Bookends 2020

What a year it has been. Sometimes my Bookends posts don't vary much from year to year. This year though, is quite another story. This year began and ended in different continents, but that was not how I was thinking it would be. So I think it is appropriate to put first a photo my wife took while doing laundry before we headed out on a New Year's Day outing.

Common Tree Frog Showing Us His Washing Machine

A tree frog—but not on a tree, rather in our washing machine. A tree frog out of place. Perhaps this was a harbinger of what the year would be like with us being "out of place" most of the year.

Tree frogs have a significant role in our lives. My first story comes from Haut Saint Marc, Haiti back in 1981. Ingrid and I were not in a relationship at the time, but we were on the same team. The six of us—a married couple, two single ladies (nurses), and two single guys—were living in tents. We had a communal structure for cooking and dining made of woven coconut leaves wrapped around living posts with a tin roof over the top. We took turns cooking and cleaning. I would get up early in the morning, while it was still dark, so I could head out to the little piece of farmland we had. I made coffee each morning by putting some of our Cafe Rebo roast in the cloth filter and pouring hot water through it. This was long before pour over coffee was a specialty thing in coffee shops. Later that morning, while I was out in the fields, Ingrid was cleaning up after breakfast. When she poured the spent grounds out of the filter, there was a poached frog amongst the grounds. That's why the coffee was especially good that morning. Forget about civet coffee when you can have tree frog coffee. I was admonished by my teammates to check the coffee filter for frogs before preparing the coffee in the morning.

Our Frog Coffee Dining Area

Fast forward a few years. Ingrid and I are married now and we are living in a different part of Haiti. This time we are in a nice house. The lower floor is made of concrete and is well screened to keep the mosquitoes out. But tree frogs have a way of getting in our bathroom. They like our toilet flush tank. Whenever we flush there would be a chorus of frog voices echoing in the tank. We would then remove the cover, grab the frogs and throw them outside. But they would find a way back in. Sometimes they would play voyeur and perch on the shower-head to watch the humans as they bathed. We hunted high and low, but it took a long time for us to figure out how they kept getting back in. When we finally found their secret entrance, we plugged the hole and from then on we no longer had the orchestra play to accompany our toilet flushes.

Back to New Year's Day 2020. Later on in the day, after the laundry was done with the frog surviving the ordeal, we made a drive to a coffee shop we like in Rattanawapi, the next county to the north. As we are prone to do, we find new roads to drive. This time we found ourselves in an area near the Mekong River where it was rice planting season for those with access to dry-season irrigation water. They have a new method they have of planting rice, which is less labor intensive. They raise the rice seedlings in plugs in plastic trays which are placed either on tarps or in ponds. Later the plugs are tossed into flooded paddies. Then the water is let down and the seedlings get established in the mud. The road we drove down had several ponds being used for rice seedling nurseries.

It is a fitting way to start the year. Raising plant seedlings is a very hopeful enterprise. One does not go through the effort without hope for an abundant harvest. And so we are hopeful, too. Hopeful for what a new year will bring. Hopeful for what a new season in our lives will bring as we anticipate leaving Thailand for a couple months and then coming back to perhaps start something new.

Rice Seedlings in Rattanawapi County

So, how did those hopes work out? Not as we planned, for sure. It's December 31st and there are no tree frogs around because we aren't in Thailand as we had hoped to be. Even if there were tree frogs around, they would be hibernating by now. We felt like hibernating last night. The heater went out in the house we are staying in, so the previous night was a bit chilly, but not too bad. I got up early so I could do a grocery run to Winco before the crowds show up.

Maybe we could jump to December 31st and just skip everything in between.

New Year's Eve Day finds me sitting in our Fresno office, even though it's technically closed, in case some UPS or Fedex deliveries come that we are expecting. I spend the morning working on getting things ready for our return to Thailand—making copies, printing out forms, etc. In the afternoon, I decide to scan some old black and white negatives that I have. Most of the photos I took from Haiti were color prints or slides, but I did shoot a few rolls of black and white on my old Canon AE-1 camera. There were a few photos I couldn't quite figure out what they were just by looking at the negative without a magnifier, so I scanned them anyway, to see what they were. And I'm glad I did. It was a series of a couple of girls sitting on a concrete and stone irrigation canal doing laundry.

Laundry Day

They actually were nice to photograph because they would sometimes look at the camera and sometimes just do their thing—chatting and laughing while they rubbed the dirt out of the clothing. The lives of these children are not easy and I don't think that doing a load of laundry is high on their list of things they want to do to pass time. But it helps to bring a friend. With a friend, even the less enjoyable things in life can be a lot easier to get through.

This past year has been full of challenges. Being displaced for nine months. Leaving our house to the whims of rats and lizards. Missing out on major events in the life of our church in Thailand. Extra hoops to jump through and expenses to shell out to try to get back to Thailand. But through it all I've had a friend. Two friends, actually.

My wife has been my faithful companion by my side through it all. When one of us is feeling down, the other can help lift us up. And God has not abandoned us either. God has been there to encourage us and help us through the hard times.

Scripture reminds us: Two people are better off than one, for they can help each other succeed. If one person falls, the other can reach out and help. But someone who falls alone is in real trouble. Likewise, two people lying close together can keep each other warm. But how can one be warm alone? A person standing alone can be attacked and defeated, but two can stand back-to-back and conquer. Three are even better, for a triple-braided cord is not easily broken. Ecclesiastes 4:9-12 (NLT)

Even if our year wasn't as we planned. Even if there were a few hiccups along the way. We made it through, with God's help.

And with no frogs in our coffee.