We made it

While Michelle was back in Texas to be with family during her paternal grandfather’s funeral, Liberty and Van stayed in Chiang Mai with me. Michelle did an excellent job prepping the home-school materials for me so that the kids’ education could continue. Except for a first-day panic, the two weeks of home-schooling went really well. It gave me a much better appreciation for all the work Michelle has put into schooling Liberty and Van.

The kids and I took many fun rides on our rented scooter. Van would sit in the front and Liberty would sit on the back. One scooter highlight for the kids was the day we went to buy tinted visors for them. Too many times there were either bugs getting into their faces while we rode around. Or, the sun shone too brightly. You can see in the pics below they were quite excited, and we even bought some stickers for them to customize their helmets. When we weren’t driving around, we were still on the scooter, having a snack.

Even though we had an excellent time together, we all missed Mom a lot, and were very glad when she returned. Her time with her family was a real blessed time, and we wish we all could have gone. Thank you for your prayers during this time.

health and 7-11

Dear friends, how are you? We want to wish you a happy lunar new year! I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it here, one perk of working in Asia is the number of New Year celebrations we get to celebrate!

Well, our family is well. Van had a spill the other day trying to do a daring balancing act on a concrete divider. He got scratched up, but is ok. I must say that we are glad for 7-11. What? In my youth 7-11 was my world, we would make weekly treks down the back alleys with allowance or bottles to return for cash, and then we’d get treats. But in recent years 7-11s seemed to decrease in number, and maybe even quality. Well, here in Chiang Mai the sheer numbers of 7-11s would make Tim Hortons’ saturation seem minimal. After Van had his spill we piled onto the motorbike we rent and went zipping down the road to 7-11. Why there? 7-11 has almost anything you need! So there we bought all manner of bandaids and gauze and tape and such, plus waters.

On a more sober note, Michelle is currently back in Texas for her grandfather’s funeral. You may recall her grandmother passed away in October. We were able to visit then too, and Michelle felt the time with her grandfather then, along with Liberty and Van, was a valuable time. We had already decided that if her grandfather were to pass away while we were gone we would all try to get back; at the very least Michelle would go. For various reasons only Michelle went, along with her sister who is in the same general area as we. It is a sad time, but we are glad Michelle could get back to be family. She and her sister return to Chiang Mai Feb 19.

In the meantime I have continued with the homeschooling. Thankfully (no really, THANK YOU Michelle) Michelle had organized and schedule the lessons for the next 2 weeks in a sweet calendar, so it has been going well. Except, on the first day we did two days worth of work until I figured out what was going on. So Friday was easy. 🙂

Please pray for Michelle’s family during this time. Thank you.

A home at last

Nine or ten days. That is the average number of days it takes for us to find a place to call home when we go overseas. This time it was 9 days. Fortunately the guesthouse we stayed at had a large enough room for us to do well in and not go crazy. We queried at least 10 real estate agents, private posters, and forums, in our search.

The cheapest places were outside of town, something we at first thought would be fine. But after we rode a rented scooter out there we realized that the isolation would get to us. We would end up staying in the house rather than getting out; there was no place to walk to. So we looked in the city and eventually found a condo large enough for us, but still in our general price range.

We think it will work well. We can walk to many places, like a library, a pool, a shopping mall and grocery store, even the zoo! The newest coworking space is even in walking distance for me!

So in about an hour we will have hauled our 8 bags to the street to hail a red songtaew to take us to the new home. Thank God, and thank you for praying.

New Year, New Destination

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December news

Dear friends, what a season this has been. It has been a challenge to stay focused in faith and not lose heart, but we press on.

We have received various bits of news of the school we have been trying to get to. Way back in early December we received an email from the Dept Director bemoaning the hassle of getting the one last Invitation Letter, along with this thoughts that they school might just give up. We gave that a few days thought, consulted with another worker, and responded with essentially a deadline: Either the Invitation Letter comes soon or we look elsewhere. That got the Dept Director energetically writing to ask us not to…. but not a word from the Foreign Official.

In the meantime we have heard that a number of other expats at the school on student visas were all told they had to leave by January 4th. OK, so the gov is clearing the school of foreigners. This has happened before and we are glad we aren’t there to get caught up in that clearing. Then recently we heard the other English teacher, an American, was still there. His description of what he has been doing was very enlightening. It turns out that right in Sept the school asked him to take the classes I was going to take. So he said yes; he is young and inexperienced in China teaching, and did not realize what was happening. Basically, once he said yes, with good intentions and just trying to help the students, and was teaching ALL the classes, it gave the school little reason to hire another one. One for the price of two! We don’t hold any grudges, and it is good to see what sort of administration we could have been working under.

All this to say is we are looking into other options and will post an update soon. We hope your Christmas was a good time, and that the New Year preparations are going well too!

The dance continues

On Thursday on November 26 (American Thanksgiving Day), with happy hearts, Van, Liberty, Michelle and I headed to Toronto to apply for our visas. We had all the original documents we needed, or so we thought. (Cue sad music)

Once there the front desk clerk told us that there is still one missing piece of paper, a Letter of Invitation (LOI) from a new government office. We managed to get up to a visa clerk’s desk and get some answers to questions we did ask, and some we did not even know to ask.

