However, for the AOF 10th Year of Ministry celebration we cut a recording of one of our Akha pastor’s wives singing her version of John 3:16 in the traditional Akha style. We hope you enjoy it!

I want to start by sharing an excerpt from an insightful article entitled “Why we don’t go or send much anymore” by Dr. Patrick Johnstone of WEC International (link goes to a repost of the article on John Lambert‘s blog):

My immediate reaction:

There is no question that we in the west are part of an “instant generation”, and as digital-age missionaries to a pre-modern culture, we are constantly changing states, speeds and worldviews as we attempt to communicate to our unique world(s).

In working with the Akha we say the following statement all the time and, although it is admittedly an oversimplification, it is largely true: Relationships in Asia, and specifically with the Akha, have no relevance until they have history. Dr. Johnstone uses different terms, but the same idea lies within his article when he says a missionary has no “right to communicate the gospel” [relevance] until he has “one”-ness [history] with the people.

This doesn’t mean that we don’t correctly handle the Word of Truth as we build history. But too often we feel like we have all the answers, our pride gets in the way and we think everything has to get fixed now. Working in Asia we must realize that until we have history the words we speak have no weight – even if they are true.

Experiences with the Akha

In our Akha village, we have showed the love of Christ by spending a majority of our time sitting, drinking tea, discussing the weather and the crops, learning the Akha language within the context of community, and caring for physical needs without cost or discrimination as we experience the minutia of life within a community in order to build relevance. It is slow. It is unglamorous. But it is necessary to affect a community towards healthy long-term growth.

Our ministry has only recently, after nearly six years of building history, earned enough relational relevance to be a resource of accountability, exhortation and truth in love in a way that will be productively and actively received by some of the people around us.

Unfortunately, this process of patience means that there have been many times where we have seen dysfunctional behavior that is unable to receive input from any source which is not equally as dysfunctional. So, in these times, we have had to stand silently, brokenhearted, so that we might maintain the relationships and history we are building, which, in turn, will give us the relevance to minister restoration to that dysfunction in the future.

The beauty of this worldview is the closeness of the community and the willingness to function in unity. The downfall is that dysfunctional behavior is also universally shared. Relevant voices of influence must show their commitment to unity within the community over a significant period of time without sharing in the same dysfunctions in order to effectively communicate functional life.

Experiences with the West

It is still true in the west that community and companionship are the key factors in administering life-impacting change, but the decision to include or exclude someone or something from our community is made nearly instantaneously. (The exception in this case is the influence of the core family-unit, but in my observation many people in America are even distancing themselves from those nuclear-family relationships that were once such powerful influences in the lives of an individual.)

These “instantaneous decisions” have led to the onset of the online community phenomenons of blogging, forums, and social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. We in the western world are much more comfortable extending our attention and trust to someone or something with whom we have no history. We might respond to attraction, position, interests, goals, occupation, production, association, or marketing in our decisions to join or include others in a community.

Online communities make the world smaller, and that small world allows us to communicate globally without moving geographically. Personally, I have a list of missionaries from around the world that I connect with for advice, prayer, exhortation and empathy – but I have only met a few of them face-to-face.

The blessing of this openness to immediate inclusion is that we are free to give and receive the ministry of the gospel in the brief moments of community when our lives glance off of one another in the thousands if not millions of connections we make. We can quickly form meaningful relationships that have immediate positive impact on our lives, and receive Godly encouragement from near stangers. The downfall of this worldview is that we become judgmental, quickly dismissing as irrelevant things that don’t capture our immediate attentions and passions and quickly accepting as valuable things that are at their core damaging but packaged to manipulate our passions.

Defining the Difference

Perhaps the simplest distinction between the Western world I know and the Eastern (Akha) world I have come to learn can be summed up in the following statement:

As for me and my house…

We must exist in both worlds. The world we come from and the world we have been sent to. It is important for Lori and I to continue to engage in our Western culture, even as we minister in the East. So we strive to be transparent, available, and vulnerable in our efforts to communicate via these “instant” platforms: Our blog: The Vernon Journal; Twitter (Paul); Facebook (Paul | Lori); Tumblr (Paul | Lori | Abi).

