Thailand Mission Awareness Tour – 2001/2002

 

Dear Friends

A little update on Bow....she made her fifth trip to Bangkok for consultations with doctors and we are hoping that will be the last until next month when all the doctors will meet together to discuss a schedule for the operations.  She is quite the seasoned traveller now and knows the ins and outs of airports and the hospital too.  The time that I took her down she was quite nervous about having the eye doctor check her....she does one of three things when she is nervous - talks a lot, cries, or breaks wind!!!  The latter of the three is the most common.  The day we were seeing the eye doctor I was trying to distract her by telling her that her skirt was beautiful.  She told me that one of the volunteers had given it to her for her birthday.  When I asked her if she had her name written in the back of it yet, she turned around and had me check to see if her name was on the label.  It wasn't there, so I said I thought she should get one of the nannies to do it for her when she got home.  Bow had another idea....she moved over next to the doctor (who was holding a pen) and said, "Would you write my name in the back of my skirt for me?"

Another little Bangkok-Bow story.  When I was driving the children to school the other morning Night said he had FOUR things he wanted to do for his birthday.  He started listing them off....first wish was a trip to a local department store, second was a sleep-over at my place, third a trip to Bangkok....and I never heard the fourth because Bow piped in, "You can't go to Bangkok!  You have to have a squished nose like me to go to Bangkok!!!"  Night didn't know how to respond to that one.

The Agape living room is back to being an isolation room this week.  Nan came down with shingles and following straight behind her was little Pim, who has the same on her foot.  There is no blessing in having shingles I'm sure; but it certainly is a blessing when you have a buddy to be in isolation with.  Nan and Pim have become the best of friends.  Nan sits and does Pim's hair every morning - giving her some wonderful styles. Then the two of them busy themselves with games, or videos or even dress-ups.  After lunch the two of them collapse on the mats together and sleep - usually hand-in-hand or arms wrapped around one another.  It is a beautiful sight.  Just yesterday, Danusorn joined their happy band as he has a few suspicious looking shingles spots on his back.

Night and Mayti thought they might give hair dressing apprenticeships a go last week.  Somehow they got hold of the teacher's scissors and Night cut of a big clump of Faa's hair; and Mayti gave Chai a new look.  I read them all the riot act when we got them home from school and told them in no uncertain terms that none of them were to take on hairdressing EVER AGAIN.  The message must have sunk in because the very next day Night hopped up in the van after school and said, "Yesterday I cut Faa's hair, but today I didn't!!!!"

Little Wenaa was admitted to hospital last week suffering from what we thought was pneumonia.  The doctor who looked at her x-ray hasn't thought she might even have TB because her lungs had lots of white spots on them; but they are running further tests to get a better confirmation of this.  She had improved rather a lot and is at least able to drink her milk without the constant coughing and she is getting some rest too.

While Wenaa is showing signs of improvement, little Suree isn't, so we made a decision to bring her home from hospital.  The doctors have tried to do all they can and they agreed that the best thing we can do for Suree at this stage is to make her comfortable.  She is still plagued with constant diarrhea and as a result she has lost a tremendous amount of weight.  She seems very content to be back at home and she spends her days being cuddled and loved.  Nanny Ket has been in hospital and off work for close to a month and she needed some lighter duties to come back to, so she has been the perfect company for Suree....it is a beautiful sight to see the two of them snuggled in the rocking chair - loving and being loved back!

Buncha moved up a rank and is now one of the Agape pre-schoolers. He made the transition well and just loves being one of the bigger boys.  We hope some of his quietness might rub off on Jae-Jae and Talae a wee bit!!!  Those two are enough to send any teacher home tired at the end of the day.

We have had some wonderful birthday celebrations in the last two weeks....Tum was SO EXCITED about his that he just about shouted it from the roof tops.  What made his extremely special was that his favourite volunteer came all the way from the U.S. to surprise him for the special day.  Are these kids loved or what?

Nikki celebrated her birthday next and then just a few days after her it was Goong's turn.  It is so wonderful to see 11 candles on the cake.  We celebrate each and every one of them.  I remember the first year at Agape we were quite amazed if we heard of children who were four or five years old....and now here we are with children who are passing the 10 year mark.  Praise God.

We had the MOST WONDERFUL treat last week.....we got to take the kids to the Royal London Circus which was in town.  We didn't have to pay for the kids if they sat on our laps, so we each had one very excited child bouncing up and down on our laps throughout the performance.  They just adored the clown - as he got away with all the usual clown-type antics.  Chai was being a bit of a clown himself and we could have easily put him in the ring for everyone's entertainment.  When the juggler started to toss his hats in the air and catch them, Chai took off his own and started to imitate the act; and as female ringmaster jiggled and jived as she watched all the acts, Chai had her "shimmy" down to a tee.  I'm quite sure that Faa didn't blink once throughout the whole performance...she was just mesmerized by it all.

What made this treat ALL the more special was that two nights after we got to take the kids, the nannies and their children got to go too (because of some very special people giving us some very special gifts).  None of them had dreamed they would get to go, so they had listened to all the kids tales about the evening.  It was just as much fun to send them all off and then listen to their stories when they came back to Agape.  The circus seems magic no matter what age you are.

It wouldn't surprise me if Mai ended up on the stage one day....she came home from school the other day with bright lipstick smeared all over her lips.  She assured us all it was her friends doing!  It was a wonderful combo with the school uniform!

Love and blessings

Jane