Judy was our team host for the organization we worked with ( Remember Nhu https://remembernhu.org). She greeted us at the airport and helped us navigate our time in Thailand. Judy is an American who has dedicated the latter half of her life serving in the home here is Thailand. Her job is to provide hospitality to foreign (mostly American) teams. She wanted to bring us to the Hillside tribe community so we could see the situations of the kids before they come to the safe home; her hope was that we could understand their depth of poverty a little bit better.
Remember Nhu has a good relationship and reputation within this community. The government is aware of them and sends an advocate from the home to the tribes when there is rumor of a child being sold in the community.
 |
| Remember Nhu. There is a beautiful story that goes along with this name. |
 |
| Simple mission and motto |
Whenever Judy visits the tribe with teams, she bring gifts to the Chief. They tolerate our visits because typically the teams buy a lot of the handmade baskets the women make. The baskets are about $9.00. They are beautiful and sturdy.
Judy said that one sale was equivalent to about a month wage for them!
Our team bought A LOT of baskets.
Walking around the village, the first thing I noticed was the lack of any kind of pavement. The walkways were dirt. Pigs and chickens shared the area freely.
 |
| Seeing these little piglets made me miss my kids! :) |
Thatched roof houses stood on bamboo stilts.
In a few weeks, the monsoon season would start, resulting in hours of rain everyday. Hours of rain would turn the dirt paths into mud paths. Everyone would be walking around in sludge. I imagined that small canals of water would form, cascading through developments and threatening to wash away whatever was in its path.
There was one house in the village that was set apart. It was a little more elegant and made of painted mortar instead of wood. Our guide explained that this was the house everyone envied in town. Apparently, the family who built this updated home did so by selling one of their children to Bangkok.
The village was pretty quiet when we were there. Our guide told us that the men were all out working in the field; most of the children went to school.
There were a few women with babies in the quiet village that day.
One women was bathing her beautiful baby on the wooden porch in a small cement basin.
The baby smiled at us. The mother waved.
It made me think about all the registering we do as Moms before our precious little ones are born.
Oh the stuff we think we need!
It seemed so silly and excessive after observing the simple lives of these people here.
We walked farther into the village and were brought to an area that looked like an arena. This was where all the celebrations were in the town. Weddings, birthdays and anything deemed worthy of needing a place to party, this flat dirt area was where it happened.
I thought of the decadence of weddings, proms and even preschool gradations at home.
Our guide told us that people will gather here for celebrations late into the night, laughing, dancing and enjoying each other. This dirt arena is a treasured space for the gathering of the community.
One of the villagers invited us into his home. The home was one small room. There was a cooking fire and pot in the middle. A mat for sleeping lay next to it.
That was it.
This is where they lived.
I was so hot in there I could hardly breath. I couldn't imagine cooking over a fire.
There were no backyards.
No grass.
There was no carpet or indoor plumbing or AC.
There were no window coverings or fans or hot waters or showers.
It was the most primitive existence, yet the people seemed eager to want to show us their homes.
I was truly humbled walking down the uneven boards that were their stairway up to this house.
I walked away in silence. I thought about all the conversations my girlfriends and I have at home, dreaming about doing this to our house, complaining about that, fixing, doing more....If I'm honest, I am always scheming and dreaming about more, more, more.
Some dusty boys ran up to us as we were heading down the path. They had on tattered clothes, no shoes and gave us the biggest smiles.
They chased each other like normal boys, laughing and teasing. What would become of these boys?
These were the children who were at risk. The poverty is so great here that one less mouth to feed and one less body to worry about would be a relief.
'One child sold for the benefit of everyone else' would start to seem like a reasonable answer
when the air is hot
and the earth is dry
and you wonder about water and your next meal.
Whenever Judy brings teams to this tribe, she makes sure everyone on the team has candy to give out to the kids (and adults) we greet in the road. Sugar brings smiles no matter where you are in the world!
Visiting the Hillside community that afternoon stirred up a whole lot of thoughts and emotions.
Being a mom, the thought of not being able to feed or take care of my children is beyond my comprehension.
What would I do instead of watching one of my children starve to death?
It made me more grateful for organizations like Remember Nhu. What a relief for so many families it must be to release their precious children to the care of these people instead of to the unknown.
What a relief to know they will still be able to see their child grow and flourish!
I also felt gratitude that I didn't have to make these decisions for my children and family. I am humbled almost to the point of tears for the abundance in my life and the ability to provide and care for my family above and beyond.
Throughout my life Luke 12:48 has echoed in my heart: When someone has been given much, much will be required in return; and when someone has been entrusted with much, even more will be required.
Visiting this village once again created an urgency of what I can be doing in my life to share the extravagant life God has given me.
It is a lifetime quest, but it renewed a passion in me. I believe one of the things that I can bring home to my family is more of an attitude of gratefulness.
What if my children grew up with a feeling of enough rather than a yearning for more?!
This would certainly be counter cultural in the United States, but what a gift I could give them!
What a gift it is to have a heart that is content!
What a blessing to simply be able to live and enjoy this life instead of constantly craving and searching for more!
A content heart is an open heart.
An open heart searches for opportunities to be generous, to share and give and feel concern.
This is the vision I have for myself.
This is the vision I have for my family.
I have seen.
I have experienced.
I am not ignorant anymore.
Not only have I been given much in material possessions, but I have been given much in perspective.
I am ready for greater generosity, for greater gratefulness, for a deeper impact.
I want this experience to make a lasting impression on my heart and family.
I don't want this to fade. This is one reason why I am writing this all down.
I want to always be able to look back, and hear the laughter of those children again and see the smile of that baby in the cement wash basin.... And to share in their joy.
No comments:
Post a Comment