Through these mediums, we try to frequently communicate our otherwise slow ministry to those of you who cover, support and partner with us while we geographically remain in the midst of that ministry. We know that there are thousands of causes, ministries and opportunities out there to partner with, and we want you to know that we value your partnership and desire to share with you how your partnership is furthuring the gospel in us, among the Akha, and throughout the world.

How do you connect with your communities? And how can we best communicate our lives and experiences to you and your communities as we minister to the Akha?

Here’s a video that the Quinley’s recorded of Lori explaining a little bit about Akha food and culture to their team when they visited us in Maesalong.

FOOD FRIDAY: EAT LIKE AN AHKA

Posted on 29. Jan, 2010 by April

As we’ve mentioned more than once, last month we went up to an Akha village for a few days to experience their culture.  Part of that was, of course, their food.  My favorite part was using chopsticks to eat it all.  Since we only ate Akha food a few times, we decided to bring in an expert to tell you all about it. Lori Vernon graciously agreed to be our guest blogger today to teach us about Akha food and even share a recipe!

Guest Blogger: Lori Vernon

Akha food is fairly simple compared to Thai fare. Most Thai dishes seek to find the perfect balance between many different flavors (sweet, sour, spicy, salty, etc) using a multitude of ingredients like coconut milk, curry paste, lemon grass, chili peppers, fish sauce, sugar and lime to name a few. Most Akha dishes, on the other hand, are savory and have very few ingredients. Akha dishes rarely use more than salt, garlic, chili pepper to flavor the main ingredient. However, this doesn’t mean, by any stretch of the imagination, that Akha food could be considered bland. Quite the opposite, Akha food is very flavorful and spicy!

Of course, rice is the main staple for the Akha people. At a meal, each person has their own bowl of rice, and the accompanying dishes are served family style. There are 5 categories of Akha food; a traditional meal would include at least one dish from each category.

1. STIR FRIED:

This category can vary greatly. Any combination of vegetables, eggs, meat or beans can be stir fried for an Akha meal. An Akha favorite is a spicy stir fried minced pork dish called sa byeh which is the exception to the “simple-ingredients-list rule” and has many herbs including a special type of tree bark. It is almost always eaten for special occasions like weddings, funerals and festivals.

2. PICKLED:

Greens can be pickled when the crops are in abundance and preserved for use at a later time. Often pickled greens are also dried and reconstituted when ready to eat, increasing their shelf life even further.

3. BOILED/SOUP:

Greens, squash or potatoes are boiled with pork and bones to create a savory broth soup. The Akha also make a thick rice porridge soup with chicken that is eaten to celebrate the birth of a child or to feed to an invalid unable to eat rice.

4. DIP:

The Akha use a mortar and pestle to create very spicy dips to be eaten with fresh vegetables, or spooned directly onto the rice. The most simple version would contain tomato, salt, chili peppers, green onions & cilantro. However, we have tasted many variations of this dish including ones that contained crushed peanuts, sesame seeds, fish, dried beef, and bamboo worms. This is a dish that is different at every house, because each family has their own secret recipe.

5. RAW:

The dip mentioned above is generally eaten with a variety of fresh greens and vegetables. Some commonly served items from this category include cabbage, green beans, sweet pea greens, cucumbers, mint, thai eggplant and other herbs. (which I don’t know how to translate into English.)

Eating Akha Style

If you’d like to taste a bit of Akha food, here’s a simple recipe you can try at home:

Spicy Akha Peanut Dip

This is normally made with a mortar and pestle, but since those tools are not commonly available in American kitchens, I’ve included instructions on how to make this using a Cuisinart (a blender may also work.)

