that all the little boys were attacking him in costume, and a bunch of the boys wore ridiculous masks and such.
We had a group so large marching across Northwest Radial all in costume down into my sister’s neighborhood. There was so much joy to be experienced with the kids anticipating visiting so many of our best friend’s homes to trick-or-treat at. First the Newhouses, then the Hicks, then the Holmquists, the Thompson’s, and finally the Hall’s. It was such a sweet interaction each time our kids would ring the doorbell of all those couples’ homes and them opening the door to our huge family, blessing them all with tons of candy and receiving the sweetest hugs and thank you’s in return.
The weather that night was stellar for walking around in the evening. We all returned home around 8:30, wiped from the chaos and excitement of the whole night. I think of Robbie’s unbelievable heart, as he came home from a stressful busy day at work with lots of deadlines coming up to be there for all the excitement of Halloween, only to return to the office at 9pm that night after everyone went home to try to get more work done. He sacrifices and works so hard for us that we may experience the life and privileges we do. I’ll never be able to repay him for what he has done to allow me to do what I do, but I’m always abundantly grateful for it all. I went to a Halloween party at Brett and Jeff’s afterward and it turned out to easily be my favorite Halloween ever (besides the one where I met Robbie, of course).
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NOVEMBER 2018
So Robbie and I had a lot of time to talk and reflect when we were vacationing together in Utah and Arizona in October. One idea that came to us while we were there was that we should take some kind of ugly Christmas card photos with our “family” at the apartments this year. We knew sending out a Christmas card could be a cool ministry in and of itself: to use a lighthearted and funny card to make a statement about how following Jesus both challenges norms and creates serious fun. We brought up the idea with the kids, who took well to the google photos of ugly Christmas card photos, and they thought it was hilarious and they were all totally in.
One Saturday in November we all drove out to a Goodwill and somehow found ten turtlenecks in random colors and our various sizes and we all crammed into two dressing rooms and knew we had found some pretty funny winners. A few Saturdays later, after we had all attended Gay Klo’s older sister Teresa’s wedding, Brett graciously let us not only use her company’s space, but also their props and green screen to achieve a set that was perfect for really ridiculous pictures.
They all nailed the “ugly” vibe and got such a kick out of trying to be super serious despite how crazy we all looked. We squished together, held hands, made a train, and ended with some hysterical memories bonding together on our first ever family picture together. I loved it and had a blast. After I edited all the photos that evening, we all gathered at Gay Klo’s apartment for a post-wedding worship service and I passed around my phone with the photos on it and everyone got such a kick out of it. Everyone loved it and the people in the room that weren’t a part of it were wishing they had been included.
We got our cards printed with a long message on the back of what this year has meant to Robbie and me. We sent them out over the next month preceding Christmas, and they worked just as we had hoped. People loved them, couldn’t stop laughing about our crazy picture, but we were also told from our peers that having that photo on their fridge sparked conversations between them and their other friends who would visit their home and spot the photo and ask about it. I was so thrilled to hear this. Not that people were talking about us, but that people were kind of forced to think about how Christ led us to do this thing that is so different from the rest of the world. And that’s awesome.
The first week of November we started Tuesday Bible study nights with 7 of our kids. We had no idea how it would go, but we reasoned that if we had children of our own, they would be reading the Bible with us. So we don’t make it mandatory, but we tell them that Tuesday nights are reserved for eating dinner together and reading the Word. From week one, they were engaged and asking good questions, taking turns reading out loud, telling us what they wanted prayer for, and listening to each other well.
No one outside of us and our youth knew we were going to start this Bible study the week that we did. We truly didn’t tell anyone. We were debating how we would go about it (i.e. buy everyone their own Bible?, go through a devotional together?, just read from one Bible that we already owned?). We decided to wing it for the first night with just one Bible and see how it worked. When I got home from somewhere that afternoon, there was literally a canvas bag full of 8 Bibles (just the number we needed) sitting right outside my door just an hour before we would have our first Bible study night with the kids. We truly have no idea to this day who put them there, since no one knew we were doing this, but it was just too crazy of timing, too specific to doubt that this was confirmation from the Lord that we were supposed to be reading with our kids. That night everyone opened their own Bible to the book of John.
After a few weeks, one of my best friends, Olivia, donated ten brand new “kids” Bibles for us to try out. I put kids in quotes because adults can read it too, but it’s in simplified language and broken up into short daily readings followed by some application questions. These Bibles have been so useful and so helpful for me to not have to stop every sentence to explain difficult English words. And they’ve created beautiful dialogue for us. Our kids are in tune, asking good questions about Jesus and His Word, and wanting to pray for each other and their classmates at the end. It’s an evening I always look forward to in the week and they all choose and want to be there. No one is forced to come, but they all do, every week.
