December 2003

Dear Friends,

Where is Annette? Is she fluting in the foothills of Mt. Everest? Lost in cyberspace? Teaching in Thailand? Wallowing in the waters off the South Carolina shores? All of the above—well, not really, but you get the idea. It has been a busy, crazy year—or two or three. Last year, from mid-April, I was on furlough for six months, traveling in the United States, helping my mom and dad, serving as a delegate at General Assembly (Ohio) and as a juror in Myrtle Beach Petit Court, and then I traveled back to Thailand to teach second semester. Then I went back to Myrtle Beach during the school break. My mom found out just before I headed home for furlough that she has terminal cancer, so I’m trying to stick close to the family whenever I have a school break.

Each trip, whether to Ohio, South Carolina, or Thailand, involves me with people so interesting and problems so intense that it’s hard to wrest away—to leave them behind yet keep them in my heart and prayers. I feel as though I’ve been in so many worlds lately. Which one is real? Don’t get too worried about my sanity—it’s just like walking out of an intense movie. For 20 or 30 minutes, even though my body might be moving out of the theater, getting in my car, and negotiating traffic, my head is still with the plot and the characters that I left behind in the theater. That is, if I’m in a place where I have a car. In Chiang Mai I would look for a tuk-tuk or songthaew (public transportation) and bargain for the best price for the trip home. Since I’ve been all around and back again, I’ll just give you a few vignettes of what’s been going on with me.

Teaching

After school year 2001-2002, in which I had 21 different university students coming to me for private lessons, this past year has felt like a breeze. Several of my excellent flute students graduated and went on to music careers or further studies, and we gained a clarinet teacher, so I have been relieved of teaching the clarinet students. I didn’t have a bassoon student this year, but I was very proud of my one oboe student, who started as a beginner with me when he was still in high school and this year played oboe in his senior recital. When I returned to Thailand in October 2002, I was not expecting to teach a course in music therapy; I had not taught it in several years and so my notes and resources were all disorganized, and I had forgotten many of the Thai terms needed to teach the course. However, a large group of students (13) wanted the course and wanted it badly enough to pester the administrator into adding the course to the semester curriculum just two days before classes were to begin. So that kept me on my toes, academically. The following semester, I audited a Thai course in psychology just to learn the vocabulary before I try to teach the three-hour therapy course again. Amid all the teaching, I like to show my students what I’m talking about (especially) since my language skills will always seem limited here. Last year, I performed a full-length concert with my harpist friend, and this year I organized and played in a woodwinds concert that included solos and ensembles for flutists (two), a clarinetist, two recorder players and a pianist.

Housing

During the 2001-2002 school year, I moved from the seminary dorm to be the house-and-dog-sitter for my good friend and fellow missionary, Janet Guyer. Janet was working in Louisville for that year. Her beautiful, exuberant Labrador retriever became my firm friend and protector and motivator for exercise and many walks. We had many adventures together. At the end of the year, Janet came back—but only to pack up her things and move to South Africa. This was just as I was preparing to go on furlough. The house was then available for me to move back into when I came back to Chiang Mai in October 2002. It’s a great house—big, spacious, with many large windows opening out to a beautiful yard with huge shade trees. Best of all, it is right beside the music department, so I have moved my office to the downstairs room just off the carport. My students come to the house for lessons, a cooler and quieter location than our previous one. I miss both Janet and her dog, but they left behind a great house, complete with a piano, a part-time maid and gardener, and lots of fascinating books that I am devouring hungrily. Besides enjoying my new office space, the students like the kitchen. It is spacious and has a big oven and refrigerator—just right for fun evenings of making cookies or pizzas or pancakes together. Just last month, we started a cell group meeting for music department students and staff. Meetings are in my living room every Monday evening, and so far, there is plenty of space for all. Thanks to a couple of my Thai friends, there are comfortable chairs and a sofa for folks to sit on, and a dining table if we wish to meet around a table. I credit my friends, not because they gave me furniture, but because they refused to let me procrastinate about buying furniture. I was going to wait until I got the house sorted out, and painted, and the roof repaired, but they insisted on driving me to urgent bargains and transporting the furniture themselves if I would just make up my mind instead of shopping and comparing prices. When one doesn’t have a car, friends with available vehicles and bargaining skills are very precious, so I bought furniture much sooner than I would have if left to my own devices. My plans for “just sort of camping out for a few months” were quite intolerable to my Thai friends.

Parents

My mom discovered she had cancer just before I went home for furlough in April 2002. Of course it was a shock to all of us (family of five) and I was grateful that I was already scheduled to be in the United States as the news sank in that my Mom, just then 76 years and quite healthy until this point, was looking at a terminal illness and a short period to live. Mom had chemotherapy treatments, and Dad had to endure several of his own medical problems and treatments during the time that I was “home.” I helped them move to a smaller place, a townhouse in a community for older adults that provides evening meals. In January 2003, Mom had to have radiation treatments also. After each setback, or each temporarily weakening treatment, Mom is cheerful and optimistic that she will soon be strong again. She gets around with a walker or wheelchair these days. After a summer of more chemo treatments, the doctor prescribed a new oral medication (one that is only recently available to the public) to do the job of chemo without all the side effects. We rejoice to see that the medicine seems to be working well, and Mom is getting stronger.

Lessons

Besides lessons too numerous to mention that I gained from being involved in church leadership in my international church in Chiang Mai (not to mention just a few eye-openers at the General Assembly), I think the Holy Spirit has been hammering (patiently and gently) away at a few other topics in the past couple of years. One has to do with all the “stuff” that I am in the habit of collecting. As I have moved from a small dorm room (how did I have so much stuff packed away in there?) to a large house, as I have pulled things out of storage for furlough living in the United States and tried to jam it back into the same small storage room, as I have helped Mom and Dad downsize and tried not to accept too many items that they were offering me from the former household, as I’ve traveled and dealt with too-heavy suitcases, as I returned to Chiang Mai to find that many boxes of my stuff had been rained on and ruined (leaky roof) or eaten by mice, but still needed sorting, it all seems to add up to a lesson best expressed by our Savior in Matthew 5: 18 (“Don’t store up treasures…”). Certainly the predicted shortness of my mother’s time on earth also gives me pause and causes me to ask myself about priorities in time and relationships. Now the war in the Mideast also rips up my assumptions about the world. My prayer is that I will be a good listener and learner in all that the Lord is teaching me. And of course, along with all of you, I pray for peace—for God’s shalom for all the people in this violence-torn world.

Shalom, Have a blessed Christmas celebration and joyful new year,

Annette George

The 2004 Mission Yearbook for Prayer & Study, p. 207

I wrote this poem to share with you. If it reaches you after Christmas, I hope you will find a space on your desk, refrigerator or dashboard to set it up as an all-year reminder of the gift that we celebrate in the darkest part of the year.

Twinkling,
Sparkling,
Sizzling light.
Yet, it alights so softly on our days
Sifting through the stars of night
We pray it filters through the haze
of corrupted horizons
and polluted streets
We hope it penetrates earthly ways
of politics
and weapon sticks
That night it did.
That Christ-born night
Love blazed
into our world
into our hearts
Light seared
the darkened parts
Heaven’s harmony exploded into quiet fields
And our God-touched earth was changed forever.
The light will never expire.
A Bethlehem cradle could not contain
All the power, the treasure, the brightness He sent
It burst into the fields, the skies, the streets, the kingdoms,
And its loving impact is still felt in hearts and minds and hungry souls.
Never can our systems, our greed or blind theories
Ever triumph over the loving light
That came that night.