Saying goodbye to my Agape family was far more difficult than I anticipated. I kept saying, “oh, we’ll come back to visit at Song Kraang in April when we come back to Chiang Mai from the village for a weekend”, but somehow even though we will come back, I know it’s not going to be the same. We will never have what we had these last several weeks.
Laura (our contact and advisor at Agape) took us out for lunch today to say thanks and inquire about our future plans. When we were talking, she explained to me what it would entail for me to come back and be a full-time volunteer at Agape for a year or two. As we were talking, it made so much sense that a lot of people would jump at this opportunity (two of my friends are seriously thinking about it, post-graduation). Baan Agape is exactly that, a Home of Love. Where one might expect to find children starving for attention who are deathly sick, a person will find many rambunctious kiddies who are loved and well-cared for. There is so much international attention/help that allows for these kids to be sponsored through Samaritan’s Purse and receive ample medical funding, a good education, and a fair chance at life, given their situation. Agape has a great thing going for the kids and what they are doing for the women in the mother-baby unit has been by far the most encouraging part of my time in Thailand so far. BUT (and there’s always a but) while I would LOVE to spend more time and be able to invest myself in such a great place and stay with these women and children that I’ve come to love deeply, I can’t help but wonder about the realities of these people before they came. I can’t stop thinking about the ones who aren’t here... the other AIDs babies in the government orphanages who are left to die in their cribs, the women who are shunned by their families and the rest of this society. It just got me thinking about how things would be if we could create more Homes of Ultimate God-Love...in Thailand, in Ukraine, in Uganda, in the slums, in the lives of people living with AIDs, in the lives of lonely people, in the physically and spiritually poor, in the broken, in the least, the last, the lost, the loneliest, the littlest...what would that look like? I want to see Agape in other places and I want to be a part of bringing it there...and by "there" I mean here and wherever.
Laura asked me what was in my future, as far as Thailand, as far as nonprofit/ministry work, as far as vulnerable women and children. The questions are many, the answers are few, and the puzzle pieces that I have received aren’t fitting together...but one thing became very clear yesterday when I had some tear-filled goodbyes with Pi Wara and Pi Jim and squeezed Bow for the last time and tickled Suwara on my way out...I want to be a professional lover of the least loved and in the least loving places. How’s that for a career, Mom and Dad? :)
