After a 14 hour train ride, the car’s tires crunched gravel as we drove up the road to Sending Hope International. The scenery already successfully awed me. There are mountains, tons of flora, and rich, earthy tones in Wiang Pa Pao, Thailand. Once we stopped the taxi, we realized all the girls from the orphanage were waiting to welcome us outside our house. Some were even holding letters that spelled out welcome with smiles and nervous anticipation on their faces. I’m sure we had the same look on our own expressions!
Part of my heart has been stolen ever since.
This is Little Nugget. That’s not her actual name but she is
so tiny and stinkin’ cute.
Sending Hope International started in 2010 by two Americans, Dr. David and Joyce Atkins. Dr. Atkins has been a pastor and orphan ministry director for 42 years and Joyce has been a school teacher for 39 years. They founded Sending Hope International with the goal of rescuing at risk girls worldwide from potential exploitation, sex trafficking, and poverty.
Their orphanage in Thailand houses around 40 hill tribe girls that currently range from 6-18. They do all aspects of life together – eat, sleep, play, laugh, cry, disciple, worship, and bible studies. From being here, it’s like they have 40 sisters in one another. It’s a powerful, invaluable connection these girls are building here that I can see lasting their lifetime. You can tell how much they deeply love and care for one another. As well, every time I talk for an extended time with staff about the girls, they tear up at times because they adore the girls.
Popo and I were friends from day one. We made a fish!
The process of how the children end up here is mostly through referrals from nearby villages. If a local villager witnesses a child consistently not being treated well or not taken care of then a wonderful lady and coordinator named Peace gets contacted. She investigates the child’s situation and sees if it truly is a healthy and wise idea to propose having the child come stay at Sending Hope instead of home.
According to Dave who is the founder and director of Sending Hope, the kids aren’t all orphans in the normal definition that they lost both parents. Some are single orphans meaning only one parent is gone or a kid simply isn’t being taken care of by their actual parents or guardian. Here in Thailand, if two people divorce, that means that marriage had bad karma which means people view the kid as having bad karma. Since those kids are “bad luck” they get dumped off on others like their grandma, grandpa, uncle, or aunt who may not even be able to feed themselves. Sometimes these children are not wanted by those relatives, they’re the last to be fed, get clothes, first choice for feeding the pigs, etc.
I’ve watched the staff here constantly invite these girls into a space full of love and kindness. There’s such intentional care of these girls and attention to their personal well-being, development, and future.
The girls in their tribal dresses for Sunday church. This is mostly everyone!
When my team first arrived here, we started ministry off here by filling their mornings with worship, arts and crafts, bible messages, teaching English, and games. From my perspective, our main role is to participate in the mission to raise these girls up in faith, joy, and love that can only be founded in Christ. It’s about pouring into them and taking their development seriously. We live right next to them and also tie in with a lot of their day-to-day life.
This coming week we will be camp counselors at the Trails to Life camp the organization hosts once a year in April. We’re excited to be here for their 8th camp! Dave, the director, describes it as boy scout and girl scout camp meets sports camp meets church camp. It’s not only the 40 girls here but also others throughout the area that wish to attend.
The heart behind the camp is to share the gospel, pray kids come to know Jesus, and leadership training for the older girls. Since that’s their main focus the camp is free. This part shocked me because it’s a beautiful place and the camp schedule is packed; they put a lot of heart and soul into the week. Dave says they don’t charge because they don’t want to limit any kid from being able to attend, especially because there is so much poverty here. He relies solely on donations from donors in the United States.
Sending Hope International is not only in Thailand but also Cambodia, Brazil, and Canada.
P.S. Just got back from our Songkran celebration with the kids. Songkran is a water festival to reign in the Thai New Year. I’ve never been soaked so many times these last 3 days. The girls demolished us in the water fight!
Teammate Jonathan getting doused by kids in a truck when we were in
Chiang Mai for a conference during Songkran. Photo cred: Teammate Megan McKinley!
