(754) Community development 2

Last night I went to a wake. The deceased was a near neighbour of mine when I was a child. I remember moving out of that area when I was eight years old. We (my brothers and I) chatted with old play mates from years past. The eldest daughter was someone we could not remember, she must have married off to a country south of us before I was born.

She was a person who was clear and lucid in describing her eldest son's mercy project. While the younger children and grandchildren were kneeling and chanting Buddhist prayers, this lady was telling us how her son went to visit Phuket in the aftermath of the tsunami. He saw a beach littered with bloating human bodies. Houses all blown to pieces. Children orphaned. Parents running around looking for their children's bodies. In fact a community bowed to its knees with little to eat, no where to stay, totally lost.

And so this pastor felt called to a task of restoration. He obtained permission from the village head and his superior in his home church. The work started with him in a fund raising effort. After a community centre was erected, the pastor's wife resigned from her teaching post. Husband and wife relocated to this rural fishing village two hours by car from the airport.

This Christmas is the eleventh they are celebrating in Phuket. The work now includes not only Thai children, but there was a group of Burmese refugees. This community centre feeds and educates the children. They provide two-way transportation to the scattered children living in shacks far apart from each other. People do not just give generously to this work, many would journey there and volunteer their time and effort. There are youth who give one or two years of their life. Some professionals would go for two weeks to two months.

With a global financial crunch, some churches from affected countries cut down their support. Thus it is time for the local people to rise up. A project of rearing fish in netted containers in the sea is bearing fruit. That provides a steady income of about a thousand dollars monthly by selling mature fish. This will pave the way to eventually a self-sustaining work.