As I (Stephani) type this, it is July 11th. I’m sitting at the dining room table in the house we are subletting in Chiang Mai, Thailand. The girls are finishing a movie they started a couple of days ago, while Ken and I were out on a date. Ken went on a hunt for coffee beans, walking to a roaster he found on Google Maps. I’m using the new school-issued laptop that I received this morning.
Let me go back and review the last few weeks in Chengdu.
The girls’ passports became available at the end of May and, instead of waiting on them to be delivered to us, Ken flew to the northeast and back in one day to pick them up. A few days later, we had tickets to Bangkok and had chosen a pet export agency.
Those purchases and decisions were made during our last two half-days of school, June 9 and 10. Monday to Wednesday had been incredibly emotional for Zoey, Jayden, and me. Each day, there were leaving ceremonies for classmates and teachers: times for students and teachers to acknowledge the impact those leaving have had on them and to encourage them in their next place. So many of our students or classmates were leaving and then the three of us were going as well! On June 9, Ken’s office hosted the staff end-of-year banquet, his last big task as Team Director. On June 10, there were lots of goodbyes and Ken had his own emotional goodbye with the staff in his office. They have been a very tight-knit little group and there were many tears.
The next two weeks were filled with the details of moving. We held a moving sale during the same afternoon as a family we are close to and who lived in the same building. I started packing up the other things we needed to ship to Thailand, adding to a huge pile of boxes and bags and reorganizing everything just once. The girls even pulled apart all of their Lego sets so that they could be shipped easily. We took time to go to our favorite restaurants one last time and saw others off as they left for the airport.
Grace International School, where I will be teaching and the girls will be studying, has been letting me know how to prepare the documents needed for my work permit. They also put us in touch with a teacher and her family who will be going home on home assignment for six months and need a family to sublet their house and drive their van for six months. They were very busy getting ready to go home and only had time to send us a picture of the living room; we totally understood and just decided we’d see the rest of the house when we arrived in person.
Five days before we left, we applied for the Thailand Pass. Last November, Thailand began allowing people to enter their country, but they had to first get a Thailand Pass. On June 1st, only non-Thai people had to complete those requirements and then they were completely canceled on July 1st. Since our flight was on June 27th, we still needed to show evidence of vaccinations, buy departure tickets (since we were entering on a tourist visa), and buy 1-month of COVID insurance in order to receive our Thailand Passes.
Two days before our flights, a shipping company came and boxed up everything that we wanted to be shipped to Thailand. They were super-efficient and friendly, so it wasn’t nearly as stressful as I thought it would be. Those things should arrive in about a month.
The day before we left, I gave all of my kitchen goods (plates, bowls, glasses, pots, pans, mixing bowls, spatulas, etc) to a stranger who had enquired after such things in a buy & sell group I had been in. She was overwhelmed and so very grateful. And that made me feel good. As I am writing this, the lovely stranger contacted me to tell me she is “using gifts from you almost every day. It reminds me of how gracious and faithful our Father is. I am so grateful!! I pray our Dad blesses you more and fills your life with His abundant love every day!” Now I know that she is a sister in Christ!
On Monday morning, the 27th, a driver came and picked up our two dogs. They spent a night in the pet export agency’s office in Chengdu and then flew cargo to another city in China where the daily high temperatures in late June stay in the low-70s. That Monday to the following Friday, when we picked up the dogs at the Bangkok airport, was the most stressful part of the moving for me. They flew another cargo flight from China to Thailand on Friday, July 1st. The agent sent me videos each day, but I could see that one of our dogs was very stressed.
Travel and Bangkok
We left in the school van about an hour after the dogs were picked up. The Chengdu airport, the international terminal, had very few people and it looked like all of us were on 3 flights that were leaving around the same time. We had taken others’ advice and gotten there three hours early. During check-in, we were asked to produce documents proving that we had done the things required for the Thailand Pass. No matter how many times I said, “But we wouldn’t have the Thailand Pass without doing those things,” the airline staff still needed to see the proof. We also had to fill out a Health Customs survey for each of us. We were told to go to security at 12:30, which seemed confusing. It was just before 12:00 and usually, you just want to get through security and have more time at the gate, right? At 12:30, we found out that no one staffs the security area until that time because with only 3 flights leaving around the same time, why have people just waiting to check passports, scan luggage and look at health codes?
Our flight to Hong Kong had about 16 people on it, all sitting in 4 consecutive rows. And the Hong Kong airport, usually just teeming with travelers, was a ghost town. Nothing was open, including the water fountains. Fortunately, I had heard that was the case and brought PB&J sandwiches and other snacks. Before we could board our next flight, we had to again show proof that we had bought insurance, departure flights, etc, to have the Thailand Pass. Our flight to Bangkok wasn’t quite as empty and we arrived around midnight.
