Matt, Miriam and Timothy

Merry Christmas to everyone back home in Australia. We celebrated Christmas in Thailand this year, and as our time here quickly comes to an end, I still notice new things that I’m learning even just before we leave. I’m sure back in Australia everything apart from service stations are closed, everyone heads off to visit family and friends and all enjoy the day together gorging on food, sharing and receiving gifts and hopefully manage to remember to give thanks to God for sending His son in there somewhere…

Well it’s a little bit different in Thailand… for one thing schools are still open, so all the kids are still at school today, the garbage collection is still on today and pretty much everyone just treats today as another day, I’m sure a lot of Thai’s know that it’s some sort of special day on the western calendar but it really doesn’t seem any different here. We enjoyed our day with the Mum’s and kids living on our property and had lunch with them, one of the boys even went of to school today, and we had a lovely time having a picnic just outside our house on the grass. Later that evening we joined the kids and family at Home of The Open Heart for a BBQ tea, well pork and sausages on little coal fire pots, not a real “barbie” just a Thai style one.

We did have a wonderful day as a family and Timothy really enjoyed getting some books and a car for Christmas, as much as we missed family and friends on Christmas day it is really a blessing to be able to experience Christmas living in another culture. It makes me look at what we do, and why we celebrate and hold particular traditions we do as meaningful, we made sure we sat down in the morning as a family and gave thanks to God for his Son, and prayed and asked God to be a part of our day, I mean there’s no reason that  you have to wait until your about to say grace to give thanks, the only reason we have Christmas is give thanks to Jesus for coming to earth and what he did so why not thank him all day?

Anyway here are a few pics of our Christmas, the one with Timothy and baby Alex is cute as we think Timothy is looking forward to being a big brother, can’t wait to get home and see everyone again, share our stories and adventures, and here how the past year has been for everyone back in OZ. Hope you had a great Christmas and a Happy New Year, look forward to seeing everyone in 2010…

So as our time comes down to a week in Thailand, we are trying to enjoy the last few days we have here as well as finish off any projects, work or commitments that we have. We went on a family picnic yesterday which was really nice, it was at Prong Prabhat Waterfall, which is only a five minute drive away from our home, and on Saturday we went for a ride as a family, on the family motorbike of course, to the airport for yummy chocolate drinks and biscuits to watch the plane takeoff. Timothy’s getting very excited about his upcoming plane ride but well wait and see how he is after several hours of being stuck in a seat. We’re doing the overnight flight so we are praying that he sleeps during most of our flight from Bangkok to Melbourne, and that we, Mummy and Daddy, do as well…

We’ll during the building of the hospice I did manage to fall through a scaffold… thankfully with not too many bruises and my head still attached, but the Thai workers are here at the moment and they blow me away with the daredevil ways they climb out onto the Thai version of scaffolding. I can’t say that I’m going to go out there and give them a hand.

It amazes me that the whole thing is held together with wire, bamboo and rope. I love that one group of guys came and put it together and then another group came in the next day and started to clamber all over it, safety here in Thailand seems like an optional extra… just like motorbike helmets!

Well it’s been nearly a year for our time here in Thailand, sometimes it feels like it was only yesterday that we got here and then other times we can’t wait to get out of here, depends on the day. We’ll as far as Matt thinks he’s pretty happy with what he’s been able to achieve on the hospice project at Home of the Open Heart, the roof is currently being tiled and the other type of tiles, floor tiles, are being laid in the bathrooms. Matt recently got to finishing off some brick handrails on the second floor and is now busy tying up any loose ends so that there isn’t a paper trail left over that doesn’t make sense, of course this means tidying up the previous one, but that’s what he’s here for. All in all the roof should be tiled and guttered before the end of the year and Matt might even have a camp out up there for something to do, then he can say he’s stayed in the building he helped make, and before we know it we’ll be back in Adelaide and trying to get life going again in that part of the world. All said and done it’s been an amazing and challenging adventure for all three of us and we can’t wait to see what we’re called to next…

Matt here, well over the past couple of months I’ve been working hard at Home of The Open Heart, in particular I have been working on the Hospice Project that Home of the Open Heart have had going for several years. There was a team from Australia that came over in late September to early October, for 2 and a half weeks, they helped to complete the brickwork and steel frame work for the second story on the hospice. Before the team got here there was obviously a lot of background work I had to do to get all the materials on sight and have the sight ready, as much as possible, to assist the team when they got here. It was a great time having the team here, as much as it was hard work, it was so rewarding to see the second story structure of the building completed, here are the pics to say the thousand words…

Thanks to everyone for all their help on the Hospice.

