July 2009
Dear Friends,
The rainy season is probably my favorite season here in Thailand. I just love to watch the dark clouds roll in as the “lom yen” cool winds pickup, then it begins to rain. Tim and I sat eating Khioy Thiaw heng, a rice noodle dish, listening to the rain as we celebrated our 7-year wedding anniversary in our new home.
Most of today was spent moving, cleaning and preparing for a team who will arrive tomorrow. But we were able to snap our annual photo and take a moment to celebrate where we are. It feels fitting to be sitting in a new home as we celebrate this anniversary.
Our new home will serve as our place to live as well as where servant teams will live with us. We are very excited about the potential for community and for life in this place. Already we have met the neighbors and Ella as befriended their dogs, eaten there food and borrowed their baby bikes (we have only been here today). The most exciting part is the kitchen.
To give you a visual we are renting a townhouse/shop house style home. Many Thai’s run a business on the first floor of what is known as a shop house and live on the top two floors. We are renting one of these that will house our entire servant team and our family. The kitchen is a large room on street level that connects the two sides of the house. It has the feeling of a garage turned into a kitchen. They might not sound appealing, but it gives us a sense of home. Being from Boston ping-pong or pool in a garage converted into a hang out area is very common. The kitchen being very central to both Thai and American lifestyle it creates this feeling of accessibility that we love. It feels as though we finally a have a place where many of the people we have been meeting can be invited in.
In Thailand we don’t eat at a kitchen table, we sit on mats and eat there. It is our hope and prayer that this kitchen can serve as the opening, the place of deeper contact where we can sit together with people we hope to call friends. With people that need a place to just sit, to be cared for to find peace.
So as we sat tonight enjoying the rain. Elijah and Arielle asleep in their room. We were filled with hope. Hope for the future and hope. Hope because we have been so blessed and hope because we know this blessing shows there is much to come. So we invite you to continue to hope with us and pray with us. Pray for our kitchen, that it will be much more.
With love
Amy Hupe