When You Can See It and (Honestly) When You Can't

 In 2008 we were timidly getting to know each other.  They were just children, at-risk but now gathered under the roof of a ridiculously compassionate couple who had suffered poverty themselves as children; people I was also just getting to know.

And now.

Miki is married.

Entorn is married.

Both stepping into this next responsibility of adult life with hope and optimism that comes from having been well fed, well loved and well educated in the context of a stable, grace-filled family.  A solid platform on which they can each build their own families now.

Gotta love it when this happens!!!  And we celebrate and congratulate and praise the God of sparrow-focused compassion Who gifted us with their care when they were so vulnerable.  

"These are my children.  Do something!"  I heard it as clearly as we ever hear these things we claim God spoke to us.  "Feed my sheep."  That's how Suradet says he heard it.  

So we did.

And on wedding days full of joy and flowers and sunshine, it feels so good to have followed those leadings.  It's all worth it when you can see the clear fruit of your investments.

And also.

I won't, but I could list you names of children that left our care prematurely.  We didn't get to see them to that place of strength where you can launch with confidence into a future that isn't determined by poverty.  Children who's living family members don't have the capacity to understand the need for education and take them back to send them to work to make money for the household.  Children who's living family members got too terrified of COVID and were convinced the safest place was to stay isolated in the mountains.  True orphans who's elder siblings made things more complex.  Children who's academic struggles brought their living relatives 'shame', hindering our attempts to find special education opportunities.  I could go on.  Each of these premature goodbyes still stings.  

I have friends who are foster parents in Canada, in a system way more structured and legal than anything we work with in Thailand, who say the same things are in play for them.  We don't call these  children 'vulnerable' for nothing.  Life everywhere, life there, is so complex.  And generational poverty does its damnedest (bad word intended).  We make agreements with living family members, but we do not override the authority of blood relatives.  We are in no way like a 'residential school.'  

So we do what we can do.

And sometimes they grow up and leave to go to university or solid jobs, and keep coming 'home' for holidays and family meals, and find life partners and marry them, and we are so happy and quick to say "yay God" for this!!!  And we should.

But my heart is often drawn back to the other ones.  I still pray for them by name.

Love like you won't get hurt, but you do.

And I write these things today because you really can't have one and ignore the other.  Because it's really a thing to be authentic and tell both kinds of stories.  Because we are entrusted with so much, and absolutely must be honest about it all.  To our supporters.  To ourselves.  

And a huge, huge thank you to Sponsors and Supporters who get it, who stick with us when it's complicated.  Without you, we couldn't be there for any of them.  

Touch Points and Tech: A Mini Report on Highview's Thailand Sunday January 22

 

One of the most challenging learnings for me as a shepherd-leader during the pandemic has been how to counter the necessity to employ "high-tech" methods with the need to remain "high-touch" shepherds.(1)  During the height of the lockdowns this was especially difficult.  As we all navigated our way through online services, taped messages, and virtual meetings, there were times when it all felt so distanced, so impersonal, so sterile.  As one frustrated person said to me, "It feels like church is being 'done to' me."

The lack of warmth from in-person, high-touch interactions was made even more chilly for us at New Family Foundation when it meant we couldn't travel.  A normal touch point year would include three visits.  For almost three years, nothing.

Well, not quite.  

They say that passion-driven learning is best, and I would add maybe even the only way some things can be mastered.  Zoom for instance.  The fact that I now have a Zoom account AND that I actually know how to use it (for the most part anyway) is only because it was intolerable for my heart not to connect, face and voice, with Suradet and Yupa and the children during the travel restrictions.

All this to say that on Sunday we invited Pastors Suradet and Yupa to bring to us a message (via recorded Zoom interview) of resilience and hope based on Isaiah 35:1-10 and the truths it holds that are lived out so vibrantly in their lives.

Strengthen feeble hands, steady the knees that give way; say to those with fearful hearts, "Be strong; do not fear: your God will come."  Isaiah 35:3-4a

And this profound picture of joy later in the same chapter.

Therefore the redeemed of the LORD will return and enter Zion (God's ultimate city of peace) with singing; everlasting joy will crown their heads.  Gladness and joy will overtake them and sorrow and sighing will flee away.  Isaiah 35:10

I will invite you to remember that these are people who have experienced life in harsher ways than many of us in other parts of the world can properly appreciate.  And here they are, inspiring us.  

Via Zoom, no less!

Sunday was for me a high-touch moment, even though it involved so much high-tech.  For all the behind the scenes support, I absolutely must thank my good friend Dave Driver, whose own passion for Thailand and his heart for our children kept him hunched over his computer for several weeks working on the tedious subtitling/translations.  Thank you!

And also a big thanks to Derek Goupil, Highview's Music Director, who can lead our worship teams to make any request for any particular song not only sound fantastic, but be part of what brings us into those spaces where we can imagine for ourselves what it will be like to be part of that throng going through the city gates one day.

It would be important to also mention our gratitude to Pastor Erin and the Elders of Highview for their continued support of all we do, as the leaders of New Family Foundation's 'umbrella' church.

And of course.  Always.  To all our Sponsors and Supporters.  There is no possible way to bring enough gratitude, in any way it might be communicated, to adequately express how much we see you as our heroes.   Thank you, thank you, thank you.  And may God bless you in accordance to the measure that you have blessed us.

And if you ever want to 'touch base' with me about anything at all to do with our incredible family in Thailand, please reach out (via tech) at rabreithaupt@hcckw.ca.

(1)  This was just one of three counterpoints in my thesis for a directed reading and research academic study of preaching for spiritual formation during disorienting times, undertaken in the winter of 2021.  Fascinating opportunity and I learned so much!!!