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…

Zwarts Family DTS Major Outreach

Back from 5 weeks away working in different places in eastern Thailand! It was the final “practical” stage of our training course here with Youth With a Mission, learning more about the culture, speaking and performing in front of large groups of people, leadership practice and opening doors for local churches to do more things in and for their community. Here is a summary of what we did…

We flew down to Ubon Ratchatani via Bangkok while the rest of the team bussed down, we stayed at a pastors House from Kitikhun Church. The family we stayed at were awesome and pretty much moved into 2 rooms of their house to free up the rest of the house for us. We went to a village called Baan Prane, had a church service in the evening that Miriam spoke at. We went to a local public high school (all public schools follow Buddhist traditions) the next day in the afternoon, and did drama, songs, games and dance and gave all 600+ kids a bible, which Timothy was very excited about. Visited Mental Hospital (facility for patients with long term mental disabilities and illness), did drama, dance and songs and Matt even mentioned to them that people in Australia thought he was crazy coming to Thailand for a year with his family, got a few laughs. We held a youth seminar at Kitikhun church, Matt taught on using music and other performing arts in church. We helped at a Compassion Project – taught music, dance and drama to children sponsored through Compassion and in the evening the children performed what they had learned.

We then went to Ubon Ratchatani AOG church. We went to village and did drama, songs and dance at the public primary school there. We visited a local university and spoke to students, prayed for Ubon, went to a slum and did activities, performed dramas and dance and prayed for people who were unwell. The next day we went to a Juvenile detention centre in the morning, we did drama, dance, songs and one of our leaders spoke about his life as a gang leader and how he has changed. There were a lot of teenage boys serving sentences for various crimes, and then in the afternoon we ran the same program for 100+ teenage boys and girls in the rehabilitation part of the centre. We visited a school that an American missionary volunteers at, did our dramas, dances and songs in front of 700+ (kindy to year 12) students and then the principle had lunch for us plus another team in his office – it was a big office! In the afternoon visited another smaller school. On the Saturday we helped at AOG church Compassion project, (approx 80 children).On the Sunday we helped at morning bible studies and Miriam spoke in church. The next Tuesday we helped at a medical clinic held in a church in a village, there was a Dr’s team from Australia supported by a Malaysian church.

The next day we visited the Candle Festival with youth group from Kitikhun church. It’s a very famous Buddhist festival, thousands of people come from around Thailand and the world to see the big candles on floats – like the Christmas pageant but with wax! The candles are made by monks in each province which are then presented to the local temples for granting of more merit/power.

We then travelled to Buntharik, staying in Noom’s (DTS staff member) mum’s house, in a village about 10 minutes drive from the town of Buntharik. It was small and nice, Matt even went fishing in the dam nearby, Timothy tried a ride on the back of the tractor. We went to the local village primary school, across the road from Noom’s mum’s house and did a program for them, and in the afternoon went to Noom’s old high school in Buntharik and did drama, dance, songs, games with 900+ year 10-12 students! Then the next day went back again, this time for students from years 7 to 9. There were over 1800 students at that school!

We all crammed in a van and travelled to Sisaket, staying at empty apartment rented by a couple who have started YWAM Sisaket and used to work with YWAM Chiang Rai. We went to a seminar in the evening at Hope of Sisaket church, Matt taught on music and worship. The next day after lunch, we joined the church in the “Hope Games” sports carnival, indoor soccer and “chair ball” (kind of like net ball but instead of a goal post and ring, someone stands on a chair and holds a basket!) quite a bit of cheating went on if you ask me, but nobody did… then we went to church in the evening. The next day we travelled to a village to paint and clean a house (it was missionaries who are currently away doing a different DTS with YWAM!) and tidy up their garden.

The next day we travelled back to Ubon and stayed at the AOG church again, and then we flew to Bangkok in morning. We had a stopover so spent time at YWAM Bangkok and went to local shopping mall were we managed to get in our first hamburger in 6 months. Then we flew to Chiang Rai in the evening, on a very delayed flight, and eventually arrived home at midnight! All up our outreach was hard as a family, but we have some great memories and learnt so much…

Well we don’t really get a lot of time off to do stuff, what with lectures and homework and a 2 year old, but when we do these are some of the things we get up to… Go for rides, Timothy has since been upgraded to a new motorbike helmet and attachment seat of his own and loves going for rides with Dad as he gets to sit right up front and beep the horn. The international night we had was great fun and we experienced food and culture from every nation, mmm! International food… Easter was good here but there was way too little in the shape of chocolate and Easter eggs, Timothy and Miriam enjoyed it with a whole heap of friends at a big party for the kids, (Easter is celebrated the same weekend as the Songkran water festival here), the rabbits are a new edition to the Base, one recently disappeared, but more were bought so now there are three little rabbits that Timothy loves chasing and squashing… he gets a little bit excited about the rabbits. The other really enjoyable thing to do is go to a local hotel and just use their pool to escape the heat, it gets so hot here sometimes.

Well we have been having some issues with Internet for a while here so I guess we will get a whole lot of updates done for you this week and then on Saturday we head of for a five week outreach to Isaan, it’s the eastern most province  of Thailand and by bus it takes about 21 hours… hence Miriam, Timothy and I will be flying… very thankfully. The pictures in the following gallery are from our second outreach a little over a month ago, we headed south from Chiang Rai to a place called PhaYao were we helped serve people in the local markets and wherever we could,  then we headed further south to Chiang Kham where we helped  in a Compassion project for kids and visited some people in the children’s ward at the local hospital, we even got to name a baby, Esther, super cool… we also did some dramas and stuff at a church service in a village where it rained so loud we couldn’t hear ourselves think. All up it was a hard but fun 2 weeks away.