Dear everyone,

It’s Easter.  It’s Thai New Year. Both: a double Jubilee. If there is such an event, and IF there ain’t, we just ‘invented’ one!
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. Have been betrayed, lied to so many many times,  that besides me, old 82 year old Fr. Joe…. they have no one else.  A betrayed, a harsh word from me in a bad mood is nearly unforgiveable….  But forgive they do. And they tell me, Fr. Joe, it’s okay to cry… sometimes…. And we love you.  And of course, our young men provided the percussion traditional Thai music.  Compelling; leading the rhythm of the dance.  

And down mid-south Thailand (eight hours by over-night bus), on the coast of the Andaman sea (Burma side) our Mogen, Sea Gypsy kids: five of the fifteen attending Thai public school in Ranong City, now, all Thai citizens ( a miracle only the angels could perform)  who live with us during school days on the mainland, have graduated into secondary school. Just fabulous.  Imagine, Sea Gypsy kids, now totally literate in Thai & spoken Mogen.  Mogen is not yet a written language: we are working on that, and it’s totally exciting  We  go day by day, also teaching, caring for,  feeding  our 35 kindergarten kids living with their fisherman parents on the island.  

To speak of our young ladies again: to call them ‘girls’ is an insult’’’ they are now.. with this New Year beginning today ‘Young Ladies’ as they themselves decided. 

And during this past Holy Week, as we, all of us, you reading this included, stumbled along the rickey wooden walkways of Klong Toey – our version of the back streets of Jerusalem -  Our Blessed Mother Mary – Momma of Jesus guided us  along a back street corner & led us to a three year girl: an abandoned angel dressed in rags.  It was so obvious.   She had been left alone.  There was no one else around.  And her first words were:  I’m hungry.   
So we did what you would do.  We  had some cookies. That took care of the moment.  
And about a shout away, a young woman appeared, shouted in tears… I love you my baby and ran away, barefoot.   We didn’t recognize her.  Never saw her again. 

Now, a few days later.  ‘Amazing.’  But so loveable.  She’s perhaps three, so she tells us; brushes her own teeth.   Screams, screeches, shouts  loudest of all, & knows all the raucous words that three year olds are not supposed to know or say 
She’s first prize as a slum kid. .  Comb her hair, dress her up, cut her nails, put some shoes on her feet.  The kids a ‘drop-dead beauty.  Yes, a ‘classy little girl’ even at three. And you should see her grin, and smile. Bright & outgoing & talks to any stranger than comes along. 
One non-matching pair of used flip-flops, no shoes, never wore a pair of socks. Doesn’t even know how to put them on 
She’s our Easter Blessing.  To finish this:  may all of you be Blessed and happy.  May your own families at home, be blessed.  Come to visit us. We are almost over with Covid.
We hope our schools will open again- traditional classroom style soon.  Right now, we re still feeding & home-work teaching one thousand six hundred kindergarten slum kids.  Yes, we don’t have much money – but we carry on, day by day.

Prayers & Blessings & Happiness to you all.   Yes, the world situation is not good, but it’s my job (Fr Joe & the job of all of us here) to take care of as many children as we can. And most important that I and all of us say our prayers each day.  All for now.