Tonight, my pastor shared a testimony from our sister church in Bangkok. My 23-year-old cousin had an incredible experience with God. Before I share her story, I want to relate something about my father's family in Thailand. The entire thing may take several posts, but it all ties back. Overall, it's a wonderful story of God's love for my family. As much as I would like to finish in one post, I want to do this story justice (and also have to worry about classwork). So please bear with me.
My grandfather and grandmother were immigrants to Thailand from China and first settled in the small seaside province of Chantaburi. They had four children, the youngest of which was my father. Unfortunately, my grandfather died just months before my father was born. Because my grandmother was poor, she gave my father away to a kindly man who was also an immigrant from the same Chinese province, who was visiting a relative in the hospital where my grandfather died. This man (whose surname I use today) raised my father as his own. As a teenager, my father discovered he was adopted. According to him, what tipped him off was some friends insisting he looked exactly like someone else (who turned out to be his oldest brother, my uncle). This added to other angst in his life, and he decided to escape his problems and past by coming to America. At that time, it was possible for him to come on a student visa and earn a Green Card by working as a welder.
Twenty years later, having established a family and a successful business, my father still felt the gnaw of his unresolved past. In 1986, he made a trip back to Bangkok, visiting again the tips he left cold 20 years earlier, and found his mother.
To be continued in a couple days ...
2 comments:
Wow!!! What a marvellous beginning to a story. This is fascinating.
Incidentally, my ex-hubby's sister and husband were missionaries in Thailand (near Bangkok) for years. And his parents were missionaries in China. He remembers being a little boy and getting smuggled out of the country in order to save his life. They smuggled the entire family out in barrels of food, among an entire shipment of food. He smelled like fish for days.
thanks, saur. i really thank God for american missionaries who dedicated at least part of their lives to work overseas. if they can just touch a few lives with the love of God, that investment will bear tremendous fruit. my own current pastor here in seattle owes a great debt to baptist missionaries. and sense my own father was saved by him, i guess i owe them something as well!
also, part of the reason i'd like to share part of my family history here is because i'm afraid it might get muddled or lost one day. i'm counting on the unforgettable web to keep the story for future generations!
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