We stayed in an AirBnB near the airport during our first night and then moved to another one in the center of the city that is pet-friendly, even though the dogs would only be there with us one night. After checking in to the apartment, we went to a large hospital and got our Moderna vaccinations. All of us had been fully vaccinated in China, but with Chinese vaccines that are not nearly as effective. We had learned that you could get just one booster shot of the Moderna vaccine to be considered protected. With the Chinese vaccines, there were virtually no side effects for any of us. The girls and I had very sore arms for 3 days after our shot that week. We also experienced fevers, nausea, headaches, and body aches.
On Wednesday, we had an opportunity to spend the day with old friends of ours, the Sang family. Sissy and I have known each other since 1998! After Ken and I were married, he and Sissy’s husband would meet weekly for prayer and accountability. When Zoey and Jayden joined us, their three kids were wonderful playmates and friends. When we moved to the States for two years, they returned to China after their own home assignment and they started living in Chengdu. We followed them to the same city in 2018 and the kids attended the same school. They returned to the States again in February 2020, then moved to Bangkok nearly a year ago. Now, our two families are in the same country again!
On Thursday, we met another friend for dinner. This time, our friend was actually more of an acquaintance in Chengdu, but one that we communicated with weekly. Aiqing and her husband have a restaurant in Chengdu that makes the best pizza in the world (in our opinion). They have also moved to Bangkok and will open a new restaurant there soon.
Friday, Ken and I went to the airport to pick up our dogs, Trixie and Nani. They were clearly overheated and extremely thirsty. Nani had never learned to drink from her bottle, no matter how many times I had put peanut butter on it. Trixie’s bottle was turned so that she couldn’t drink from it even if she tried. The driver who took us to the airport was very supportive and gave us more water when we ran out, as the dogs just drank and drank. We got them fed and bathed just in time for guests.
The Ungos family had lived in Chengdu for many years and Nani had been their dog for the first 7 years of her life. In June of 2020, they moved from Chengdu and needed to rehome Nani and that’s how we became her family. They came over for dinner and to see Nani. We are hoping that they can visit us in Chiang Mai in the future, not just to see Nani again, but so that we can visit with them more.
Being with the Ungoses and the Sangs really reminded Ken and me of what we had been missing these last two years as most of our fellowship and others in ministry either moved away or were stuck outside China. Or maybe it was because we are now finally outside China that we spoke more freely and just felt our hearts were lifted by the evening’s conversations.
Arrival in Chiang Mai
On Saturday, July 2nd, the large van we had hired to drive us all to Chiang Mai arrived to pick us up. Ken had disassembled the dogs’ crates so that everything would fit in better and we rode comfortably. The dogs got to be on the seat next to me or on the floor at our feet, the driver stopped several times so that we could walk the dogs, and fun videos were playing for us in the van to make the 10-hour trip seem to go faster.
We arrived to find that the house we are living in for the first six months of our lives in Chiang Mai is so much bigger and nicer than we could have imagined.
After 24 years of living in Chinese apartments, 6 of those years being on the 24th or 25th floor of a high-rise, we now live in a single-family home that has a small yard and trees around it. After 24 years of walking, riding buses, taking the metro, or hailing cars, we have a van that we can drive (when we’re ready). What?! I mean, there are three bathrooms upstairs and one bathroom downstairs. There’s a nice-sized dining room beside the huge kitchen! There’s a small den where we can escape the heat. There’s even a huge porch area we hope to add outdoor furniture to and enjoy. And did I mention the yard? I mean, how perfect for two schnauzers! It’s even all fenced in, so they can go outside without a leash. Of course, we still go outside with them. For one thing, they will figure out a way out of the fence if we give them the opportunity. Also, there are large, black scorpions here and the centipedes are poisonous. I have also heard there are occasionally snakes. Yikes!
We have been in our house for 10 days now. The housekeeper, who comes twice a week, is a very sweet woman who has charmed our dogs. We are starting to learn about the cafes and stores that we have around us. I have been to the school three times for various things and it’s not far away (well, we can’t walk to school anymore, but it only takes about 10-15 minutes to drive there). We have met two families who are on our new team and they are great (probably because they’re from Michigan). Ken and I even managed to get to one of our favorite Italian restaurants downtown for a late anniversary date.
School will begin on August 1st for me and August 10th for the girls and all the rest of the students. So we have another couple of weeks to continue to settle in. I am starting to learn about the sixth-grade curriculum (it’s elementary here, a first for me) and Google Suite (my previous schools used Microsoft). Ken has started working on the application for our new sending organization, Crossworld. They had asked that we do this once we were outside of China.
Ken will continue to get some rest throughout August. He most likely will be headed to the States alone, visiting both Fort Wayne and Greenfield, later in August, for about 10 days. We hope to visit Indiana and Ohio as a family during Christmas break and then spend the summer of 2023 there also.
Your help is needed
As you are all aware this shift to Thailand and in our ministry means that we now have to move to a support raising model. If you are willing and able to support us, please reply to this email and we will send you the information about how to support us. If you would also like to hear more about our plans, we’re willing to share our plans in an email, or if you’d like we can meet with you on Facetime or Zoom, or Google Meet. We also need to raise a prayer team and would love to hear from you if you’d be interested in praying for us.
Stephani & Ken