It was great to have the team here, they achieved there goal of getting the main structure complete and then even had time to construct a disabled access toilet on the second floor as well. After the team left I continued on where the welders had completed the main roof structure, and added some verandah’s to give plenty of shade. It took me nearly three weeks just to get the fabrication done and painting and then a team on DTS from Kona, Hawaii were here at just the right time to help me lift up the steel work and erect the frames into place, thanks guys. Here’s the pics…

Well the next things I’ll be working on are getting together all the paperwork for the hospice, floor plans, electrical requirements, plumbing, everything else that needs to happen to make the Hospice complete. After that I’m going to look into getting the handrails/guard rails and staircase hand rails hopefully in place, of course I’m looking forward to laying about a thousand bricks myself, but what else am I here for? It’s great to see work getting done on the hospice and rewarding to know that one day it will be a place for those who need love in their hardest of times, I pray it’s all that and more…

So we are living at Home of the Open Heart now in the managers cottage, it’s on an adjacent property to where the kids live, three mums and their kids live on the property with us, and we are now very busy helping out in whatever way we can here. Matt is already getting ready for a team from Australia coming over at the end of the month, their aim is to get the second storey on the hospice building project brickwork and roof structure complete, so he’s very busy emailing correspondence and ordering all the raw materials for the construction work. Matt is also giving two of the kids guitar lessons twice a week which is good fun.

Miriam is trying to find her role as a nurse here, as there are already two other nurses here at the moment, but she is kept very busy with an ever joyful and fun filled little 2 year old running around. Miriam is also teaching English once a week to the Accountant here, Kak. The other thing that amazes me is that with all that my wife does she still manages to remain the most beautiful woman in the world, I mean that has to take some effort, but everyday without fail she manages to win my heart, bravo, bravo!!!

Timothy is quite happy with our new home, he gets his own room, which is actually better for Mum and Dad to have more space, Timothy goes to Kindergarten every morning and is really loving playing with his Teacher and one of the kids from Baan Nam Jai. He loves going on outings with Mumma and Daddy and is very quickly repeating every word we say. He loves playing on the playgrounds here and is now into a comfortable routine in his week, which makes life a bit more predictable for Mum and Dad.

All up we are enjoying our time here, and we know that before we know it it will be time to go home, so we’re both working really hard to try and get done as much as we can in the 4 months that we have left here, and try and savour all the things that we’ve come to love about Thailand, 60 cent Cornetto’s, bargain… riding on a motorbike as a family, and not trying to think too much about the things we miss back home…

So here are some pictures of Home of the Open Heart, Timothy at Kindergarten, our new home and the Hospice Project that Matt is working on, now that we’re a bit more settled we hope to get more posts onto our webpage, that’s if the internet is reliab………………………………………………………………………..(Local Area Connection Disconnected, please contact your service provider for assistance.)

Just after we finished our DTS we went on a family holiday to Chiang Mai, it’s about 3 hours drive south west of Ching Rai and it has a lot of cool western stuff to do. We indulged a little in the western cuisine and had our fix of iron from eating beef, went to the Zoo and Night Bazaar and just had some time to relax as a family before we officially started at Home Of The Open Heart.

We had a really good time and are planning to go back in late October again for another long weekend, there are a lot of cool things to take Timothy too like a butterfly park and Tiger park, and swimming is always a great thing to do when it’s hot…

Here are some more great pictures we took while we were on our major outreach, hope you like them…

Here are some more creepy crawlies we saw during our Major Outreach in Ubon Ratchatani…

Here are a whole lot more lightning and great weather and scenery pics that we took while we were on our major outreach in Ubon Ratchatani, hope you like them…