For this Prodigal Son, Homecoming Is a Work in Progress

Pornchai Moontri’s return to Thailand after 36 years has been that of a Prodigal Son traversing some dark rivers of the heart, but with help from an unexpected navigator.

September 7, 2022 by Fr. Gordon MacRae

“Sawasdee Kup, my friends. This is Pornchai writing from Bangkok, Thailand. I am very happy to see this post by Father G about my other spiritual father and patron saint, Maximilian Kolbe. He has been so much a part of my life in too many ways for me to describe. I think Father G summed it up well when he introduced this post today on Linkedin and Facebook. Here is how he described it:

"#Resistance This post reveals a little known mystical connection between St. Maximilian Kolbe and St. Pope John Paul II. Resistance to evil is never futile."

My birthday is coming up. (That is not a hint!) Some of my friends got me my first computer as an early birthday present. Remember that I was "down" for the entire computer age. So this is like an alien device to me. Yesterday I saw Beyond These Stone Walls here in Thailand on a full size computer screen for the very first time. It is awesome! And so are all of you.

With love and my prayers,

Pornchai Maximilian Moontri”

After I posted “A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II” a few weeks ago, the comment above was posted by our friend Pornchai Moontri writing from Bangkok, Thailand. A few readers subsequently sent messages asking for an update about Pornchai and his life there. I had already intended to write about this because his birthday is September 10, just a few days after this is posted. Pornchail will be 49 years old and is still struggling to regain the sense of home that was lost when he left Thailand 37 years ago in 1985.

This post will be followed in a week by one that has been a long time coming. I have been working on it for months, and I believe it is the most important post I have ever written. There are some who do not want me to write it, but, for reasons that may seem apparent here next week, I must. It is an Earth-shattering account for which Satan himself has lodged many obstacles in the path of its telling. They have mostly been overcome. I ask for your prayers as I complete that most important post this week.

By coincidence, I learned only after beginning today’s post that the Gospel for the Sunday Mass following its publication is the Parable of the Prodigal Son (Luke 15:11-32). The word, “Prodigal” does not mean what some readers think it means. Its origin is in the Middle English “prodigalite” which comes from the Latin, “prodigere,” the original meaning of which is to drive away or squander. From the famous parable that Jesus told, it has also come to mean “reckless” or “wasteful,” neither of which I could ascribe to my own Prodigal Son, Pornchai Moontri.

But there was time in Pornchai’s life — a long time — when he felt compelled to drive away anyone and everyone who cared enough to enter it. This is the plight of so many who have been spiritually and emotionally wounded from a traumatic past. Pornchai tried to drive me away, too, but God had other plans and we both ended up following them. That story was told in this very same week one year ago, so I invite you to revisit it. If next week’s post is my most important, this one remains my own favorite. It is “The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner.”

Mary Calls in Reinforcements

I do not know whether I have the writing skills to adequately convey what Pornchai has been up against over the last 18 months. I have known and helped other prisoners who have faced deportation as adults to a home and country they had not seen since early childhood. Many simply do not survive. I had long been determined that Pornchai would not be one of those. Over time, by some mysterious grace, my writing made its way around the Globe to Thailand where people noticed and some support developed to assist Pornchai’s plight. He had no contact for 36 years with any of the extended family left behind when he was taken away at age eleven. He had only vague memories.

While he was still trapped in that grueling five months of post-prison ICE detention, my heart sank when I learned that the housing and support plan we had for him just fell apart in the eleventh hour due to illness. It was just weeks before Pornchai was to board a flight and I had no backup plan. Trying to put such things together from inside a prison cell half a world away is a daunting challenge.

I kept no secrets from Pornchai in this regard so I painfully remember hearing his own heart sink at the other end of the phone when I told him that the plan we had in place for him fell apart.

