ore then two years ago, I started working in a slum 30 miles from Bangkok. Many reasons led me to this choice, but only one aim: to share in the lives of poor people and pray and serve them. Being a nurse and a physical therapist, I started taking care of the sick and disabled. Tuberculosis, as well as AIDS, is rampant in these areas. Often time, there is no service for the disabled who are left at home without assistance.
I started alone, but very soon the few people I used to visit became a huge number. Fr. Adriano, of Our Lady of Mercy Church, suggested training 5 young women to help me with this task. Our manual for training has been the Gospel. Since the beginning, we have been applying the gospel directly to our own situation.
St. Mark’s Gospel starts by presenting John the Baptist, who shouts out: “Prepare the way for the Lord, make his path straight!” (Mk 1:3) Broken families, poor education, abandoned children, early sex and abortions, parents in jail, drug abuse, selfishness, slavery due to debt, school dropouts, etc… These are the ways to be made straight… and the sooner we begin, the better it is.
These 5 young women are not Christians and not even Buddhist. They just need a job, and a little money to care for their children at home. All of them have a quite heavy past. Toa, was abandoned by her husband with 4 children. Kulap, is married twice with 3 children and another two, the older ones, left in the care of their grandparents. Nuan, has 2 daughters and has a past of 6 years in jail for drug dealing. Faa, comes from the north with no idea of Bangkok lifestyle in the slum. Phrew, the oldest of three children, was abandoned by her father and her mother is sick with AIDS in a slum not far away.
We have been taking care of disabled children providing what is needed according to their situations: and also the orphans
We simple started going around taking care of the sick, visiting families, assisting people with AIDS until the last moment: and sometimes, being their own new family. We have been taking care of disabled children providing what is needed according to their situations: and also the orphans, whom Fr. Adriano supports, for their health care.
Now, nurses and doctors at the local hospital know us and know what kind of patients we take to them. So, they try their best to cooperate and facilitate the service. At the beginning, it was not so. They used to treat us like undesirable intruders. Since we were not relatives, we did not have the right to interfere in their care.
It took quite a long time for them to understand and appreciate our service. But, what still touches me the most is the fact that these five women, out of their poverty and simplicity, have been trying to live out the Gospel. In their own flesh they have become good news for the most wretched and outcast in Thai society.
(From Xaverian Missionaries of Mary)