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THANKSGIVING
One of the coolest things that’s happened at the apartment was our plan for Thanksgiving. About a month before Thanksgiving, we started dreaming about what we hoped would come of our first holiday season here at the apartments. I think the biggest thing for Robbie and me was we hoped that all of our neighbors, immigrants and non-immigrants alike, would feel loved and supported by us and ultimately Jesus. We decided that Thanksgiving would be an amazing opportunity to share a meal with everyone at our apartments and to show everyone what we are most thankful for (all of them of course). So we imagined a day for a bunch of our friends to bring in tons of food and serve it out in the apartment courtyard together as one big family.
A few weeks in advance I sent out a text to about 20 of Robbie and my American friends who have been huge supporters of the life that we have created this year. It was really important to me to handpick the people that would be here for our Thanksgiving celebration. I asked only the people who have gone out of their way to spend time with our families and our kids, the people who have walked alongside Robbie and me in this journey and have in so many actions made it clear that, “These Karen people are important to us because they’re important to Rob and Chase. And Rob and Chase are important to us.” I did this because consistency is important when it comes to loving immigrants. I wanted the faces who would be serving them a meal to be faces they were already familiar with, faces they already trusted as people who they already knew loved them. The love we have felt from our community in 2018 has been unbelievable. I’m so happy our Karen friends get to experience Jesus’ love through our American friends.
We planned it for the Saturday before real Thanksgiving; so it was on Saturday, November 17th at 3pm. The day before, a bunch of the boys at the apartment and I grabbed a ton of chairs and a handful of tables from Citylight Benson’s basement, packed it all into the big church van and got it over to the apartment. Saturday morning we woke up early to start getting things ready. We looked outside and snow was beginning to fall. After going outside and feeling just how bitterly cold it was in addition to the snow, I texted all my friends and told them to dress as warmly as possible because rain or snow or wind or temperature was not going to hinder us from letting our neighbors know how much we loved them that day. And everyone were such troopers.
Since we were not anticipating the temperature to be so freezing cold, Robbie and I had a last-minute idea to go buy firewood and create two bonfires in the courtyard where people could gather to warm up. We have the tables and chairs all set up, Brett brought sweet little table centerpieces, people were arriving with lots of delicious hot food, the fires were burning bright, and then suddenly all of our neighbors started coming out one by one by one.
I will never forget the experience. I feel emotional now, a couple months later, reliving it through these words. That even in bitter cold weather with snow falling so hard on all of us, black neighbors, white neighbors, Native American neighbors, Karen neighbors, Karenni neighbors, Nepali neighbors, and Hispanic neighbors all came out of their apartments to grab food and nearly half of them stayed outside with everyone to eat together around the fires. Joy was so easily sensed from every person that received that day. Peoples’ thankfulness was so evident. Many of my American friends had beautifully genuine interactions with various neighbors who told them how impacted they were by this gesture. I got to share with so many new neighbors who I was and who Robbie was and tell them where I lived and that if they needed anything, ever, they could come to us.
There were neighbors that got food and brought it back home to eat and then they would come back for seconds or grab food for other family members that were still inside. One of our “church dads” from Citylight Benson made three huge pans of his famous lasagna and it was the greatest hit of the afternoon. Not only was it delicious, but it was still piping hot the whole time we served it (of course before it was all gone so fast). You could see the hot steam coming off that melty gooey lasagna anywhere in the courtyard and people wanted something to warm them up. In addition to the lasagna, we had chicken, turkey, mashed potatoes, an insane amount of fruits and roasted veggies, hummus, rice, noodles with a peanut sauce, chips and salsa, hot chocolate and more. Everyone that wanted food that day, got food that day. We thought we had wayyy too much when we started, but we went through every last bit of it.
Even after a few hours outside and not being able to feel my fingers or toes (and knowing no one else could either), everyone was still outside, laughing and enjoying each other’s company, asking questions about each other’s lives, and learning new things about each other’s cultures. I remember serving turkey for a an hour and occasionally looking up from all the activity in front of me to see so many different people gathered together around the fires. There was so much beautiful conversation going on around me and I breathed it in like there was more warmth in the sight that I beheld than if I were to go inside by the heater. I feel like I could write about this day and write about this day and never fully do it justice. None of our friends gave up early because of the cold, all of our closest Karen friends stayed out there for hours too, serving others before they served themselves, and every one of them displayed joy like Jesus would have despite the bitter temperature.