Ingredients:

• 1 small clove of garlic (optional, depending on how much garlic breath you’re willing to tolerate)
• 3 medium plum tomatoes or one large American Tomato
• ¼ cup of roasted peanuts
• 1-5 Thai chili peppers to taste
• ½ tsp of salt (or to taste)
• green onions, chopped
• cilantro, chopped

Instructions:

1. Boil/blanch tomatoes and chili peppers for several minutes… until the tomato skin splits. Remove from water and let cool.
2. Chop peanuts roughly in a Cuisinart.
3. Peel skin off of tomatoes & add tomatoes in with the chopped peanuts.
4. Add blanched chili peppers and garlic clove. Use the pulse setting to chop/mix.
5. Add salt to taste
6. Remove from Cuisinart.
7. Stir in chopped green onions & cilantro to taste, reserving a small amount for garnish on top.
8. Serve with raw vegetables or over rice.

- Lori Vernon

It encompasses every aspect of their lives.  Preparing the fields, planting, harvesting.

every meal
every day
every month
every year

It’s no wonder that rice is the center of religion, culture and celebration in the Akha world. But, if there is a secondary symbol of importance in the Akha community, it is bamboo.

Bamboo provides tools and toys. Secular and sacred objects.

If rice is the focus of the Akha way of life, bamboo is the function of that life.

In our village the children learn at a very young age how to turn scraps of bamboo into functional creations. Boys of three and four years old create woven masterpieces to complete the homes and tools of their minor kingdoms. Their education in the vegetation and animalia around them is extensive, any Akha child of age can easily forage a meal while walking through the jungle.

This interaction with the world around them builds a community and identity among the Akha people, and will continue to be important to them wherever the evolution of their culture leads in the years to come.

The other day while Lori was out in the village she came across another incredible sight. Our Akha grandma had picked cotton off of the tree behind her home and was spinning it by hand into yarn.

Here are a few moments of her incredible skill:

It’s truly a blessing to live among these people.

I’ve often been asked how I bathe in the village, so I thought I’d give you a step by step tutorial on the process! When I first arrived in the village, I had no idea how to shower at the public wells and had to walk about a mile to our Akha mom’s house to bathe in her indoor bathroom. Luckily, some of the young women in the village took pity on me and taught me all the ins and outs of bathing modestly in public! Of course, with our new house (We promise a video tour of the finished house is coming soon!) we have an indoor bathroom, so indoor bucket showers are also possible. However, I actually enjoy being outside and have become quite accustomed to showering like this, so I still prefer sarong showers (weather permitting).

Remember to click on the pictures below in order to read the captions and view the full size photo.

I often wonder how he can actually make a living as a mobile ladder salesman. Although, I confesss, I’m probably looking at it from an overly American perspective….The Icecream Man is one thing, but the Ladder Man just wouldn’t fly in America! On the other hand, I guess it does make sense here; most Thai families have a scooter instead of a car or truck, so they can’t simply run to the local store and bring a ladder home… the ladder has to come to them!

We have visitors and teams coming beginning tomorrow through the remainder of this month, so that gave me today to get caught up on some of our communication to all of you.

We mentioned a few months ago that we were building a new home in Mae Salong. The home that was built for us upon our arrival was built to last 3-5 years. With our three years up, we decided to build a home that will last us closer to 10 years as we continue to live and work with the Akha.

Once again, our village was incredibly generous, donating their time and expertise to our need. Our new home features such ammenities as cement on the floors (it’s not level, but it’s not dirt!), an indoor bathroom, indoor running water (when available), and electrical outlets and lights in each room. These modern conveniences are still coupled with bamboo walls and a grass roof, which we love and will probably never go away from (it’s so much cooler!).

It’s a huge blessing for us as a family and also for the village who are now using our first home full time as the village community house.

We have a video of the entire construction process – take a look…

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or
Download .MPEG (High Quality)
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For those of you who are wondering, the song (Big House by Audio Adrenaline) is an homage to our old Campus Crusade days at the Colorado School of Mines. Good times, good times… but you probably had to be there.

I’ll get a video tour of the “lived-in” house up on the site next (who knows when, but it’s my next project).

Thanks for following our lives here at the Vernon Journal!

The punishment? The offending officer will be required to wear an armband depicting the schoolgirl icon “HELLO KITTY” for an entire day.

The punishment is “in-house” only, as officers will not be required to wear the armbands in public, but as we all learned as children peer pressure can be a powerful motivator… I think the measure will be effective.

