Miscellany

I've been slaving away this week on Christmas presents, mostly just for my adorable niece and nephew. While I sew Peter likes to bring me a "cup of tea". He's very careful and brings me the empty china cup: "Here go Mommy." I drink it and say thank you. "Want sommore? - Ohkay, I be wight back - ohkay Mommy?"
I've been thinking I should try to make my own boys something so they don't feel left out. Today I proudly butchered one of my older son's sweatshirts to make pants for my two year old from the tutorial I saw here.
I've been virtually nosing around Australia via the links on one of my favorite blogs: One Red Robin and Skip the Chips.

Can anyone tell I've just learned how to insert links into my text! HA! Unfortunately I can't find my camera at the moment or I'd put up pictures of the pants, and all the other things I've promised to put pictures up for.

Instead I'll just tell stories.
Building 4 is the apartment building where I go to visit Chin families. I look after all the families in building 4 - I try to visit them all once a week. The one I frequent most is: Biak & Sui Zam's apartment. (Biak and Sui Zam being the moms of the two families that live in that one 2 bedroom apartment) I was happy this week because Sui Zam was up while I was there. She's hardly ever been around since she got a job. Yeah for the job! Sad for me missing her because she's really awesome. I so wish we could communicate better because I know she's really funny - I've gotten good at reading faces - I know she'd be sarcastic a lot! Biak is full of sweetness and has a baby boy who is starting to smile. The highlight of the visit for Peter was when we showed off one of our mom-lays-on-the-ground-and-flips-him-over-with-her-legs-tricks. All the ladies exclaimed at that! We also showed a little girl (daughter of a friend of Biak's) the Very Hungry Caterpillar Book. She's 13 months old and all she really wanted (like all toddlers) was to just stick her diminutive finger in the holes. Eventually Peter got her to pretend to eat the strawberries.

Interesting note:
Words that are the same in most Chin dialects:
Strawberry
Banana
Mango
(lots of other fruits - you get the idea)
Merry Christmas
Bible
Jesus

I was chatting with a friend of James' who is from Chin State, Myanmar and he was telling me all about his families emigration to America. It was quite complicated. At one point he was living with his grandmother for several months while his parents (in Maylaysia at that time) worked to get him out. James told him that we pray for the Christians who are being tortured and killed there and he immediately responded "that's why we left!" I asked him if his family had been tortured, and he said "no - because they left" but he knew people who had been.
I am so thankful at this very moment that I do not have to flee the country, leaving my child behind because of torture and threat of death. Right now Peter has a fever, and I'm dissappointed that I probably won't be able to do the things I'd planned to do today, but I have medicine, we have clothes, we have heat, we have a home.
I am so so blessed.

Merry Christmas
Merry Christmas (that one was in Chin)

Lissa