We spent the night in Mae Sot again last night, resting up after a busy Sabbath. I am still recovering from dengue fever, so sleeping in, or at least staying in bed longer, sure was nice! Then I got a call from Ben wishing me a happy mother’s day. Since I did not know that it was Thai mother’s day, it was a nice surprise.

When we finally dragged ourselves out of our room, we were faced with quite a dilemma. I had brought all four little girls with us on Friday, and we had caught a ride in a van to get to Mae Sot, while Roy drove the motor bike. But, although Travis had taken two of the girls home with him on Sabbath evening, we still had everyone’s things. We had two overloaded backpacks, my computer case, also stuffed full, the diaper bag, blankets,  my purse, two babies and Roy and I to get onto that one little motor bike. If anyone had been around, I would have had them take a picture for you! I did not feel all that safe by the time we all got aboard. Hannah was sitting on one backpack and all the blankets, with the other backpack sitting on her lap, which blocked her view of the road. She did not like that, so she kept trying to push it out of her way so that she could see, while Roy resolutely tried to keep the bike rubber side down. Roy carried the computer, while I strapped Destiny to my front, and held the diaper bag and my purse on my back.  We suddenly became the eighth wonder of the world, while the locals stared wide eyed and unbelieving at the spectacle. Cars slowed to let us pass so that they could gawk at us. We calmly waved and kept right on going. We did make it all the way home, and only got drenched during the last 4 kilometers, which is very unusual…normally we would have gotten soaked all the way. So we were very happy upon arrival at our home sweet home.

When we arrived, Travis and Thunduh, relieved of their baby sitting duties,  jumped on the other motor bike and headed off to see Numpoong. When they returned from their visit, they told me about a very happy surprise. While we were all at Pawkuhmooeydee’s baptism, Numpoong was also being baptized! She is not allowed to have a phone at the dorm where she lives, and nobody else thought to tell us, so we knew nothing about it.

A little background….Numpoong is Thunduh’s sister, and when she first came to live with us, we found her to be a very thoughtful girl. She watched everyone and everything that we did, and you could tell that she was thinking about it a lot. But during that time, Thunduh was not doing very well, and although she had already been baptized, she was not acting like a Christian, so Numpoong got angry with her sister and left us. She said that she had decided to just be a Buddhist like all of her friends.  She stayed away for many months, until Thunduh started making changes, and started sharing what she was learning with Numpoong when they were at school. Numpoong then decided to come back to us. She of course participated in worships and seemed to love to read her bible, but she never said anything to us about it. (She does not speak English and I think that she was too shy to use a translator)  So, this baptism came as a real surprise to us, but we are so happy for her decision. I can’t think of a better way to celebrate mother’s day than for two of my children to get baptized, can you? Surviving the motor bike trip was just an added bonus!