Showing 1 - 10 of 10
Money can't buy Miss Tip's love
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 07/05/2017
» We never knew mum when she was young and not yet ravaged by cheap booze and hard hot years under the Southeast Asian sun doing unskilled sweatshop labour, living wherever there was work on the decks and holds of rusty out-of-date cargo ships in the Bay of Bangkok.
Branching out in Klong Toey
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 09/08/2015
» There’s a really big tree with roots all over the place and beautiful deep green leaves shaped like a Valentine’s Day heart. It's a nice tree, but it’s slightly unkempt. However, Auntie Gung and our children say it’s fine for a sacred tree to be unkempt. And this is a sacred tree with a sacred spirit, or angel. It's called a dhon pho tree in Thai and it’s in the back of the Klong Toey slum flats.
Ducking for cover
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 20/04/2014
» Let me tell you a story of Master Gan — a new child at Mercy Centre — he’s Songkran and Easter, all at “a mighty five years old”. Right now, he’s not at his mental and physical peak because he’s got chickenpox — but he’s almost well again.
Little girl with a big heart up from under the expressway
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 04/08/2013
» Demure Miss Tangmo (Watermelon) tries to be as good and loving as any mum on the planet, but she's only eight, and she worries a lot about her five-year-old brother and the twins. Not that there's really much to worry about there: he's happy and the twins are jolly three-year-old eating machines. Her mum, back in rehab? That's a worry, but it's nothing new.
Motorbikes, miles and an endless cycle for slum girl
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 16/06/2013
» The first time, 12 years ago, it was an easy rescue. Her dad, a European man, kicked down the door, barged in and beat up the two bad guys with his fists, cracked their skulls with a beer bottle, and picked up his three-year-old daughter, Miss Jew Waew. He waved down a taxi and brought her to us at Mercy. He had heard that we took care of abandoned kids.
Easter spirit shines through children's smiles in slum
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 31/03/2013
» She crones that ancient children's lament, ''Auntie of the Moon'', over and over. Eight-year-old Miss Phae can't talk clearly _ only babbles _ and her tongue goes in all different directions. Yet her best friend, nine-year-old Miss Phon understands perfectly when Miss Phae sings, ''Please find me a kind granny for my little sister and a kind granny who loves me too.''
A Christmas story, Klong Toey style
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 23/12/2012
» They tried to lead a normal family life, but they were always looking back over their shoulders ... never quite sure if Herod's soldiers knew, when they killed all those children in Bethlehem more than eight years before, that Jesus had escaped that horrible nightThe children at our Mercy Centre don't really worry about time and space, so yesterday, today and even tomorrow all become ''right now''. If a story rings true to them, they ''buy in''. Like all kids, ours have an unerring sense of what's real and what's fake. And without exception, they like the story of Christmas. So here at Mercy, we celebrate Christmas every day, but especially on Dec 25, when we follow our Sacred Traditions.
Miss Dao and her amazing feats
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 23/09/2012
» She has mostly had to learn everything herself. Mum couldn't be there for her, and Miss Dao also has to take care of Granny, as she'd promised her mother. You know, things like mixing her betel nut chaw and holding her hand crossing the street. She has three older half-brothers and a half-sister, but they aren't close. Her half-sister is married, and Dao only saw her once at the temple for her mother's cremation.
Ex-street kids fight the nightmares and find the dream
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 05/08/2012
» Ever since she was 11 and on the streets, Noi had always dreamed she would get married in the proper style, with a dowry, a ring and a bridesmaid. Her husband would have a real job and talk nice and love her. After she met the right man she promised herself that she would make it happen, and she wanted it even more after her two children were born. Her husband Somchai, also street-raised, always had the same response when she told him of her matrimonial dreams: "Why not?" But that was as far as it went.
The long road to mercy
Spectrum, Father Joe Maier, Published on 19/02/2012
» Seven, she favours that number. She's seven times seven years of age and has been "Mother Gung" to our HIV/Aids kids under seven for seven years now. It's been, she says, "a long journey, and I choose to stay".