Visiting Rujira

Yesterday we traveled about three hours from Chiang Mai to visit the child we sponsor through Compassion International. It was a great trip and I know we were blessed as much, if not more, to meet them as they were to meet us. If anyone sponsors a child and has the opportunity to meet them, I would definitely recommend it.

There were five people traveling to the Lahu village, Robby and I, our translator/visit coordinator, a photographer/writer from Compassion and our driver. We had a really good time getting to know these people on the trip there and back. The photographer/writer (Jonathon) went to college in the US and majored in journalism so Robby got along with him very well. :)

After a little detour where there was some confusion about which village we were going to, we pulled up to the church where Rujira attends and where the project is located. Compassion partners with local churches so they are the ones providing services and activities for the children rather than the non-profit. 

Rujira was waiting in one of the rooms for us. At first I didn't recognize her because she always had her hair down in the pictures.

She was wearing the traditional dress of the Lahu people. They usually only wear the full outfit for New Year's and a festival where they eat the first of the new rice. She wears the skirt to church most Sundays. This outfit belonged to her older sisters and I think had been in the family for a while.

One of the themes of the visit was large fruit. The King of Thailand has several projects that he promotes and one of them is to encourage farmers near the border with Myanmar to grow new fruits and vegetables instead of opium. The Lahu village is pretty close to the border and the Lahu people are originally from Burma. So, some of the fruits they grow now are some type of hybrid.

The small one is a normal sized mango and the big one is the hybrid. They were pretty good, just more crunchy and with a mild flavor like a carrot.

They also had gigantic cucumbers, you can see them on the plate. They tasted like regular cucumbers.

Robby is holding a cucumber on his left and a mango on the right. 

We went to Rujira's house and they served us a meal. It was really good rice with a squash soup and a pork stir fry with mushrooms and some vegetables. There was another vegetable dish, but it had a lot of peppers so I skipped that one. All the food was delicious and it was very special to be able to share a meal with them. The man in the green shirt is the pastor of the church. He translated from Thai into Lahu because Rujira's parents don't understand Thai very well. This porch was between the sleeping quarters of the house and the separate kitchen directly ahead in the picture. 

The little girl is Rujira's niece. Her sister works in Chiang Mai so their mom takes care of the granddaughter. Her mom is only 33, but she already has a six year old granddaughter in addition to this one. 

After lunch, they picked a variety of avocado from the tree next to the house. The house in the picture belongs to Rujira's grandmother. The avocado were't ripe yet so we didn't eat them, but they were also much larger than usual.

We brought some gifts for Rujira and her family. It was a lot of fun to give her gifts and I did not expect that they had gifts for us too. They gave each of us a Lahu bag, Robby is wearing his in the picture with the cucumber and mango. It was so nice of them and very special to have something from their village. As we had been walking to the house we saw a loom where they make the cloth. The lady said it takes about a week to string the loom for a skirt and about a full day to weave the skirt. Definitely labor intensive.

Unfortunately we had to leave before too long. We got to pray with them before we left for their health and Rujira's studies. She wants to be a nurse, so we tried to encourage her to study hard so she can go to college.

I didn't get a lot of pictures of the trip, but Annie said they would send us some of the pictures Jonathon took. 

After we got back to the hotel, we took a little break to rest and figure out what to do next. We went to dinner at a restaurant in an old house made of teak. The house is more than 150 years old.

The food was good, but I didn't think it was as good as the food Rujira's family served us. :)

After dinner we did some shopping in the Night Market before heading back to the hotel. Today we fly from here to Bangkok and we will get settled in before we meet Chat tomorrow!