Yes, it was Mother's Day in Thailand.

Monday was the Queen's Birthday in Thailand.  It was also Mother's Day.  It is a day that focuses on honouring the Queen.  There are government funded, community celebrations to which they all turn up, get free food, talk and watch the entertainment provided by the children.  If there are enough funds, the show will finish with fireworks. 

Tuesday, I went along as the Director of NCCM - National Catholic Commission on Migration - with our delegation to meet the Government Director of anti-Trafficking in Women and Children.  Yes, that happens here and out of here.  Trafficking is the modern day and quite antiseptic term for what used to be called slavery.  Name it for what it is. 

Then Thursday was the Feast of the Assumption of Mary.  I went to the nearby Marist Brothers' community for mass and dinner to celebrate the feast.  They had a visitor who was another one of those great characters in life that you would only meet living in a Bangkok.  She was a woman from Costa Rica working here with ECPAT - End Child Pornography and Trafficking - which has its international base here. 

So it has been somewhat a Week for Women and Children, recognising their strength and goodness and acknowledging how they can be abused and put down by evil forces in our world. 

My Thursday and Friday were spent at a consultation workshop on urban refugees.  The participants were refugees themselves and ones from NGOs working for them.  In one exercise, we were asked to name the players in the life of refugees, identifying how powerful and helpful each player was in helping refugees in their plight.  As I did the exercise, I could see that powerful players were not necessarily the most helpful, but could be the exact opposite.  I could also see that the real power did not necessarily belong to those so readily named as being the most powerful, even if they are the big and strong government and non-government institutions dealing in this area. 

The real power lay with the refugees themselves.  As I heard their able representatives share their stories and saw what they were doing to act on their lives, they gave me life and hope in what can be a most frustrating and tiring field of work and ministry.  For the wider refugee population, no matter how despairing their lot may be, I could see that it becomes a challenge of recognizing their power for themselves and seizing it to act for good in their lives. 

They can do it!  That was my catch cry by the end of Friday.  If they can act for themselves in facing up to such hardships as they know, so can we all!