I was (and still am) incredibly inspired by the people in our lives, pushing through to make Jesus famous. I can only imagine how the meal we all shared that day looks similar to a meal we will one day share in Heaven where there will be all languages and colors represented and every voice will matter. This is all for God, every part of it.
So many people stayed well past when all the food was gone, telling stories and making jokes in circles until the very last ember faded out of the fires. Maybe fifteen of us, Karen and Americans, gathered in our small living room, warmed up our feet and hands, and watched a movie together to end one of the most perfect days I’ve ever experienced.
++Since that day, I have had American and Native American neighbors come to my door when they needed rides or help. And I got to have a spiritual conversation with them on the ride home from Walmart one day that they were so open to. We’ve had other neighbors we didn’t know prior to that day bring us brownies or simply open dialogue with us about what we are doing here because it confuses them but they appreciate it. I love confusing people with our lives. Because following Jesus should never look like what the world would expect.
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DECEMBER
October and November were incredibly thrilling and beautiful months at the apartment with our people, and I knew for sure December would not disappoint. None of our kids had ever experienced Christmas before. In Thailand the kids say that they did recognize Christmas but just never did anything to celebrate it. Robbie and I are well aware that gifts really mean nothing in light of the birth of Christ. And we wanted to be sure that we were cautious about the way that we approached Christmas with our friends here. Robbie and I have always celebrated with gifts, and we love that aspect of this holiday, so it got us excited at the thought of giving special and individualized unique gifts to each person. We went back and forth a little on how exactly to go about the holiday, but the conclusion we came to was that these people are our family and we do gifts with our family every year, so this shouldn’t look any different.
The weekend after Thanksgiving, we took the gang with Brett and Jeff out to a tree farm and it was one of the most fun experiences with everyone. There was snow on the ground surrounding all the lovely pines. There were snowball fights, hay rack rides, and jokes made about taking home the small dinky trees or the enormous 6 footers. There was running through the forest and tackling people on the ground. Hot cocoa drinking and finding the perfect tree. Everyone agreed on ours and couldn’t wait to come home and bring it inside. I’m not sure what it was about cutting down a real tree together and then coming home to decorate it all together in our living room, but the kids reminisced this experience for several weeks following. “It was soooooo fun when we cut down the tree!” “Yeah that was fun! I can’t wait to do it again next year!” And so on.
Bretty and I drove out to the farm with just the girls while Jeff and Robbie had all the boys in their car. Chat Htoo asked hesitantly, “Chase? Is Santa Claus real?” from the back seat. The girls are going to be teenagers in the next year, so I felt like it was appropriate to be honest. I turned around in the passenger seat to make eye contact with the girls while I gave them my answer. We had a good discussion about how we don’t have to be sad that Santa isn’t real because Jesus IS real. We talked about why Robbie and I give gifts. And how it is a reflection of Jesus’ love through us and how we love to see other people light up when they receive something just for them. And how that’s a lot like what God did for us. He gave us this gift that we didn’t deserve in Jesus which is Salvation and the forgiveness of our sins. He didn’t have to, but He wanted to because he loves us just that much. The girls had lots of adorable questions but the sincerity of their trust in me, to believe whatever I said, made me so grateful. I never want to break that trust that we have built.
So we put those trees on top of our cars, one for the Hicks and one for us, and got back home to decorate, to string lights, and then to end it all with a Christmas movie. These are the memories I still remember from when I was growing up and I hope they’ll keep them in their hearts forever too.
For Robbie’s birthday we took them all ice skating downtown one evening and it was pretty hilarious. They were mostly all terrible at it, but Thing Aye, the oldest, was the worst and we all loved teasing him all night for the way he “danced” when he was falling because he would try to catch himself and it ended up looking like he was twirling. Haha Gay Klo and Chat Htoo were actually not half bad at it, and I was super proud of Eh You Paw because even though she mostly had to hold onto the side of the rink the whole two hours we were there just to stay standing and not fall, she didn’t become discouraged and she wanted to keep trying. Overall, even though it was difficult, everyone had a blast (especially Robbie because he’s amazing at ice skating). It was super sweet of Robbie to spend his birthday celebrating with all the kids and I know they loved getting to be with him that night.
