“I want to get baptized!” he said excitedly.

“You want to get baptized?” I responded, not sure if I’d heard right.

“Yes,” he said.

I glanced at my wife to get her reaction and noticed she had tears in her eyes. Just to remove any doubt, I turned back to him. “You want to become a follower of Jesus?”

“Yes, I want to become a Christian,” he said.

We were talking with our friend, Hong Kry, a young man we had met outside our language school a couple of weeks after we arrived in Cambodia. Hong Kry comes from Preah Vihear province in north-central Cambodia. About three years ago, he left his family village and moved to Phnom Penh hoping to get an education. To survive in the city, Hong Kry soon found a room at one of the many wats (Buddhist temple-monasteries) that pepper the city. In exchange for room and board, Hong Kry helps the monks care for the wat. Our paths crossed at his high school where our language school rents a room.
We had been praying for several months that God would lead us to people who would be open to the gospel. We had anticipated these would be language helpers or teachers, not a high-school student in a group of curious onlookers laughing at us as we tried to wrap our tongues around Khmae words. We became acquainted with a couple of Hong Kry’s friends who then introduced us to him.

One of the first things that impressed us about Hong Kry was his respectful demeanor. After getting acquainted with him, we discovered he wanted to learn English. We felt impressed that God had drawn us together, so we offered to help him attend an English-language class taught by an Adventist friend of ours, hoping this might open up opportunities for him to hear the gospel.

At times, I wondered if our investment in Hong Kry would pay off. Because the English class was several kilometers from where he was staying, he soon began to arrive late for class, and his test scores plummeted. But God impressed us to not give up on Hong Kry. After all, our goal was not just to help him learn English but to lead him to Christ.

Other things also gave us cause for concern. When Hong Kry began attending church and studying scripture with a Bible worker, the monks at the wat became angry. After Hong Kry told me about the opposition he was facing at the wat, he called me to say he wouldn’t be attending church the following Sabbath because the monks had told him they needed his help at the wat. Not long after that, he stopped meeting with the Bible worker. It seemed that he was buckling under the pressure.

God impressed us to continue praying for Hong Kry, and soon our eyes were opened to how the Holy Spirit was working in his heart. For instance, one day while I was visiting him at the wat, he told me that we were like God to him. I told him that God had helped us, and now He wanted us to help Hong Kry and others in return. On another occasion, as I was driving him back to the wat, he told me he wanted to pray for Molly, who was sick at the time. We stopped and bowed our heads, and he prayed a simple, heartfelt prayer to Jesus to heal her.

Hong Kry continued to come to church and mentioned several times that he enjoyed learning about God there. One Sabbath, he said, “I like what the teacher taught us today.” The sermon had revolved around man’s need of a new heart and the truth that if a man’s heart is good, his actions will be good.

“Yes,” I agreed. “We need God to give us a new heart.”

One Friday night, we invited Hong Kry to come and stay with us at the village. As we sat in our living room, our conversation turned to some spiritual questions he had. We talked about man’s fall into disobedience and God’s plan to redeem us through Jesus. We talked about the different religions and what was unique about Christianity. As the night wore on, the village generator shut down and left us sitting in darkness. Over the light of a candle, Hong Kry confided, “There is no love at the wat. I ask myself ‘Why?’ My friends at school don’t like me anymore because I am studying the Bible. I want them to understand about the Bible, but they won’t listen. They think I have gone crazy. I used to think just like them. I have studied the teachings of Buddhism for a long time. I used to think like my friends about Christians and the Bible, but now it is different. If only they would read the Bible, they would know, too! But now some of them even say they hate me.”
We shared with Hong Kry that this response was not unusual. Many people in the Bible also encountered opposition when they chose to follow God. But God was faithful and would help him.

Finally, our conversation came to an end, and we bowed in prayer. As the prayer ended and we lifted up our eyes to the flickering of the candle, Molly and I knew that another flame had begun to burn—a flame of light and love that God had lit in Hong Kry’s heart; a flame that He would use to bring light to other dark hearts here in Cambodia.

Yesterday, Hong Kry sealed his decision to follow Christ through baptism. We praise God for this precious soul. We also praise God for the change He can bring to each of our hearts. It truly is the difference between night and day.

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