HT: Boing Boing

Time has put together a photo journal from a book by Peter Menzel and Faith D’Aluisio entitled Hungry Planet. The book itself is a photographic journal and cookbook looking into the family table around the world. Time has taken a glimpse into this book with a photo slideshow entitled “What the World Eats“, and I encourage you to take a look at it.

One word of caution: the most relevant information given is that of “Favorite Foods“. Although the “Food expenditure per week” is interesting and can show what economic slice the pictures are taken from, without a basic cost-of-living from the region it’s difficult to tell whether you are looking at poverty-level or luxery-level spending. For example, a single adult who makes $500/month in Thailand is very wealthy in Northern Thailand, where a meal at a Thai “restaurant” costs less than $1 and a nice home can be rented for $100 a month.

It was also interesting to me how much more money families with teenage boys have to spend on food. Yikes!

So go take a look and see where you think you might be able to live (those meat and cheese countries look really good to me)…

There is a lot to be told about this event, and for Lori and I there is still a lot to be learned about this event, but today I just want to share some pictures of a young Akha bride and groom from a wedding ceremony in our village. Specifically, I want you all to see the long, involved process that is the donning of the traditional Akha headdress and attire.

Beautiful, is it not? We were honored to take pictures for two weddings in our village just before Lori became sick, and promised to put together a video slide show of the pictures for both couples’ families. We are planning to head back to the village this weekend to give out the finished videos.

It is a strange world the Akha live in today – they sit on dirt floors in their bamboo huts and watch family wedding videos on their televisions. Talk about an ancient-future experience.

Here we have some of our neighbors preparing one of the dishes for the festival meal. They do everything in community, and here they are gathered around on a salah chopping up vegetables. Look at that young boy go! He’s only about 11 years old, but he knows his way around a knife.

Enjoy!

Yesterday we received a special treat and were able to go to Lawca Akha (Elephant Mountain Village) for their new rice celebration. This is the largest Akha village in all of Thailand and one of the most traditional Akha villages in Thailand, and we were honored to be invited to celebrate with them.

It’s a rough road to Lawca, but it was worth it as we enjoyed singing, dancing, playing on the Akha Swing and – of course – the traditional Akha celebration meal of minced spicy pork (sa bieh), salsa (sa pi), soups, vegetables and new rice.

The other day, however, Lori decided to just force the issue and use our camera whether it ruins pictures or not because she wanted to capture some of the Northern Thailand rice fields before they are harvested later this year. She will post some of the pictures she has taken when she gets a chance, but for now I want to share a few of the pictures I’ve taken recently, and I am even posting a video!

We’ve had a lot of cloudy, misty days up in Mae Salong and the full moon this last week just made for some spectacular views of the Akha Swing in our village. Unfortunately, we missed the swing festival this year (we were at a wonderful conference in Chiang Mai), but these pictures are still pretty cool ::

Here are a few pictures from last July when my parents were here and when the Foursquare Team from California came to our village to do an outreach project. You can see the Akha women scraping bark for the savory Akha Minced Pork, the Akha women playing “Dress Up the Pala” with my mother (note the fake hair sewn into the Akha Headdresses), and an elder from our village giving out snacks that the team brought for the kids ::

We are also leaping (ok, stumbling) into the 21st century with a video post. It’s not much, just an incredible rainstorm… everyone in the village holes up at home when storms like this come. You can see our waterfall, our moat and a real cutie waving hello.

This is a DivX encoded file, if you have problems viewing it I recommend downloading the BSPlayer (it’s the best media player for all your video needs).

Right click on the picture and choose “Save Target As” (Internet Explorer Users) or “Save Link As” (Firefox Users) to view the movie ::

*** Update. Just click on the image link and then click play ***

We have shared in our newsletters and in previous blogs about the Akha woman we lovingly refer to as Lydia because of her generosity. In reality, we call her ‘Atsu Kuh‘, and she is our Akha mom.

From our first moments in the village this widowed Akha woman has taken care of us. Feeding us, teaching us, administering painful Akha remedies on us when we are ill, and generally trying to get us to live with her. Through our time with her we have learned that her husband died nearly 23 years ago and she raised her two daughters alone. Her daughters have since grown up and now live in Korea where they sell Ginsing products for a Korean company.

