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Rachael

Welcome Rachael to our family.  She is three years old and has been living at our friends orphanage since she was three days old.  It was intended for her to be adopted by our friend who in the end wasn’t able to.  He has given her to us and she has been with us for three weeks now.  We aren’t too sure about being able to adopt her either.  It is a very complicated process.  She will always be our daughter but it may not be able to happen on paper.  Everyone is still adjusting but most everything seems positive with the new change in her and our life.  Abby is enjoying being a new big sister.

Eli is amazing.  He is beginning to walk and will be one year on the ninth of this month.

The house is pretty much finished.  I just finished the bathroom last week.  We brought the girls up a couple of weeks ago while Lisa Gavin was here and they had a great time staining the outside.

We are looking forward to B-ma and almost all the Blues coming here in the next couple of weeks.  We will spend time in the village doing everything from painting, teaching, soap making, cooking, and working in the coffee field.  People in the village are excited and wont stop asking for B-ma.

The coffee is looking great and after a couple set backs with the locals most things seem to be doing well.  In one area we were forced to take out our banana trees because they believe there is an evil spirit attached to the tree that makes them sick.  We refused for awhile and even used the opportunity to speak to them about God.  But after they released cows in our field and threatened my brother in laws life.  We were forced to remove the banana trees.  Since then we have planted a new fast growing, nitrogen fixate, shade tree to replace the banana trees.

Prang is doing well and is busy with the weaving project in the village and even some free lance translation.  We are brain storming and researching many new business opportunities for her.  We are in the process of buying and selling avocado and coffee.  This could some day turn into a business or a company here in Thailand.  We will be driving up to Chiang Rai tomorrow to meet with farmers and with local buyers.   Prang will also be starting school here next term in December.  She will be studying on Saturdays and Sundays to some day become a teacher as well.

The next month is packed with many trips to the village, B-ma and the Blues, soap making, buying and selling avocado’s, taking care of coffee trees, and hopefully at some point having some sort of a vacation.  We have yet to have had a vacation since we first got married four years ago.

Please check out our pictures link. I have many recent photos uploaded

Water Supply

Sorry no pictures on this post.  Computer, camera, and memory card problems.  I’ll post pictures as soon as I get all my hardware problems solved.  Seems like a never ending battle.

We had a good month in the village.  Two weeks can easily turn into four once the rains start coming.  This is the rice planting season.  Or the season for any sort of planting.  Farmers in the mountains rely fully on the rain for their crops.

For those of you who follow this blog will remember that we had a water project proposed.  Well that project has been funded and completed.  We ran two Kilometers of water pipe to two different places.  This project seems to be a building block for many new relationships.  They see us running water pipe and then all of sudden you have many new friends.  I’m not concerned about their motives.  It’s the relationship that I care about.   This water will be used to ensure the survival of our new 3,500 coffee plants.  Others in the family and church who will be planting coffee or that will be working with us will also be using the water.

Once the rains started coming we began planting our coffee, avocado and banana trees.  We now have over three thousand coffee trees, 100 avocado trees, various different shad tress and a few hundred banana trees.  The shade trees, avocado and banana trees will serve as a shad canopy for the coffee.  We already began micro loaning seedlings out to other farmers and have sparked the interest of many other local farmers who say they want to plant coffee with us next year.  Which is our goal.  We want farmers to invest long term investments into their properties.  A good veriety of different cash crops that they can get a little something from every season.  Now they just battle with the supply and demand of tomatoes and chillies.  Most of the time just wasting their time and money in hoping to get rich once the supply drops and the demand increases.

Our house is pretty much done.  I still need to finish framing in the kitchen area but have run out of wood.  I used the rest of the lumber on the bathroom.  Again I will send some pictures once I can.

We also had a lot of time to spend with people in the church and were sharing and teaching.  Our main theme seemed to be relationship.  To have a relationship with God.  Something that isn’t taught here.  Many people in the church didn’t seem to understand when we explained that that’s what it means to be a Christian.  To have a living relationship with Jesus.  He is your father and friend.  You can talk with him and he listens.  My 15 year old nephew came to me after church one day and said “Thank you.”  He has never heard anything like this.  He said that is was cool to know that we could be friends with God.  It seems that we are mainly just battling with the spirit of religion all the time.  Living in this contractual world makes having a grace filled relationship with the living God seem impossible.  But we are seeing people accept what we say.  Even if it’s just my nephew being able to grasp it.  That makes it all worth while.

Coffee, Bags, House and Rice Mill

This is a pretty packed update.  Not just because my last post was in January but there just seems to be a lot happening.  I have never been this busy since I moved to Thailand back in 05.  Which means we are coming up on our fifth year mark here in April.  I won’t get into to many details otherwise this is going to be a long post.  So I’ll get to the main points.

