One of the new responsibilities that LaMon and I have is to be the advisors forthe second year Seminary students. We thus decided that we needed to meet with each of the 20 students to access how they are doing in this new school year.

His name is Chai and he is a smiling seemingly happy young man from the Lahu tribe of Northern Thailand. He came to the seminary last year as a freshman. Both LaMon and I have taught him in several classes and he never fails to smile and make others around him happy by clowning around and telling jokes. He is very talented and enjoys singing, playing the piano and the guitar and in fact often leads music for the morning devotions. As we began to question him about how his life is going and if he has any problems that he shared the following story with us:

He was finishing up his high school years, was in fact around 18 years old when a special opportunity came his way, at least he thought it was special. He knew he wanted to study in a university but he comes from a poor family and there was no money for him to study. A very influential person came to his village and offered for him and some of his friends to come and live with him and he would adopt them and pay for their college education. So Chai happily moved into the house with this man and agreed to the legal adoption. After only a few weeks the man decided that he needed to purchase life insurance policies for each of the boys and proceeded to buy policies of 50,000 bhat (about $2,000) for each of them. Not long after the man bought the policies he told Chai that he needed to go and visit his parents in the mountains. It was late at night, around 9 p.m. and this man sent Chai off on his motorbike. As Chai began to climb the mountain he saw a man walking. The man stopped Chai and asked him to take him up to a village close by. As they the mountain began to get steeper and the motorbike was going slower the man told Chai that he had dropped his wallet and needed to get it. Chai stopped the motorbike and waited for the man. Unbeknownst to Chai the man had previously hidden a large stick, the man then picked up the stick and beat Chai over the head, knocking him down. The man then picked up a large rock and began dropping it on Chai's head. He then took liquor and poured into Chai's mouth. The man's intent was to kill Chai. However, Chai survived. He was in a coma for a while, lost a year of his studies and had memory loss for 4-5 months. Chai knows that the plan was to kill him so that the man who had adopted him could collect the insurance and then the same thing would happen to his friends.

Chai praises God for his survival. He also points to this incident and says that he knows God has called him to help his people. Many young people would become bitter, suspicious and even withdrawn after such an experience. But not Chai. His life is a beacon of God's love.

We would ask you to not only pray for Chai as he prepares himself to become a future leader in the church in Thailand but to pray for the many, many desperate young tribal people who want to improve themselves and can find no hope in the world around them. Pray for all of the missionaries as we strive to point them to the ONE TRUE HOPE, the saving knowledge of Jesus Christ.

Pat Brown