Returned Just in Time!

5 days before Rich & our second son's flight was due to depart they received the dreaded call that they had been bumped off their flight.  Fortunately, we were offered another flight.  We did not realise just how fortunate we were until a week later, while in quarantine, when Sydney went into lockdown and international arrival numbers were halved.  We are very thankful to God for his provision as the next available economy flights to Sydney from Thailand are from January 2022!  

It has been great for most of our family to be united again after such an extended period, although we miss our oldest son and he misses us.  Despite the disappointment of Sydney’s lockdowns, our second son has settled well into the rhythm of his new school online. He just wishes he could have a chance to make a start on the guitar he is planning on making in his Industrial Tech Timber class! 

We have begun our final home assignment, which will be completed at the end of this year.  We would love to connect with you, or your small group online, or just via a phone call, until the lockdown in Sydney ends. Please let us know if you’re interested, and send us your number. 

Go Cho June 2021 - Earlier Return

Rich’s farewell lunch with the OMF North Region 

 

Our March 2021 Go Cho emphasized our need to “hold our future plans lightly, as inevitably there would be twists and turns that we could have never expected.”  This has come to pass, as Rich and Aidan plan to leave Thailand in a few days (God willing).  

A number of different factors led to the decision to apply for a place for Aidan to start in Term 3 in a school in Sydney last month, with his place being confirmed by the end of last month.  

It has been a hectic and stressful time, especially for Rich in organising the sale of cars, motorbike, changing of visas for Luca, flights and packing while still leading the digital media teams and projects (as yet there is no one to take over from Rich).

Aidan is quite sad to be leaving Thailand earlier than expected.  He had a great group of friends and was very much settled here.  This is one of the hardest aspects of missionary life, when you have to move your family around so much.  These transitions are not easy for anyone, but harder as the children grow older and their attachments much stronger.

Luca will remain in Thailand to finish his final year of highschool, starting in August.  Undoubtedly, it will be hard being the only one in our family to remain in Thailand.  We are so thankful for Ross and Eirenee who will be his guardians for at least the next 6 months.

After two weeks of quarantine and a few weeks to settle in, we will begin our final home assignment from August.  We look forward to visiting you at your church, small group or individually and sharing with you of God’s work in Thailand and some fruit of your faithful prayers.

Go Cho April 2021 - God Provides Unexpectedly (Again!)

Weekly meal with Ross & Eirenee

On 29 Nov 2021, a post came up on my (Rich’s) facebook feed. A young couple from the US were moving to Chiang Mai to work with an expat church and to seek God’s plan for their future.  They were seeking to rent a house and a motorbike from the end of December until the end of July.  I don’t know what prompted me as I normally wouldn’t respond to a random post like that.  But we had an empty guest flat so I messaged them offering it to them if they wanted it.  I was surprised when they took up our offer as our flat was pretty small and basic with no kitchen.  
Ross was in the US marines and Eirenee is a dual US / Thai citizen.  They share Aidan’s love for rock climbing and were able to take him “real” rock climbing (as opposed to indoor) at some cliffs in Chiang Mai for the first time.  Since moving into our guest flat, they have been coming over for dinner once a week and have been a real blessing to Rich, Luca and Aidan while our family has been apart.  
They have grown to love Luca and Aidan and didn’t want them to be split apart with two separate families or places when Rich returned to Australia in August.  This was looking likely with it being very difficult for 1 family to take care of  both boys.
After praying about our boy’s situation and their own plans, Ross and Eirenee amazingly offered to extend their stay in Thailand and look after Luca and Aidan until at least January 2022!  We and many of you had been praying for months for someone to look after our boys and God answered our prayers in such an unexpected way.  Praise God!  Having lived next to us all this year and knowing the boys already will make the transition a lot easier when Rich leaves.
With Ross and Eirenee to look after the boys, the next step was finding a house for them all to rent near Luca’s school.  After looking at a few possible houses, we received an offer from one of the members of our church to house sit from July.  The house is directly opposite Luca’s school!   God had answered our prayer again.
Although our family separation was not part of our plans and caused considerable upheaval to our lives, we have experienced God’s grace and love in many unexpected ways which we are so thankful for.

Trip to Kanchanburi

Bridge over the River Kwai

We have lived in Thailand over 13 years and we haven't visited some of the most famous places in Thailand.  So with Covid-19 restrictions easing, we made the 700km road trip from Chiang Mai to the Bridge over the River Kwai in the province of Kanchanaburi.  It was our first long road trip in years as it is so cheap to fly everywhere in Thailand.  It was very crowded on the Bridge, but it would have been many more times more crowded without Covid-19 and all the tourists been locked out of entering Thailand.

Unfortunately, the Death Railway Museum was closed until the end of July so we couldn't go in.

The Commonwealth War Cemetery opposite the Death Railway Museum was a sobering reminder of the sacrifices of the WWII.

The Erawan Waterfalls is considered to be one of the most beautiful waterfalls in Thailand with 7 levels.

It was stunningly beautiful but we were sorely disappointed as they had banned swimming in the water due to Covid-19.  Kind of an overkill really as there hadn't been a new internal case of Covid-19 for over 30 days previous to that and people could still go into cafes and shopping centres and other public places and walk very close to others on the trial up and down.  

