Bruuuuuuannnnnneeeeee

Greetings!!! This has been a week of changes! Not always a bad thing, but not always an easy thing. Breanne left us for home yesterday, because she has a very important wedding to be in this week. It was really sweet watching her say goodbye to some of her favorite kids. They love her! We haven't been to work yet since she left, but I know they will ALL be asking for her. "Bruuuuanne?!" 

Laura's litte girl was just as unsure about Breanne leaving as we were. 

I could go on and on about how awesome Breanne was with the kids, but I will just tell you all when I get home:) We are already really missing her. Before she left her sweet momma treated us all to pizza!!!! It was a terrific way to give Breanne a goodbye dinner and give her a taste of home:) Thank you thank you!! 

Today the three of us headed to the Burma (Myanmar)/Thailand border to activate our second round of visas. We had an interesting day to say the least.  One thing that kept things quite interesting was that there was a crazy guy on our bus with an open wound on his leg. He said the strangest things and drove us nuts. He  At one point he was barking in the front seat. When we arrived, it was a rough seeing a lot of beggars and children asking for money. We only spent 15 minutes across the border, and that was enough. I will be praying for the faces I saw for a long time.

With this being done, we are ready to start our last week of work and then next week we are traveling to Phuket. God is definitely preparing our hearts for heading home. Prays for strength this week as we finish up our work here would be much appreciated! Blessings to you ALL!! 

Finally another blog entry!

Surprise!!! To everyone’s astonishment...we have not died. I have just been trying to write a blog for a while and then I get side tracked. I am new at this...sue me.

Since Breanne’s birthday we have been working regularly and spending a lot of time laughing. It is pretty crazy that she is headed home in 5 days!! Yikes! We will be sad to see her go, but we are so thankful that she has been able to come for 6 weeks. We will sure miss her giggle.

We got a package from Kristyn’s mom, Leisha full of junk food! These pictures pretty much sum up our feelings about this package. We tore into it like children.

Then today we got a package from MORE mom’s with a second round of junk food!! We have some awesome moms. With the same package today, Breanne received some lice treatments from her family. This is GREAT news for her and BAD news for the dudes living in her hair.

We went to Thailand’s tallest waterfall last week. It was wonderful and beautiful of course!!! Since it is not tourist season here and it was a wednesday at 12, we were the only people there. Phudit, the taxi driver told us about it and gave us a deal to get out there! We drove for about an hour and a half south west of Chiang Mai to the _________ national park. On the way out there, we drove through the most beautiful country side. There were villages of people picking fruit, it was surreal! Phudit stopped by a random group of Thai men and we all got out trailing behind Phudit. He walked up and striked up a friendly conversation and asked if we could have some fruit. We took it from the pickers gratefully and Phudit said to us, “Say Ka Pun Ka.” Which is thank you. It was cute because we kind of felt like his son. Thanks dad! Here are some pictures. They do not give justice to the size and beauty of this place!

WELL today was my birthday and these three ladies definitely knew how to make me feel special!!! I woke up to some incredible chocolate chip pancakes and candles of course. We have tried to make do with what we have around here for birthdays, so there was a fancy white sheet table cloth. We headed to a spa for the morning to celebrate. This has actually been our first time to get massages, and it was really relaxing. We were the only ones there. The ladies fixed our hair afterwards, and it was pretty sweet trying to figure out what to do with hair that isn’t thick and perfectly straight. At one point there were 3 ladies surrounding me looking at my hair like a science experiment. Then we headed to our favorite restaurant for lunch! Of course the food was wonderful, but the most special part was a sweet gift I received. Before we left, Kirstyn got some close family and friends to write me sweet notes and letters. Or drawings if you are Kristen. Then she put them in the most BEAUTIFUL journal that she had painted on each page!!! As soon as I opened it I started bawling of course!!! No one was surprised. It was such a sweet idea and definitely made me feel so special. Thank you so much for those of you who wrote in the journal for me. After work, Kirstyn and I made a quick trip to 7-11 (the usual) and headed home to find the other two squirts standing by a candle lit table with cake!!!!! It was ANOTHER perfect surprise. Everything they pulled off is so great because it is hard to be sneaky when there are 4 of you living in a house together. They were wonderful and surprised me over and over again. I am on really blessed 21 year old.

We have continued to have sweet moments with the kids. Like tonight when 3 of the 9 year old boys helped us carry legos back down to the volunteer room and we gave them peach-o’s even though they had already brushed their teeth. They were giddy. Or when our sweet little blind friend sang me happy birthday in Thai and English as she hugged me so hard it hurt. Or when Breanne and Taylor sing pop songs to the little girls and they watch in amazement that they know all the words. God is continuing to bless us and encourage us to finish this trip strong! To be honest, it has not always been easy. The preacher at the church we go to really spoke to us on Sunday about the power of walking in faith. Alot of days are not perfect, but we are trying hard to walk in faith and not sight! And our faith is telling us that God has us here for a strong purpose even when it is fuzzy sometimes!

