Brokering the Sweetness

We've brought Werthers with us.

I confess that in my own weakness for sweets, anything butterscotchy is right up there, and therefore Werthers would not surprisingly be something easily thought of to bring to treat orphans. I had purchased a large bag, thinking it would be something to take to Doi Saket.

For the sake of those not knowing, Doi Saket is a small community, sort of like a suburb of Chiang Mai. Asia's Hope's first orphan home in the area is located there, a larger home with approximately 100 children and the feel of summer camp on steriods. Within the past 18 months, in a surge of growth, made possible by the addition of three more sponsoring churches, Doi Saket 2 and Doi Saket 3, along with Hot Springs (Highview's partnership), have been added. That means about 50 to 60 more orphans have been gathered under the shelter of the amazing people who bring the love of Jesus to desperate children.

In these two days of recovery and adjustment here in Chiang Mai, before we even get to Hot Springs and the 15 kids we're actually here to see, and can't wait to see, we have had the chance to drop in at Doi Saket.

We brought the Werthers.

It's a wonderfully "regular" thing for the kids at Doi Saket 1. Farang visitors have been bringing gifts and treats here for some time now, and while any child there would never be rude or pushy, there is still an aura of delighted expectancy whenever Tutu or any other Asia's Hope personnel shows up with someone new.

Our time there was wonderful for me, and seemed happy for George and Starr as well. We stepped out of the car and were greeted by an immediate dozen of hugs. Some faces I recognized and even could call by name. Birdie was there and we said a happy hello and I showed her the beaded bracelet I was wearing, the one she made for me on my first trip to Asia.

I gave Starr the bag of candy and she immediately had just that extra edge of connectiveness with the kids. I loved watching them approach her, wai, receive the candy with joy, and then run off to go tell 99 of their best friends. One by one, Starr dispensed a tiny, wrapped package of afternoon sweetness to children who certainly don't get it every day.


It was at Doi Saket 3, however, that the candy became something more.


These are Asia's Hope's newest kids here in Thailand. Two to three months ago, these children were in desperate situations, without enough food, no one to provide care, or at least with adults so desperate themselves that adequate care of their children was an impossible dream. And they look it. Some are fairly rough around the edges still, with rashes and markings showing evidence of disease and lack of basic needs.

When Starr began handing out the Werthers here, it almost seemed as if some of the kids had never seen candy before. They struggled to get the wrapping off. They looked at it and held it in their hands for a second. One little guy popped his candy in his mouth, his face becoming wide with happy surprise. He spit it back into his hand to look at this wonderful little piece of heaven, and then popped it right back in his mouth, half squealing, half giggling with wonder.

Over a Werthers.

It seems to me, in a very simple way, that's why we're here. To show to the ones who have nothing the wonders of a God who longs to give them all the wonder heaven has to offer. A God Who by virtue of laying Himself down to be hammered to a cross, has indeed already given them everything He's got. A God who is so incensed by poverty and oppression, He repeatedly and with great clarity and intensity, compells those who call Him Father to broker for Him the sweetness of heaven.

It was the same screaming whisper I heard 18 months ago on my first trip out to Hot Springs. The fierce tenderness of a God, who brought me half way around the world to see first hand what was breaking His heart here. That first night at Hot Springs, meeting our kids, I heard God say, as clearly as I ever hear these things, "These are My kids. Do something."

So yesterday, in the happy excitement of one small package of butterscotchy sweetness, there it was again. That sense of being here for way bigger reasons than I could possibly understand, humbled and profoundly grateful that we get to broker the sweetness of God's pounding love for His kids.