I remember trying to put the best spin I could on it. I asked him to trust. I said that often in my experience, such disappointments can become opportunities. Did I really believe that? I’m not sure, but I was sure of one thing: Pornchai would not believe it unless I did. So I did! In prayer, I turned this over to Mary, Undoer of Knots, my favorite from of Marian devotion and the most powerful. I asked her in an act of surrender to undo the knots of faithless distrust that held us bound.

Just two days later, in our daily ten-minute phone call while Pornchai was stranded in ICE waiting out a pandemic, I told him we had better news. I told him that Fr. John Hung Le, a Society of the Divine Word missionary priest from Vietnam, had been reading about us on Beyond These Stone Walls and sent me a message that he wants to help and would provide housing for Pornchai until we could find a better plan. Pornchai was dubious. “I don’t want to be a burden for anyone,” he said.

After Pornchai’s initial stay in required pandemic quarantine at a Bangkok hotel in February, 2021, Father John showed up with our Divine Mercy Thailand friend, Yela, and with Chalathip, Father John’s neighbor and a benefactor of his refugee project. Chalathip learned about Pornchai’s life from Yela and Fr. John, and she received an interior summons from Mary herself.

A retired teacher, Chalathip took on the task of helping Pornchai to assimilate in Thailand, a most difficult task after an absence consisting of his entire adult life since age eleven. Pornchai had to be tutored in conversational Thai, and quickly, but Chalathip knew this could not happen while Pornchai was living with four Vietnamese priests, none of whom spoke Thai.

So Chalathip spoke with Father John and decided to offer Pornchai a small apartment on the upper floor of her home just a few doors down the street from Father John’s. They spoke to me about this, but I was not going to second guess those with boots on the ground.

Chalathip owns several properties in Thailand, so in return Pornchai offered to help her manage them. Having become proficient in woodworking, Pornchai found that these skills translated easily into home repair. He dug up stumps, did landscaping, fixed leaky roofs, painted walls, sanded and restored furniture. Chalathip had two daughters. One had tragically died from an illness several years earlier and the other lived in the U.K. It did not take long for a strong maternal bond to form between her and Pornchai. This was literally divinely inspired. Chalathip never had a son, and Pornchai lost his Mother at a very early age.

Honor Thy Mother

Over recent months, Pornchai had enormous decisions to make. Chalathip had accompanied him and Father John on Pornchai’s first visit to the home and family from where he was taken at age eleven. It was in the village of Phuviang in Khon Kaen Province in the far northeast of Thailand — a nine-hour drive from Bangkok. I wrote about this hauntingly mysterious visit in “For Pornchai Moontri, a Miracle Unfolds in Thailand.”

In recent weeks, Pornchai had to return there to face a difficult decision. The half-completed home that his mother was building at the time of death in 2000, and the small amount of farmland around it, would have been taken from him unless he could come up with 80,000 Thai Baht in fees that had accumulated so he could effect a transfer of the house and land to his own name. Pornchai was frozen in place unable to decide what to do.

The amount seemed impossible for Pornchai, but in U.S. dollars, 80,000 is the equivalent of about $2,400. It just so happened that I had saved that amount in a just-in-case savings account. I did not want Pornchai to lose his mother’s home and land because it would have been gone forever. So I sent him what I had and he was able to complete the transfer. But the real Guardian Angel in this story was Chalathip. She went there with him, acting as a translator and trusted advisor pointing out options as Pornchai discerned under pressure what to do.

A kind reader has since returned my small investment to me. I am profoundly thankful, but most of all I am thankful for Chalathip. At every step of Pornchai’s long journey home, she has been a much needed teacher, guide, chauffeur and parent. She is near the age Pornchai’s Mother would be today had she lived, and I believe strongly that Chalathip, like me, was destined for this connection with Pornchai.

She returned with him to Phuviang four times in an effort to help him obtain his Thai ID for full citizenship. At some point I learned that after all my prayers to Mary Undoer of Knots, Chalathip was right there untangling all the complications that Pornchai faced in order to make Thailand his home again.