Every Sunday we walk to church from our apartment with all the kids. Robbie is always adamant that we walk and not drive no matter what the weather is. This particular Sunday it had been snowing for nearly 2 days and Omaha looked like a beautiful winter wonderland. Walking to church, we threw snowballs at each other, ran and slid down sidewalks for fun, and were in awe of how quiet all the streets were. When we got home, I was inside cooking something simple like frozen pizza for everyone while Robbie and a couple boys stayed outside to play in the snow. Nearly an hour had passed and the food was all ready, and Robbie was still outside in the cold so I went out there to tell him and the boys they needed to come in and warm up and eat something. Robbie was stubborn that he was having fun and didn’t need any food yet. And I was stubborn and wanted them to stop and come eat as I yelled at them from across the courtyard.
When they wouldn’t come, I marched over to the parking lot to try to figure out exactly what they were doing and why they wouldn’t come in. My frustration immediately turned to laughter when I recognized that they were building an amazing igloo out of the snow that had been plowed away from the parking lot. What they had made was truly amazing! I had never seen anybody in person build a real igloo that you could get in and out of. Over the next hour or two hours Robbie and Nay Lay Htoo and Thin Mwae (but mostly Robbie, if we’re honest. haha) worked away at it, packing more snow around the outside and digging out more of the center to make room for more people. Eventually this igloo was able to fit three adults inside. Maybe not comfortably but it could be done.
More and more kids started coming out to see it and even some neighbors who we didn’t know very well saw it and got giddy about it. This igloo was spectacular! And we laughed trying to get as many kids inside it as possible. Days later, it was still in tact and neighbor kids would go hide inside it when they’d get home from school. It was hilarious and yet one more memory we’ll never forget.
So on December 22nd, a Saturday, we woke up to our heater being broken. Oh the frustration of these issues always only arising on the weekends when nothing will be done at the apartment. It was really really cold in our apartment, especially when our bare feet walked across the laminate floors. I texted and called the maintenance people I knew and trusted. They were out of town for the holiday but directed me to a phone number that I could call for after hours work (which up until that moment, I had no idea a number like that existed). I called that number to which I was told, “Unless it’s a plumbing problem, we don’t send anyone out on the weekends to fix things. We will try to have someone come take a look at it on Monday.”
So funny enough, Robbie is usually at work when I am busy calling the apartment office all the time so he usually isn’t present to hear how these conversations go. But the guy was on speaker phone and Robbie was in the room so he heard it all and was hilariously surprised by the way I stood up for myself. I really really lay down the law and don’t take any bullshit from these people. I hold them accountable to their jobs. His lack of help was and is unacceptable. People need heat in their homes in Nebraska winters. After so much time, I was only really able to get him to give me the number of their heater guy so that I could contact him directly to solve our problem.
Brett and Jeff let us borrow their space heater and we also connected our own. It was Christmas Eve Eve the next night and we had a ton of us packed into our living room playing games on the floor and on the couches. We were super cautious not to blow a fuse so we didn’t have the heaters on full blast. Yet unfortunately, without warning, we blew a fuse. No heat and no lights now. We were all super cold super fast. I threw on extra sweatshirts and we got out more blankets. All the kids adorably didn’t want to go home so they stayed and fought through the cold and had fun playing their board games by flashlight as I tried to brainstorm what to do.
There are some fuse boxes above the washer and dryer in the apartment laundry room so I ran over there to see if our apartment was represented. There was a random assortment of apartment numbers represented but of course ours was not one of them. Were we just supposed to go without heat or electricity for the next couple of days until someone would come out and flip the switch? I called trusty Gyung. He answered right away and said he was currently at his evening church service but that he would swing by our apartments after service to help us. What would we do without Gyung? An hour later, Gyung was there, grabbed the key to a closed maintenance closet and flipped the switch and got our electricity back on. Thank goodness! Our packed living room applauded him and wished him a very Merry Christmas before he left.
We had planned to treat Christmas Eve like Christmas Day with the kids so we could spend real Christmas Day with Robbie’s parents and siblings. Christmas Eve morning around 8am there was a knock at our door. I said out loud to Robbie, “The kids KNOW they’re not allowed to come over until 10am today. I thought I made that clear to them yesterday.” I walked over to the peep hole to see a maintenance man (not a kid! haha). Praise God! He came in and fixed our heater in about twenty minutes and we had our apartment warming up for two hours before the Christmas festivities would start.
