Baby boy
After I made the decision to come back to the States to help my family I had about a week in Thailand to do ministry and wrap up a few things before leaving. I was able to spend time down at the border and even go with my whole team to visit our villages across the border, filling my heart up before having to leave.
While arranging things for my team to cross the border for a day trip, I asked our contact to stop by one of the villages to check on a mom and baby boy we were providing formula to (she wasn’t producing enough milk to provide all her baby needed). I got a call back that mom and baby were doing great, but that they were now having to share the formula since a there was an orphaned one-week old baby in the village. What?! I didn’t even know that a woman in the village was pregnant! Thankfully we have a supporter that has committed to paying for the formula for the first baby boy, and another ministry in town was able to donate formula that day so we could get more to them right away.
When we visited the village a few days later I brought some photos that I had developed from previous trips to give to the people in the pictures. They were flipping through the photos, handing them out, when they got to one picture I heard several people softly gasp… everyone gathered around and said, “it’s her”. Unbeknownst to me, I had taken a picture of the mother who passed away and brought it with me.
My heart broke. I knew the momma. I didn’t know her name, but I knew her smile and her face. I knew her three year old daughter was just getting to the point where she was no longer afraid of us. This was a sweet young mom who had a beautiful smile and you could see her love for her daughter. And now she was gone.
We asked lots of questions trying to get the story of what happened to leave a two week old baby boy without a family. Apparently the mom had her baby at a hospital in another town, but three days after giving birth she died of a heart attack. The father lives and works somewhere else and has the daughter. I’m not exactly sure if it’s a sister or just a really close friend who’s family has taken in the newborn, but we got to sit in her house and hold this precious baby boy.
With the reality of children and babies being sold for sex, slavery and even body parts I get nervous when children are unwanted or parents are to poor to provide for them (I don’t know what I would do if anything ever happened to the kids I visit). I was so relieved to realize that the ‘adoptive mom’ is a woman that I know from the village! She is an amazing mother of two young boys who has lovingly opened her home to this baby boy. The woman’s husband even came and sat down with us for a bit, he made a bottle and helped hold the baby after a freshly changed ‘diaper’ (not something we normally see men do). The man made sure to let us know that this baby will be loved and cared for by his family.
Leaving was a little harder this time around as the realities of the people here are no longer rumors and stories, but they are now undeniably real and affecting the people I call friends and family. The more we become a part of people’s lives here the more we are going to be faced with stories like this, and have a desire to help meet the needs of these people who just can’t do it for themselves. When I got the call there wasn’t a question of ‘if’ we would help provide for these babies, because the obvious answer was yes. The hard part comes when realizing that right now, these types of calls aren’t in the budget because our ministry budget is coming out of our personal budgets for the most part. Many of the events we do are covered by supporters or teams, but the daily and emergency things aren’t necessarily covered by anyone specific. When you wonder why I / missionaries keep asking for money remember stories like this…. of a newborn baby boy who doesn’t even have a name yet, who lost his mom and who’s father isn’t in the picture, of a young family who is struggling to feed their two boys who aren’t old enough for school yet have lovingly decided to raise a baby who is not theirs, and of a mother who’s willing to share what little she has to help keep this precious life alive… the funds that you give go towards me / missionaries provide not only for personal expenses but also giving an entire village a reminder that they are not forgotten and helps restore the hope that this baby boy will be able to live a long and happy life.
Give – Casey Wells or to Outpour Movement (general fund)
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