Father John and Chalathip have joined Pornchai in prayers at his Mother’s tomb at the Buddhist Temple cemetery nearby. Thailand is 99-percent Buddhist but there are many Catholic converts there and Catholicism has left a large footprint in Thailand. Chalathip, so very rare in Thailand, is Catholic since birth. Her deeply felt faith and fidelity to our Lord has bridged the chasm between hope and despair for Pornchai. He and I still speak every day, and I have recently detected that hope and some evidence of actual happiness in his voice knowing that he is not alone in his plight.

I detect it in my own voice as well of late. Night is often long and dark, but with the dawn comes — if not rejoicing, then at least a modicum of peace. It is what Jesus said would happen if we remain faithful. “Peace be with you.”

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Note from Fr. Gordon MacRae: Please join me here next week for the most important post I have ever written. It’s a matter of life and death!

And thank you for reading and sharing this post. Please “SUBSCRIBE” if you haven’t already. You may also like these related posts from Beyond These Stone Walls:

A Tale of Two Priests: Maximilian Kolbe and John Paul II

The Parable of a Priest and the Parable of a Prisoner

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Archangel Raphael on the Road with Pornchai Moontri

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Another note from Father Gordon: Our friends from Divine Mercy Thailand who sponsored Pornchai’s homecoming will be gathering with Father John’s community this week for a birthday celebration for Pornchai.

Also, Pornchai was recruited to teach an ocassional physical fitness class by the owner of MI Fitness in Pak Chong, Thailand. Mr. Mi (pronounced Mee) saw him working out at his gym and corralled him to teach a class. Mr. Mi and his wife created the poster below for their Facebook page and a short video of Pornchai’s first class. Just click on the poster to see the video.

For Pornchai Moontri, A Miracle Unfolds in Thailand

Divine Providence: Pornchai Moontri was brought to northern Thailand for his Thai ID, and then to Nong Bua Lamphu and the family he was taken from 36 years ago.

I hope you have read Pornchai’s first guest post from Thailand, “Free at Last Thanks to God and You!” This unbelievable story of grace and Divine Mercy now seems to be just beginning long after I thought it was coming to an end. But before I delve into that, I need to comment on the photo atop this post.

To formally welcome Pornchai to Bangkok, Father John Le, SVD and friends treated him to a cruise on the Chao Phraya River, a shipping lane that runs through the center of Bangkok and is the port city’s lifeline. There is a wonderful, painful, seemingly miraculous story that was set in motion just after this photo was taken at the end of February, 2021.

Pornchai’s return to Thailand after a 36-year absence was coordinated by Yela Smit, a Co-Founder of the Catholic apostolate, Divine Mercy Thailand. Yela had worked out a plan with me for Pornchai’s housing after his release from the required hotel quarantine. However, just before being released from his gruesome 5-month ICE detention to travel to Thailand, our longer term housing plan fell apart due to illness.

As soon as that happened, Father John Le offered sanctuary to Pornchai for a time of adjustment and discernment. Father John is a Vietnamese priest and a member of the Missionary Society of the Divine Word. His principal ministry in Thailand is the resettlement of refugees. Though this change in plans seemed to be by “accident,” Pornchai could not be in better hands.

On March 29, 1973, after the U.S. signed the Paris Peace Treaty with North and South Vietnam, the last U.S. troops left Vietnam. The Paris Accord did little to end the bloodshed after the departure of American forces, however. The continued presence of North Vietnamese soldiers in South Vietnam dissolved the cease-fire agreement. Without the presence of U.S. troops, thousands of refugees fled South Vietnam and a looming communist slaughter. Many fled aimlessly in small, crowded boats. John Le, at age 15, was among the famous “Boat People” who shook the conscience of the Western World.

Father Le knows painfully well what it means to be a displaced person. I was deeply grateful when Yela told me that he and his religious community stepped up to offer sanctuary to Pornchai. I had the task of telling Pornchai about this by telephone while he was still trapped in ICE detention. I remember telling him that often such a sudden change in plans is divinely inspired and becomes a source of grace.

