I’m sure many of you are wondering how this all began, why now, and how this came to be.

Surprisingly, it started with a book I avoided for five months. It sat by my front door the entire time. I walked past it every day, feeling slightly guilty, until finally I packed it in my bag for a long flight to Thailand. I’m a painfully slow reader, so I figured if a 24-hour journey couldn’t make me read it, nothing would.

A few chapters in, I realized I wasn’t just reading, I was being spoken to. And just as clearly, I sensed the book wasn’t only for me. It was meant to be finished on that trip, so that I could leave it with Christina, the friend I was visiting.

The timing was uncanny.

I was on my way to see Scott and Christina in Chiang Mai, friends who had given up everything years ago to serve vulnerable women and abandoned children in Thailand. They run cafés that rescue women from sex trafficking and shelter women and children who have no place to go. Being with them was humbling in ways I can’t fully describe.

That Sunday, they insisted on taking me to church, an outdoor service of maybe fifty chairs, all in Thai. I couldn’t understand a word, so I prayed, God, speak to me anyway.

Then the signs came.

A hymnal was passed around, and at the bottom of the page, the only English phrase: “Count Your Blessings.” A bunch of teenagers led praise and worship. Then the children sang with a joy I haven’t seen in years. Only later did I realize, they were the church. These were the rescued youth. The once-forgotten was the body of this church.

Afterward, Scott introduced me to the two leaders of this group. Their names? Mary and Joseph. We laughed, knowing I’d never forget their names.

On the drive after church, I shared with Scott and Christina about a dinner I’d recently had in NJ with a few BASIC friends I hadn’t seen in nearly thirty years. Joe was visiting from Texas, so we gathered to reconnect. We reminisced about how BASIC wasn’t just a youth group, it was where many of us first saw God move for real. Where we learned to pray, to lead, to serve. Before the night ended, we half jokingly, half seriously talked about a BASIC reunion.

But as we drove through Chiang Mai, I began to tell them how the idea had started to shift in my mind. What if our reunion wasn’t for “us” at all? What if, instead of spending thousands to reminisce, we used that money to support youth here in Thailand, where the need is real? Maybe the truest reunion isn’t about nostalgia for ourselves, but about caring for our “neighbors”. This is how legacy is built, not by looking back, but by giving forward.