Last year at this time I was in Bangkok, spending most of my time with my YWAM missionary friends Iven and Kashmira Hauptman and their kids. We've known each other for about 15 years having first met in 2007 in a small dark coffee shop on Sukhumvit after one of my counseling colleagues encouraged me to look them up next time I was in Bangkok. And so during each subsequent time in Thailand we would usually connect and hang out. Over the years, six kids were added to make up what I call the HFam! Last year while in Bangkok for three months, I spent most of my time with them and in their neighborhood as I wrote about here. When I first reached out to them wondering if I could hang out in their neighborhood we did not know how our lives would come to intersect and how important and lifegiving we would become to each other. Long story short...right as I arrived last May, they as a family began sensing a call to return back to the US after 15 years living in Thailand. This was unexpected and not on their radar and perhaps even questioned initially - in most ways Thailand had become home, especially to their kids. All six kids had been born and raised on the same street corner a few blocks from the Grand Palace. Apart from brief visits back to the US, Thailand is/was home and all they knew. So the timing of someone arriving in the neighborhood who happened to be a counselor with a heart for third culture kids, who had also done his share of leaving 'home' and who loved this country as much as their kids loved the same country did not strike anyone as coincidence but rather as a huge gift. And for me it was certainly a gift to spend time with lifegiving friends who speak into my life through their words and example AND to be given the opportunity to have a purpose in walking along side them - kids and parents - helping them process this big change that was potentially coming.
Even as I arrived still pretty broken and attempting to pick up pieces of my life, they affirmed me daily with the same message they offer everyone they encounter: You are deeply loved and known by Jesus.
When I returned to Thailand in January of this year it was intentionally to spend the first month with them as to help during their final month before returning to the US. Again, it was a gift to be, as we began to jokingly call it, their 'transition specialist' - but it was more of a gift to just walk beside them in their journey as they continued to walk beside me. When they left in February, we knew that we are in some sense or another stuck with each other for good (hopefully!)
In spite of now knowing each other for 15 years, we have never ever met in the US until two weeks ago when I flew to Kalispell, Montana to meet up with them on the last few days of a pretty epic road trip. To help introduce their kids to America, they had decided to go on a cross country road trip - it's their story to tell (hundreds of stories actually) but I met them on day 50 or so and spent the next six days on the final leg of their two month, 12,000 mile, 33 state road trip.
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| Flying into Kalispell |
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| Collection of Junior Ranger badges |
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| Some things don't change - books, backpacks and shoes - similar to their front door in Bangkok |
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| YWAM Lakeside base - Montana |
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| Inside St. Ignatius Mission Parish - a brief stop...because St. Ignatius... |
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| This was such a crazy pit stop! HFam members are hard core, they go hundreds of miles without a pit stop, but we needed one and chose these porta pots with a busy highway one side and a rushing river on the other - not the safest place but nature was calling... |
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| The Depot - YWAM base, Cascade Idaho |
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| Hot springs just outside of Cascade, ID - and yes there were snowflakes coming down too |
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| Dry Falls, E. Washington |
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| Last night on the road - an unexpectedly beautiful camping spot near the Gorge, WA called French Coulee. |
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| Last breakfast on the road called for a typical HFam Thailand breakfast with mangos and papaya |
Duncan
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