25 Years of Witnessing to the Word in Thailand 187 A sense of naïveté is inevitably attached to the intention of working with orphans, particularly those who are even more vulnerable, being HIV positive and/or living with disabilities. When seeing the children playing with each other at our center, I couldn’t help but ask what they have done to deserve this. They are branded and labelled since birth, and they have had to carry the burden that comes with the illness without fully realizing why. Sympathetically, I pondered what I can do to help. My pondering was more in terms of how much can I compensate for what they have suffered–these unwarranted sufferings from the illness, witnessing the death of their parents and growing up without them, being unwanted by relatives, being rejected by society, and most devastating of all, the feeling of being not good enough for others. During the last few months of my CTP, I was assigned full time to Ban Mae Marie, which is a subsidiary of the SVD Foundation, caring for abandoned teenagers. The makeup of this place is quite diverse as we recently accepted elderly patients from the hospice due to an overflow. Perhaps the best description of my work is a mix between a bus driver and a guidance counselor. I work primarily with the teenagers—driving them to school, to the hospital, and basically everywhere else needed. I began somewhat of a counseling session with them to touch base on their well-being
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTQ0MTI=