Coffee

We have already dug some 2,500 holes for coffee seedlings and about 2,000 more planned.  We are planting our own as well as micro-loaning seedlings to farmers who want to grow.  Primarily working with people in the church and family.  Many farmers have told us they may want to grow coffee after they see ours succeed.  Apart from the holes being dug we have also built a small (and I mean small) nursery to keep seedlings and other plants.  A new water project has also been proposed and will consist of drawing water from a natural spring, running one kilometer of pipe and possibly building a cement tank.  It will provide water for the coffee plantation and possibly give water to a near by village during dry season.

Also we hope to have a training event where villagers who are planting coffee will be able to learn all about growing, mulching, trimming and harvesting coffee.  We are hoping to receive training from a local coffee company.  www.silaacoffee.com

Bags

J’Nangutong ~ My Sister’s Bag

The vision includes bags from a variety of women groups around the world, but for right now, we only have Karen Bags.  We have modified the tradition style side bag to meet the grocery bag standard in the West.  We are also thinking some products like tea towels, table runners, napkins, etc. might provide a more consistent appeal to western markets too.  This is all still in the marketing research phase and a web site will hopefully soon be up and running.  For the mean time we have women busy making bags and tea towels to be sent to the States and Canada.

House

I am building a small two bedroom house for our family to stay in while we are in the village.  Mission teams and guests will also be able to use it while visiting the village.  We are cutting the wood from big pine trees in the forest and building it ourselves.  It will be a traditional Karen style house raised off the ground.  I also hope to have this done before the rains hit in mid May.

Rice Mill

We have just installed a new machine in the rice mill.  It will take the rice husks that get tossed out in the back of the mill and grind them up to a fine bran that will be bagged and sold for fodder.

Though we are having some initial set backs and some mild miss-communication on how to use the machine.  We hope to get the kinks out soon.  Thank you to those of you who have supported our rice mill project.  We will be using the profit from the rice mill not only to pay for the workers but also to help establish small businesses in the village.  Including the bag and coffee business.

Eli Blue Abbott

That’s our new sons name.  He was born on September 8th at 1:30 in the morning.  He is strong and healthy and weighed in at about 7.5 pounds.  Because of his size a caesarean was necessary.  Prang just couldn’t manage to get him out by her self.  She is doing well and is back home after three days in the hospital.  I am adjusting to this new change in my life and I’m not sure if it has completely hit me yet.

I am having driver problems with my computer.  So everyone is going to have to wait on the pictures.  I’m hoping it’s just my memory card and not my camera.  But don’t worry I will get some up soon enough.

Rice Mill Finished

As of Saturday last week the rice mill is finally up and running and producing rice for the village.  Saturday when the machine was turned on for the first time people from the village swarmed in.  It got so crowded the guys trying to do some adjustments on the machine couldn’t work.  Soon it became chaotic and some people were displeased because the bran that is discharged wasn’t enough for them to use when feeding the pigs.  People began to rush home to get un milled rice to test the machine.  It turned into a free day for anyone who brought rice to the mill.  At first I was a little set back but it was pretty much out of my control by then.  People just kept coming and there wasn’t much I could do about it.  But people were excited and we let it go for the first day.  Kind of like a grand opening.  So far a week has gone by and we have seen people come every day.  It’s been a good turn out so far.  Even Prangs family members are getting the hang of running and adjusting the machine.  Our biggest problem now is the cost of electricity.  After a few months of accounting we should be able to see exactly what kind of a profit we are looking at.  All in all it’s been a good and effective project.  Everyone seems pleased.  Click on the photos link to the right to see pictures of the mill. I also added a couple video clips down below too.

Rice Mill

I am proud to say that we (Ton, Prangs brother) and I have finally finished our first rice mill. We saved a lot of time and money on not having to build a main building. Rather just adding to an existing one. We took Dad’s area for the cows which was just a roof. They just moved the cows out into the field. We had to clear out a lot of cow manure and add over hangs on the roof to prevent rain from coming in. We hired some guys from the village to get us wood and bamboo from the jungle for the walls. We then hired this father and his son to build and install the rice hulling machine. They really knew what they were doing and have done some sixty machines or more this year. This machine runs off a ten horse power motor, thus making us have to upgrade our main power service. We are still waiting for the new electrical service to be finished. Then we will do some test runs and then learn how to actually use the machine. As well as teach the people in the village how to use it too. It’s actually pretty basic. The machine takes the rice in its husk form. Sorts out all the rocks sticks and other things brought in from the field. Sends the rice through a series of rollers that break off the husk from the actual seed. Then it is sifted again before it goes through another series of rollers that then polish the seed creating white rice. It’s capable of both brown and white rice. But everyone seems to want white because of the taste. The brown rice is obviously more nutritious but lacks in taste. The shavings that are polished off from the brown rice are saved and fed to the pigs. Maybe that’s why the pigs taste so good?  They’re feeding the pigs all the polished off nutrients from the rice.  Anyways hopefully only in a couple of days or so we should have everything up and running and will have our first running rice mill.  Prangs family seems optimistic about running the mill and the villagers seems excited to have something near by for them to use.  We are all excited to be able to have such a practical resource available for everyone.