Everyone arrived, all our youth including Day Mu and Moo Paw and her little daughter and my sister came too which was so meaningful for her to be there witnessing every moment. Brett came bearing a big fresh fruit bowl for breakfast for everyone and she also came ready to take pictures with my camera of the whole morning. Brett has always played such a powerful role in my life, and every year our bond grows stronger through all the ways we blow wind in each other’s sails no matter what we are pursuing. Brett has easily been the most influential person to these kids outside of Robbie and me since the beginning. They know her, trust her, love her, and get excited to see her. Her capturing every gift unwrapping, every reaction, and every hug that morning meant I could live in the moment more (because pictures are just something for my whole life I have never been able to stop caring about), but also gave me a memory with and of Bretty that is deeply special.
The reactions did not disappoint. I had fears leading up to their first Christmas that somehow their expectations wouldn’t be met (let me be clear, they never set any expectations for us– I put that irrational thought in my own head) or that maybe it would all feel a little too cheesy and not natural. Yet I was wrong about everything, and I’m so thankful I was. It’s a day Robbie and I will never forget. Everyone waited their turn with gifts so patiently, enjoying watching their friends open their own gifts one at a time, and celebrating what everyone else got. Robbie and I put considerable thought into every gift and it really paid off because their excitement when they opened each item was everything I had hoped it would be. And their gratitude was immense and sincere.
Legit soccer jerseys, a basketball, a huge acrylic paint set with brushes and paper, nice makeup for my friends my age, necklaces for all the moms that read “family” in both English and in Karen, a bracelet for Chat Htoo that reads “I love you big bigger” (because she always says “I love you big big” to me because if you translate the Karen words for “I love you so much” that’s what it would be), a Harry Potter owl purse/backpack for Hser Gay Moo, necklaces for all the little girls that have a pendant with the state of Nebraska engraved on the front and the country of Thailand engraved on the back, long sleeve shirts for all the boys and Robbie and I that have illustrations of all of our faces that Robbie drew with a list of all the crazy quotes that all our boys say non stop every day listed down the backs, and intense nerf guns for all the boys and Robbie. Last but not least, the boys are always making the “A-okay” sign with their hands and playing the “gotcha” game by trying to “make you look” seemingly every second of every day. So Robbie thought he’d really get Gay Klo good (he’s the one who does it the most) if he molded a hand into that position out of clay and let it dry into form. It was life size and Robbie put it into a special box just for Gay Klo to open. It was such a hysterical moment. Everyone loved that. We let the kids gift all their parents gloves and hats from us too.
There was laughter, there were screams of excitement (mainly from the girls), there was immeasurable gratitude. Our oldest boy even, Thing Aye, had tears in private with me later over how overwhelmed he was by the kindness of it all. As I served everyone lunch of rice and salmon there was a comment made by Ler Htee Moo about no one having gifts to give back to Robbie and me, to which all the other boys chimed in acknowledging this lack. I quickly turned away their sadness over this with, “Hey! That’s not why we got you these gifts. We didn’t want anything in return, silly!” And Hser Gay Moo thoughtfully said, “But you and Robbie are the ones who do everything for everyone all the time. You’re the ones who deserve the gifts yet you’re the ones giving them.” (Mind you, she’s only almost 11!) Gay Klo piped up, “Yeah, that’s true!” and it gave me this perfect opportunity to remind them that’s precisely what God did for us– giving us the greatest gift of all, though we did not and do not deserve it, but simply because He loves us. “And also, you guys ARE our gifts. Your lives add so much value to ours. We are so thankful for you!” Ler Htee Moo and Korosoe just said, “Wow.” and the rest of the girls said, “Yeah, we are really thankful for you too.”
Christmas with the kids wrapped up with nerf wars, a beautiful candlelight service at Citylight Benson redirecting our hearts to the marvel of Christ’s birth, and then Robbie’s whole family and all our kids at our apartment for pizza and games and a Christmas movie that night. How could it have gotten any better? I can still remember the way I felt when I went to sleep that night– an infinitely full heart, like nothing I’d ever felt before. I have so many people I GET to love and that love me in return. One cannot ask for more.
In order to not miss out on everyone’s first time celebrating New Year’s Eve, we chose to celebrate on New Year’s Eve Eve with the kids (and go out with our friends on the real holiday) and I’m so glad we did. We ate together, played video games, played card games, braided hair, took pictures, nerf gunned, and stayed up until midnight with everyone together in the living room counting down the last seconds until we cheers’d with sparkling grape juice. Never have I ever been more fulfilled by a year than 2018, and never will I ever turn back from a life centered fully on obedience to Christ. His way is radical and outstanding and uncomfortable and beautiful and I feel fully expectant that 2019 will be even crazier and more thrilling. We have goals to keep our eyes more on Jesus this year than last, His Word to be more supreme, and daily prayer to be a must. We are so ready.
Robbie + Chase 