I had no idea then just how prophetic those words would become. The story that follows is just the latest thread in the tapestry of extraordinary graces in the epic Divine Mercy story of Pornchai Moontri.

A Return to the Painful Past

In a telephone conversation with me just before Pornchai’s flight to Thailand, Father Le said that Pornchai must obtain his official Thai citizen ID which he would have received at age 16 had he been in Thailand at that time. He said he would drive Pornchai eight hours north of Bangkok to the City of Khon Kaen where his birth records are located. From there, Father Le said, they would go further north to the Province of Nong Bua Lamphu.

Father John said that his Order sponsors a home and clinic there for Thai children suffering from HIV. I was shocked by this, not by the nature of this much needed apostolate, but by the location. It was from that very place that Pornchai was taken at the age of 11 and brought to the United States against his will 36 years ago. This is an incredibly painful memory for Pornchai, and among the most traumatic times of his life. Most readers know by now the full story of all that happened after, but if you have missed it, please don’t. The story is told at “Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam.”

Having been abandoned by his parents at age two, Pornchai was hospitalized with malnutrition. His mother had left Pornchai and his brother to go to Bangkok to find work. She was a mere teenager herself at the time. Bangkok is nine hours away by car, and she did not drive. No one knows how she got there. But once there, Pornchai’s mother, Wannee, fell under the control of a most evil man, Richard Bailey, an American and former helicopter pilot in Vietnam. Bailey took Wannee to the United States in 1978.

They settled in Bailey’s home town of Bangor, Maine. Bailey knew that Wannee had two small sons living with her family in Thailand, but he had no interest in them until they were ages 11 and 13. He then sent Wannee to Thailand to retrieve them. If you have read the above article, then you already know all that happened next. Pornchai was victimized in unspeakable ways, and forced into homelessness at age 13. Living on the streets with no parental guidance or assistance, he became embroiled in a drunken struggle at age 18, and went to prison.

While awaiting trial, Pornchai’s mother came to visit him. Sent by Richard Bailey she was instructed to warn Pornchai of what would happen to her if Pornchai told the court the truth. This compelled Pornchai into silence and he refused to offer a defense. After the trial, Bailey relocated with Wannee to the U.S. territorial Island of Guam. Six years later, in 1998 Wannee gained the courage to leave Bailey and confront him with what he had inflicted on her and on Pornchai and his brother. She filed for divorce. The Guam court ordered Bailey to pay her a settlement sum of $1,000 per month and half the sale of their jointly-owned home in Guam. Wannee then returned to her family in Thailand to attempt to rebuild her life.

Pornchai was in his sixth year in prison in Maine at that time. Back in Thailand, Wannee had begun to have a home built on a small parcel of land she owned in Nong Bua Lamphu. She was counting on funds ordered by the Guam court to complete the home that she intended to live in with Pornchai upon his release from prison. In 2000, when it became clear that Bailey simply ignored the court restitution orders, Wannee returned to Guam to seek their enforcement.

But before her return, she visited Pornchai in prison. She told him that she was living back in Thailand building a home for them both, and she apologized for the years of disbelieving him when he told her the truth. She said she was on her way back to Guam to seek the funds needed to complete the home. Pornchai never saw his mother again. The 2000 Guam autopsy report concluded that she had been beaten to death. Her death remains a “cold case” homicide despite new evidence that has not been investigated by Guam authorities who to date remain silent.

The Odyssey Runs Full Circle

After applying for Pornchai’s official Thai ID in the City of Khon Kaen, Father John Le drove him another 90 minutes to Nong Bua Lamphu. The home Pornchai lived in as a small child had been destroyed and another rebuilt on the same site. Over his absence of 36 years, the village of small farms and rice paddies had grown into a more modern town. Nothing was recognizable to Pornchai, but just being there held him spellbound.

