When we started our home-based care program in 1999, our goal was simply to get our hospice patients back home with their families. We were homecare pioneers in Thailand and thus had no local organizations to turn to for advice and counsel. So we learned on the ground.

Last week our social workers took 45 street children to a place they could barely imagine, far away from their everyday cares.

People often ask us, what is your most basic need? What do your children always need? What do your poorest neighbors need?

I write to you this Monday morning to thank you all for so many kind wishes on my 73^rd birthday this past week on the Eve of All Saints (Halloween.) May we all be Blessed by the ever present silent Protection of all our Saints and Ancestors as we celebrate the Feasts of All Saints and All Souls.

Last week, twenty Bangkok slum children – the very poorest of the poor – took a long bus ride to Ranong province and then hopped a boat to Koh Lao to help a destitute island village of ethnic Mokens, the sea gypsies of Thailand.

Last April a fire ripped through an old squatter-slum community in the Rama 9 neighborhood. In total fifty-one homes were destroyed or badly damaged, leaving 178 residents homeless, including 61 children and eleven grandmoms and granddads.