A Lady from Taiwan

It was about half-way through the semester.  I was teaching a class in Basic English as a Second Language, when one of my students, a woman in her 40's remained after everyone else had left.  I went over and sat in one of the student desks next to her, sensing that she was troubled and wanted to talk.  She began to tell me that some months previously, she and her two teen-aged children had arrived in this country on student visas.  She wanted to study English; her children were in a local high school.  But they had come first to the port of Houston, where she had contact with a Chinese lawyer who was helping her.  Upon her first visit to him, he took her documentation and paperwork and kept it.  Thereafter, he was blackmailing her.  If she did not pay him a fee each month, he threatened to "turn her in" to the immigration authorities for not having documentation.  Her children just loved America and its school, and she did not know what to do.  Every night, she spoke to her husband in Taiwan and cried on the phone in desperation.

"Have you prayed for help?" I asked her.  "I pray and pray to your Jesus," she answered me, "but He not helping me!"  "Well," I said, "maybe He is, after all.  I have a good friend who is a Christian lawyer, and he may be able to advise you."  I put her in touch with Jack, whom I had known for years, and whom I could trust.  She was so grateful to me that she wanted to come to my church.  I did invite her to Mass, but the Catholic ritual confused her, and she understood almost nothing of the sermon either.  So I told her about a Bible study I was teaching on Thursday night. 

Anh cleaned houses on Thursday nights to pay the blackmail fee, but nevertheless, the next Thursday, she arrived in Kenner all the way from New Orleans East, where she lived.  However, since she had cleaned a house before coming, she arrived at 9:00, just as we were all leaving.  I could not allow her to turn around and return home after that long trip, so I said, "Come on; we'll do something very short." 

I opened my Bible to Genesis, Chapter 1, and we read about Creation.  Then I went to the first chapter of John, where we read about the Light of the World, Who gives to all who receive Him the power to become children of God.  "How can I receive this Jesus?" she wanted to know.  "You just ask Him to come to your heart," I told her.  "No, I cannot," she answered me; "I have too much crime in me."  I was awed at her response, remembering that St. Peter had said to Jesus, "Depart from me, Lord, for I am a sinful man."

"The reason He came," I told her, "was to remove the crime from our hearts."  "Oh," she said with a great deal of relief.  Then she knelt on the floor, and we asked Jesus to come into her heart.  Suddenly this lady from Taiwan jumped to her feet:  "I know the REAL GOD!" she said.  "All these years, I have gone to Buddhist temples and lit hundreds of candles.  How could I not know that Buddha was not the REAL God?  Now I know the REAL GOD!"  The excitement, the joy, the shouting coming from this shy, somewhat withdrawn, woman was a moment none of us could ever forget.  The fire of Pentecost had arrived in our midst. 

I thought to myself on the way home that night, that if this is what it felt like to be a missionary, I wanted to be one!   But that was not the end of the story.  She went home and called her husband in Taiwan.  "What happened to you?" he wanted to know.  "Before, you always cry and cry on the phone, and now you are happy!"  "Tonight, I met Jesus Christ!" she told him.  The next day, he went out and bought a Bible and began reading it.  Then she told her children that she now knew the REAL GOD, and the three of them began studying the Bible at home.  Eventually, her teen-aged son began a Bible study at his public school in Metairie.

In the Acts of the Apostles, Luke tells us the story of Cornelius, the Roman Centurian, who sent for the Apostle Peter at the direction of an angel.  As Peter began telling the Roman household about Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit descended upon all in the house, and they began speaking in tongues.  I believe I witnessed the same phenomenon that evening.  This lady from Taiwan instantly knew what no one had ever taught her; she knew the REAL GOD.

Over the years, I have lost touch with my former student, but I often wonder about 'the rest of the story,' as Paul Harvey used to say.  I was so blessed to have seen and heard what God did for this child of His, and I have often wished I could replicate the experience for others -- but, as Jesus said, the Gift of the Holy Spirit is the "Gift of the Father," and we do not know where it comes from or where it will go.