Having lost his mother to Bangkok and Richard Bailey at age two, Pornchai had also lost all memory of her. Growing up in Nong Bua Lamphu, he came to believe that his Aunt MaeSin was his mother. MaeSin was 36 years old when Pornchai was removed from her home. She is 72 today. Pornchai also has a cousin there who was 15 when he last saw her. She is 52 today. Before leaving Nontha Buri with Father John, Pornchai and he located his cousin and called to tell her he is back in Thailand and will be coming to visit. He had no idea what to expect and neither did his cousin or aunt. His family there did not know about all that had happened to Pornchai beyond the mere fact that he had been in prison in America.

Father John took a photograph of their reunion, captured below. A lifetime of loss and sorrow for both was suddenly transformed into a moment of great joy. I cannot begin to describe the cascade of emotions Pornchai experienced in this photo. I have been talking with him by phone at the end of each day, and walked with him through these overwhelming events.

But our story gets even more overwhelming. Pornchai learned that his Mother’s remains had been returned to Thailand and were interred in a nearby Buddhist Temple cemetery. Pornchai and Father John went there and Pornchai offered prayers at his Mother’s tomb and that of his grandmother, whom he remembers with great fondness and deep respect. Pornchai has allowed us to share this sacred moment.

I called Pornchai at 10:00 PM Bangkok time at the end of his first day in MaeSin’s company. She had suggested to Pornchai that he sleep in the house next door which was empty. MaeSin does not speak English and Pornchai last spoke Thai at age eleven 36 years ago. Love, even after decades, speaks its own language, but some details became lost in translation. When I called Pornchai, he was sitting in the empty house that his mother was having built. It had sat empty for 21 years since her death in Guam.

When Wannee left Thailand to visit Pornchai in prison in 2000 and return to Guam to confront Richard Bailey about the court’s terms, she had no idea that she was going to her death. The house she was building in Nong Bua Lamphu still contained all her personal belongings. When I called Pornchai late that night, he was sitting on the edge of his bed, overcome with emotion while surrounded by his Mother’s meager Earthly possessions. Her clothes were still in the closet and dresser. A photo of her with Priwan, Pornchai’s older brother, was on the nightstand. Pornchai had not yet been born.

Pornchai sobbed as he sat amid the wreckage of a life — his own as well as his Mother’s. It took me a moment to connect the dots and realize where Pornchai was. The emotional impact of it struck me like a thunderbolt. Pornchai is still processing all this. So am I. I told him that Divine Providence brought him to that house to honor his mother. And so he must.

I think a lot about Wannee. She had no one to protect her in life but there is much we can do for her in death. I believe that she is precious in the hands of God whose Providence has led us all to this moment. I remain deeply troubled by the unfinished business on the Island of Guam where authorities have been unresponsive to new evidence and our inquiries. These latest events are for me a wake-up call reminding me that the odyssey of Pornchai Moontri, though having run full circle, remains incomplete.

Father John Le left Pornchai in Nong Bua Lamphu for a week while he attended a meeting with his Order. On Sunday, March 7, Father Ben, a member of the order, was sent to pick up Pornchai at MaeSin’s home and take him to a nearby Catholic Mass, his first entirely in Thai. On March 12, Father John returned to accompany Pornchai on the nine-hour drive back to the Divine Word Mission in Nontha Buri.

As we wander among these dangling threads behind the Great Tapestry of God, please pray for Pornchai that he will be strengthened in his faith as he confronts the brokenness of his past.

As for me, I have been privileged to walk with Pornchai through the wreckage left behind by someone else. At this juncture, I can only borrow from the great Robert Frost in Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening. I cannot yet retreat from this.

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“I have promises to keep, and miles to go before I sleep.”

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Note from Father Gordon MacRae: We would be in dire straits right now without Father John Le and the Society of the Divine Word who now comprise our boots on the ground in Thailand. I am deeply moved by their amazing support of my friend at this critical time. If you wish to help, please see our “Special Events” page.

And please share this post, and these related posts referenced herein:

Free at Last Thanks to God and You!

Human Trafficking: Thailand to America and a Cold Case in Guam

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