It was still dark when the village began to stir. A mother wrapped her shawl tighter around her child. An elderly couple sat quietly outside their wooden hut, waiting for the day to warm their bones. In the distance, the mountains of northern Thailand stood silent—beautiful, remote, and unforgiving.  No clinic.  No paved road.  No one coming—at least not usually.  And yet, this is precisely where the Church belongs.  There is something deeply Gospel-shaped about going to plac

It begins with fear.  A poor village. The kind of place most people pass over without a second thought. Empty granaries. No walls strong enough to protect them. The bandits will return after harvest—it’s only a matter of time. The villagers know they cannot fight back. All they can do is wait… and hope.   Hope that someone, somewhere, will come to their aid .  When I last watched Akira Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai , I didn’t expect it to linger with me the way it did. It’s often

Advent is often described as a time of waiting—a quiet, expectant season in the Church’s life. But the deeper truth is this: Advent is not passive.  It is an active preparation, a spiritual awakening, a call to make room for Christ by making room for those who need help. In the Gospels, the coming of Jesus always prompts movement: Mary sets out in haste to help Elizabeth, Joseph rises from sleep to protect his family, the shepherds leave their fields, the Magi journey across

After returning from a 3-week mission in Hong Kong working with refugees and the marginalised, I had a ton of emails to clear from my inbox. Scanning through the headers for urgent ones, something caught my eye. It was a notification that carried significance for a small Catholic humanitarian organisation like ours.  Gebirah had been invited from a global search to join the 2025 QBE AcceliCITY Humanitarian Challenge — and selected as a semi-finalist .  There was no sense of