Well, her daughters have come back for this week and we have been able to spend some time with them. We are the same age, 28 and 26 (not taking Akha years into account), and have had a lot of fun with them while they have been running around and fussing over their mom, buying her telephones and things for her home. And Lydia is loving every minute of it.

With their Chinese education from Doi Mae Salong, her daughters can make more money in Korea than they ever could here in Thailand and are therefore able to take good financial care of their mother, but she misses them so much. Seeing her with her daughters helps us to understand why she has taken us under her wing. It also helps us to understand how our parents feel about us living off in a distant country. But we also see the pride and love in Lydia’s eyes when she looks at her daughters.

Seperation is hard on all of our families but it also reminds us that wherever we go in this Family, we will always find love, and those who need it.

This recent revelation that I’ve reached the big three-oh has inspired some thoughts of days gone by. Now I know many of you reading this blog have seen 30 come and go. Some of you have even seen 30 years twice over. You’re probably reading this and thinking I’m insane for writing about my old age, but you have to realize the shock is not just from turning 30, but from hitting that mark 2 years early!

How did I get these extra years? Well, as best as I can tell, here’s how:

In the Western world we count from zero. This not based on natural truth as much as it is based on a philosophical idea. Our sense of time and mathematics, however, depends heavily on this idea so the first 12 months of our lives are spent in the zero^th year, not turning one until twelve months after we are born. (If you know much about interest and finance the idea is simalar to interest being accrued at the begining of a period vs. the end of a period.) Children have an acute understanding of the problems this system creates which is why we have so many six-and-a-half year-olds running around. In fact that system is not used in school. We do not say that a child in the first year of school is in the 0^th grade, we say they are in 1^st grade.

So it seems that traditionally the Akha say that a child is one-year-old throughout it’s first year of life, counting ahead rather than behind. That accounts for one of the extra years added to my life, but still would have made me only 29 years-old. As my discussion with our friend MiNah proved, the Akha accounting of years is even more involved. Traditionally the Akha say that when a baby is born it is anywhere between 8 and 10 months into it’s first year. Naturally within their culture the Akha seem to believe that life begins at conception. This being the case, three months after a child has been born it is beginning its second year – or as the Akha would say two-years-old.

This accounting of time seems to have changed as birth certificates and the western calendar have made their way into Akha culture. But, based on the zodiac (12-year cycle of animals) calendars familiar throughout Asian cultures including the Akha hilltribe, the 28 year-old friend of mine in our village was born two years after I was, making me 30 Akha-years-old.

However, after yesterday, we had to show you some pictures – even though they were taken from our phone. They aren’t the best pictures we’ve ever taken, but they are from one of the funnest days we have ever had.

Since it is summer break for all the Thai schools. About fourteen of our Akha friends came to visit our village. They showed up without food, but rather than burden the village with feeding them they decided to go catch their meals. You can read more about our adventure fishing with the Akha from Lori’s article in our Journey Notes blog. (The first picture is from our broom-making days which Lori also wrote about.)

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

Paul & I consider ourselves to be somewhat athletic & coordinated people. Unfortunately, it seems that any coordination we ever possessed was left behind in America! As we progressed down the mountain we were slipping & sliding all over the place! The combination of a muddy path & slippery, wet sandals was just too much for us to navigate. To add insult to injury, our guides were two older Akha women (who couldn’t have weighed more than 100 pounds each) and neither one of them mis-stepped once!

At one point, both Paul & I went clumsily careening down a certain section of path to find ourselves muddy and wet at the bottom. Our Akha traveling companions thought that we were the funniest thing they had ever seen and we all had good laugh! I’m sure we were quite a sight!

Well, long story short, we ended up abandoning our sandals and taking most of the trip in our bare feet. (Quite fun!) We had a great visit at the village and the trip back up the mountain was much less eventful. Apparently, “going up” takes much less skill than “going down.”

After a long, wet, adventurous day we could only be grateful for the experience. This is why we are living in the village after all, to learn & understand all the nuances of Akha culture…. like their uncanny ability to maintain their footing on a slippery slope!