So that very morning, rough & tumble beautiful 14 year old Ga Yeek kissed her mom goodbye –jumped on the four hour taxi fast boat to Ranong city. 
To Ranong City, hoping against hope she would find her old teacher.  She had a total of twenty Baht, just like she did when her dad left her so many years before.  Standing there on the wharf, not exactly  knowing what to do, she over-heard a workman there speaking her native sea gypsy Moken.  He told her “The Moken Boat (Taxi) would arrive in a few minutes, back from daily teaching some the kindergarten children.   

Waiting for her old teacher – second mom really, who had saved her when she was a little girl.  Her dad had wanted a second wife.  Mom had given birth to only girls, no boys.  Always the woman’s fault. Use her mom as a servant.  And no chance for daughter 3 year old Ga Yeek to attend school. 
 Mom had run away to another Moken island, escaped with Ga Yeek. Dad found them. Made mom a slave really. Ignored daughter Ga Yeek. Didn’t care if she lived or died,   Mom protected her: learn to read and write. Dream. Teach  Moken children.    

Today is a very special day, a day to celebrate a man who has given so much in such love to our communities. We at the Mercy Centre want to wish Father Joseph H. Meier a happy and blessed 57th anniversary of his Ordination Day as a priest.

We just celebrated Thai New Year (Songkran) & Holy Week & Easter. You can see from the photos. Our young ladies performed their own Traditional Thai dance. Klong Toey Slum style & hauntingly beautiful, offering me their own blessing by pouring lustral water over my hands & feet& asking the Angels to protect me. To protect us all.  Also an asking forgiveness for the past  year’s ‘goof-up’s. Plus, most importantly, forgiving me, for my ‘walking away’ dismissing the fact they are orphans. 

Merry Christmas. Deep in the heart of each of us, is a ‘broken alleluia.’  So often, almost always in the slums of Klong Toey, and here at Mercy Centre;  the whispers, tears, the silent gestures of the children  say so much about sadness and being dumped off  left alone in an abandoned building or a bus stop.  That’s the broken part and the alleluia is the joy of Christmas of being loved. Being found. 

May  the beautify of our dance, and strength of the Holy Family also bless and protect you.   

It’s been 82 years now, since my Baptism. Over 50 a Redemptorist Catholic priest,- known as ‘the slum priest, or the Catholic slaughter house priest,’ an honorable life-time in the Buddhist Klong Toey River Slum of Bangkok. Walking carefully on rickety wooden walk-ways hopefully showing honor & dignity to all I meet, as I think Jesus & His Mother Mary would. Me, a stranger, not born here,  accepted, tolerated, by the Buddhist & Catholic  poor, where I have stumbled along those slum walk-ways & through the Slaughter House. A salvage place drenched in mercy where only the lowest level of Thai society lives and works. Where our Catholics butcher pigs & water buffalo.