The first interesting tidbit is that the missing LOI should have been issued with the all-important Work Permit. Praise God, we do have the Work Permit (which tells us Shane is approved by the highest levels of government). But, the cleck emphasized that there is no way to have a Work Permit without the corresponding LOI. Where then is this LOI? The clerk figures that the school officials simply forgot to include this LOI when they mailed us the other originals.

Why would they forget this? Turns out it is a new requirement. So new in fact that another Canadian friend of ours have a similar delay in Sept for several weeks, and she is even connected to the best state school in the province. If they did not know, then the small school in the small town we are headed too can be forgiven for not knowing either. (*note: another friend also just wrote us to say they too had an issue with the same LOI with their school.)

Additionally, the official at the school we are going to is new (3 years); the school has not hired a Canadian in over 5 years; and there have been several rule changes the past few years anyway.

All this to say, it is now a matter of the school finding that missing LOI and posting it to us. Whether they use the slow method like last time (3 weeks!) or a faster method remains to be seen. We have asked them, of course, to use a faster method.

Please pray then that they find the LOI and post it to us soon. We hope they haven’t lost it which would mean more time is needed to get the Work Permit and corresponding LOI re-issued. Plus, we are quickly coming to a point in time where the schools will start to shut down for the holidays in January, so we need to be there in December. We need to be there in December because registering with the police can take a couple weeks, and we need to have that finished within 4 weeks of our arrival in the country.

Thank you for your prayers! Thank you for standing with us, and believing God has great things in store for the city to which we are headed.

UPDATE: We did hear from a school official whose title is Waiban (pronounced Why-Bahn) and she told us they are working on it. Her choice of words makes us wonder… the LOI should be there, it was issued with the Work Permit, so what are they “working on”?

Papers

Just a few days ago the app we have been using to track our paperwork from China to here lit up with a notification! Eagerly we opened it up to see the update…. the paperwork is now in Canada. Closer than ever.

Ok, so the papers are not in our hands yet, and we still worry that the officials left out one or two important documents, BUT, when the app’s last update was 5 days old we wondered if the papers had been lost in transit. So this new update showing us they are in Canada is a huge relief.

They must have taken a boat.

The question of leaving

The other day we had an experience that, upon reflection, made me wonder if I would ever have the same experience in Canada. What happened was that we ran out of coffee. And as I poured the last of the grains into the coffee maker I thought to myself, “Hm, do we get another bag, or no?” And that made me think about the myriad of other items whose purchase is affected by how much time we have left in a given place. Like sugar, flour, other foods. Clothes even are part of the picture. I have a drawer of clothes which I will not bring overseas with us, but will simply wear them out while we are here and then either throw them away, or pack away the more salvagable ones for when we are back in 3 years. The newer clothes wait in the suitcase ready to be used once we get overseas. Toys for the kids… do we buy new ones ‘now’ or will we just need to leave them behind, in which case don’t bother buying them. Our life possessions are chosen by answering the question, “Will it fit in the luggage?”

Now don’t get me wrong; once we are where we will be for the next year or so we feel free to get those things which make a house more homey, and meals more mealy (?), and relaxing more relaxed. But it is during these moments, just before leaving, that we are faced with the question: Do we buy more peanut butter, or no?

Tracking the kids

Up until this point in time Michelle nor I worried too much about keeping track of our kids. We have tried to not be like a Helicopter Parent, hovering over every move of our kids. We have made sure to point out boundaries, whether physical, emotional, even spiritual, when we are in whatever environment we live, with the kids. By and large, with the odd act of discipline here and there, Liberty and Van have done superbly with staying safe.

But what with Liberty saying all her friends in the Canadian schools have cell phones, and Van loving to play with phones too, has got me thinking about what we could do once we are overseas. So while googling “track kids” this item came up, the Tinitell. It is a way to both track the kids AND a way for them to call home if they need to (or either Michelle or I’s cell).

Tinitell. It is an interesting looking device, and one which I think the kids might like wearing. The only problem is it isn’t shipping until next year!

In the meantime, does anyone have any other suggestion?

A life

There is an emotion we experience from time to time: Woe is me! Particularly these days as we wait for the paperwork and visa, initially with some uncertainty, certainly with faith, and now with anticipation. Many friends have had kind words for us, encouraging us to enjoy these extra days we have in Canada. I do not feel I am in a position to say that God held us back in order of us to be able to attend Michelle’s grandmother’s funeral. But I am glad we were still here so that we could do that. If God has some specific purpose for this delay I think it could very well be for something about which we may have no awareness. Some conversation with someone that would not have happened if we had left August 20. Some act of service or gift to someone we would not have been able to do if we were not here. More family time. More McDonalds or Tim Hortons time.

I am almost of the opinion that trying to figure what His purpose is behind some situation may simply be counter-productive. It sure can add to stress in your life as you wonder and fret, “Was this the reason? Did I miss it last night at that meeting?”

The couple in the photograph, as far as I can tell based on what I know about China, likely have done this job for decades, and will continue to this job for decades: Gather papers and other items which can sold (in these modern times, recycled). My Western eyes see a life’s possibilities wasted. No travel. No education. No broad impact on the world around them. But these people are also quite likely Christians! There are estimated to be 100 million Chinese Christians in China (that is, Han Chinese specifically, not counting other ethnicities such as Kazak or Uyghur or Dongshan, i.e.). Wondering if they are Christians brings to mind Colossians 3:17 (NIV):

And whatever you do, whether in word or deed, do it all in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.

This verse has been what is in my mind these days. I pray it be so for you too.

Cookes Overseas