Tomorrow we are headed back to that crazy looking lake. We want Breanne to see it before she leaves, so we thought it would be a perfect way to spend our day off. Prayers for Breanne’s last few days here and her travels are greatly appreciated!!

Blessings to you guys!

Breanne's birthday, hospitals, and elephants!

To our sweet Breanne,

IT”S YOUR BIRTHDAY TODAY!!! You have brought 22 years of fun to a lot of people. Thank you for always making us laugh when we need to cheer up. Thank you for saying the most bizarre things as you fall asleep. Thank you for playing with the kids that we honestly cannot handle sometimes. Thank you for being such a sport about getting an awful sunburn. Thank you for baking delicious goodies. Thank you for giving me the best laugh of the trip when you screamed because a cockroach ran up your arm while you were making whipped cream. Thank you for keeping Thailand’s battery supply companies in business. Thank you for opening our eyes to the world of tiny elephant statues. Thank you for not crying when your bike died on the way home from work the second day you were here.Thank you for helping us out when we need to calculate Baht to dollars. Thank you for grabbing that baby lizard- with your hand- out of our bathroom. No really...thank you. Thank you for completing our team!You have definitely been a shining light for our us here!! You are one of the most loyal and encouraging friend. We are really going to miss you the last two weeks we are here!!


God has given Breanne such a strong talent in working with kids. She has been so positive and excited to play with the children every time we go to work She has fallen in love with the little babies here at Agape. This might be the very strongest gift God has given her. It is basically pointless to go into the baby room with Breanne, because they just want her to hold them. It is really sweet to watch. She has found an extra special bond with one little girl. The Lord has been working in mysterious ways through this relationship. For the past few weeks, Breanne has been sneaking away to the baby room to see her little friend. She always talks about how she wishes she could just take this little cutie home. Well, on wednesday she got permission to adopt. Just kidding. On wednesday, Laura came over to our house with a request. The little girl has had 3 seizures since she was born and she is almost a year old. She got admitted to the hospital for testing so they can try to target the source of these seizures. Hospitals here are nothing like home. The nurses there are in charge of IVs, temperatures, and blood pressure. They do not change diapers, sheets, or bath. So if a child is admitted, there has to be someone with them at all times doing those things. Well Agape was low on staff for that night and needed someone to go to the hospital for the night with her. So Laura immediately thought of Breanne and came over to ask. It was such a cool realization that God has been preparing Breanne for this! AND Breanne got to be this little girl’s mom for a night. Of course Breanne said yes and she headed to the hospital at 5 pm. She spent the night changing diapers, bathing, playing, and feeding her. They told Breanne that they wouldn’t being doing any tests on her while Breanne was there. Well they came and got her from Breanne and did a spinal tap. They wouldn’t let Breanne go back with her, so she had to sit and listen to her scream from 3 beds away. When she came back the nurses told Breanne that she had to keep her on her back for 6 hours. A 1 year old on her back for 6 hours!!!!!!!!!! The room that Breanne was in had 10 beds that were all very close to each other and the fan above Breanne didn’t work.This little girl was in a pretty uncomfortable situation, but kept smiling and laughing. Breanne did such a great job and has some cool stories about the night! You can ask her sometime. I will hold the diaper stories for another time. You are not allowed to take pictures in the government hospital, but since Breanne is such a rebel...she took some with her phone. Blog dedication award!

Well much to our surprise, someone was needed at the hospital again the next night. And the volunteer who went was....


KIRSTYN!


She headed up there at 5 and stayed until the next morning at 9. We are extremely proud of her! As she was leaving Breanne asked her, “Do you know how to change a diaper?” and Kirstyn responded, “I will figure it out!!” So hilarious! She definitely figured out how to do that. It was a pretty long night for her in the hospital. Kirstyn got the full mom experience, because the little girl was pretty fussy all night.The biggest frustration was the language barrier! It was a huge job for them to be trying to communicate with doctors and nurses. What an incredible learning experience for them! Let’s just say they are pretty sleepy and we are really really proud of them!! 


Since it is Breanne’s birthday tomorrow we celebrated with elephant riding this morning and a fancy dinner tonight. We rode elephants for an hour through the jungle. It was really fun and really hot! Breanne wasn’t sure what to think of this outing at first, but in the end...she still LOVES elephants. We went to dinner in an air conditioned taxi. It. Was. Heaven. We all got amazing food and finished it off with coffee of course! 

 We have a long weekend ahead! Once again, prayers for energy are greatly appreciated! If you get a chance, tell Breanne happy birthday old lady!!