Merry Christmas From Bangkok!

All of our loved ones in the West, with your cozy fires, chilly holidays and picturesque vistas...Bangkok does Christmas much the way it does everything else- big, bright, colorful, loud and HOT!

Tonight our apartment threw a Christmas/New Year's bash, and it was quite the event...

Nothing says Christmas like a traditional bucking bronco. I double-dog-dared Tim to do it, but he had a flimsy excuse about not wanting to hurt himself before he leads worship tomorrow. 

Imagine attending this party with a 101.5 degree fever- that was my evening. A bit nightmarish, with blaring Thai Isaan music accompaniment (for the record- it's after 10 and it's still blaring. Sounds like it's in our apartment. Unlikely to stop anytime soon). Wacky but fun- that's Bangkok.

On another note, we have a more staid (but still fun- oh, so important!) Christmas celebration planned tomorrow evening as a precursor to our new church, which is moving toward beginning meeting early in the new year.

Grief and Hope

A dear friend here is in the early weeks of learning how to deal with her advanced stage cancer, even as she learns to be a mommy to her newborn baby.

My friend and teammate is across the world grieving the death of her father as her children wait here for their parents to return.

And, after I published my last post, I woke up the next morning to the news of the unspeakable tragedy in Connecticut.

Joy and sorrow, life and death all together- the story of this world.

And we prepare, counting down the weeks of Advent, sharing the highs and lows of each day, rejoicing in the gift of today. We press on to celebrate the coming of our Savior, the One who brings hope into the desolation of our world.

He will swallow up death forever, the Sovereign Lord will wipe away the tears from all faces, he will remove the disgrace of his people from all the earth. The Lord has spoken.     - Isaiah 25:8

Nicknames, etc.

We've always been a nickname family, everyone having any number of regulary-used variations on his or her name. Recently, though, we realized that Em has her own special nicknames for each member of our family. They're not new, and she uses them often, but they've eased into our family consciousness slowly, and have just become a topic of conversation. So, for posterity's sake, our little imagination factory's nomenclature:

Daddy- Dipsin Dads
Mommy- Mamasita Maria
Asa- Bipsin
Ju- Sweeshin

She is delightful.

So we've had a little bit of activity lately. Here are Bipsin and Sweeshin on Deck the Halls Night:

And us plus dear friend Catherine after the halls were decked:

Big news is that Dipsin Dads recently got his micro-balcony studio up and running- let's see- this is the second apartment balcony on which he's thrown pots over the course of our married lives, in addition to his parent's garage, his brother's rental home's toolshed, a tiny room at the back of the garage in our house and a big room at our furlough house. Whatever the setting, he's more alive when he's making, and everyone's spirits were high as this came together.

Mamasita Maria's had some adventure of her own lately- was able to go to this beautiful place:

Angkor Wat- Siem Reap, Cambodia

with these beautiful women:

to do this!

Our group was split between the half marathon and 10K (I was most definitely in the 10K contingent), and the effort of traveling to Cambodia and back over land was a marathon in and of itself; certainly the most adventurous thing this mama's done in quite some time! A really neat group of women and I'm so glad I got to be a part of it.

And finally, our girl has had memorable moments, too, lately...

raising the Thai flag with her dear friend before school on a recent morning

Satay making practice with our friend who has a street stall selling this delicacy

And most significantly...months of rehearsals led up to her acting debut in her school's performance of 'It's a Wonderful Life'. She had a small, non-speaking part that whet her appetite for theater and it's likely that auditions and rehearsals will be an ongoing part of our lives. She was smashing.