Difficult School Choices

Choosing a schooling option for your Third Culture Kid (TCK – the new term for Missionary Kid – MK or any child growing up in another culture) can be quite a stressful and difficult decision.  For some missionaries, their options are very limited and home schooling might be the only option.  For others however, there might be the option to send their children to a local or international school (either boarding or as a day student).  These options are often combined with home schooling.

After 10 years in Thailand we have been through almost every option with our kids.  It started with a local Thai schools combined with some home schooling.  Then it was home schooling full time.  Now all our kids are at an international school (as a day student).

Each time the decision the change schooling option has not been easy and things have not turned out as we had hoped.  The ideal situation would have been our kids attending local schools and speaking Thai fluently and eventually sometime in highschool shifting to an international school to prepare to tertiary education back in Australia.

It started off almost to plan with the 3 kids at that time going to a local Thai school and being fluent in Thai.  However, we had an unexpected home assignment for a year due to health of my father and our kids lost most of their Thai.  Then we changed ministries and were involved in ministry where our kids were with other Australian missionary kids and there were no appropriate local school options. 

By the time we moved to Chiang Mai, a large city in North Thailand with lots of expats, with our kids much older and with hardly any Thai, the local Thai school option would not work.  Homeschooling was an option which we tried but it wasn’t working well for our family.  So in the end we decided to send our 4 kids to an international school.

There were plenty of options in Chiang Mai - Grace, Chiang Mai International (CMIS), Prem, Lanna, American Pacific, Nakorn Phayap, Varee to name a few.  We liked the British curriculum option and considered Varee and Lanna at first.  However, our kids didn’t want to go to Varee and when we applied for Lanna our kids were not accepted.  That left us with the two traditional options for missionaries in Chiang Mai, Grace International and CMIS.

You ask the missionaries about where to send their kids between these two schools and you open a can of worms.  Some people are very passionate in advocating for Grace or CMIS.  Grace with almost 90% of the students being TCKs from missionaries families and a clear Christian mandate is definitely the more “Christian” school with predominately Christian teachers (who need to raise their own support to teach at the school) and overtly Christian events like chapel.  CMIS has only around 50% of TCKs from missionary families and less overtly Christian.  I would call it a church school rather than a Christian school.

Both are great schools.  I’m sure our kids would have been happy at both school but we had to make a choice.  In the end, we chose CMIS, because it would give us more contact with Thai families for whom we had come to Thailand.

Although being such an overtly Christian school and having a thoroughly Christian environment at Grace is conducive to a Christian child’s spiritual growth, I’ve heard that one of the issues can be what happens when they leave this “Christian bubble” and have to go to college where environment is completely opposed to their faith.  Some don’t cope well with this transition. 

So far we are happy with CMIS after half a year for our two older kids in grade 5 and 8, and after two weeks for our younger two in grade 3 and pre kindergarten.  

10th Wedding Anniversary in Krabi, Thailand

Morning at Poda Island, in Krabi, Thailand

Signs reminding us of the tsunami

Our daugher with her new dress

We have hardly been to any tourist areas in our first term here in Thailand. So our 10th wedding anniversary gave me the opportunity to take the family to a tourist destination instead of our normal holiday location in Pracuap which is owned and run by our mission. We chose Krabi because it is less touristy than Phuket. Even though it is the rainy season the weather has been really good with only a couple of raining periods so far. One of my highlights was our trip to Poda Island today. About 25 minutes by long tail boat to small but beautiful island. We were the first ones there, but within minutes other boats started to arrive. About 20 minutes later though, the most unexpected thing happened. A tourist was walking towards where I was sitting and he sort of looked familiar. I looked again and I though he looks like our mission's Thailand field director but it couldn't be. He saw me and then had a confused looked on his face and then we both realised that it was who we thought it was. Our field director was on holidays with his wife and son and daughter-in-law. We couldn't believe that we'd happend to be at this remote tiny island which is only accessible by boat on the same morning and we'd actually crossed paths! Unbelievable!

Krabi is a great place for a holiday. Lots of things to do for active young couples like snorkling and rock climbing. However, with 3 young children, most of the time is at the beach or in the pool. In a few days we go to Chiang Mai for my language check and then back to Lampang to start packing for our home assignment and tying up as many loose ends as we can.

Day at the Bakery

Phii Nuu's daughter and son

Phii Nuu with the Boys

Phii Nuu was my first English student at The Lighthouse. She has been faithfully coming to my Wednesday night English class almost without fail for the last 11 months. Other students have come and gone but Phii Nuu will be there and if see can't like last week she will turn up and say that she can't come or phone me.

A couple of weeks ago Lisa took the boys to Phii Nuu's bakery because they were studying the letter "B" in home schooling. The boys at a ball of a time and so did Phii Nuu, her children and the bakery staff (or so she told me).

We continue to build relationships in Lampang and we hope that we can have many more like this one where we can go beyond the superficial. Phii Nuu's son is studying English at Chiang Mai University and is thinking about doing further study in Australia.

Dining Out and our growing girl

We like dining out in our front lawn whenever we can. It can be a bit difficult right now in the wet season though. We've had one or two conversations with neighbhours we haven't met before doing this.

Our little girl is growing! She is quite an attraction when we go out. About 10 different people must have stopped and looked at her in her pram today at the restaurant at lunch. The majority of people guess that she is a boy (incorrectly). At lunch, we heard one waitress scold another waitress, "Of course it's a boy!". Obviously, the pink dress somehow doesn't give it away here in Thailand!