Back from LittWorld, Media Associate’s International’s triannual conference, there is much to think about. But the last breakfast keeps me hungry for more.

I’m thinking about Byato. He had sat in front of me in a workshop on publishing books, but we hadn’t spoken until that last morning breakfast. He pulled out a chair at the same table where Lorraine and I were sitting.

He described Mongolia, his homeland, as a culturally Buddhist country. He didn’t grow up knowing much about religion. Mostly what he knew was terror at home. His dad had been abusive, so much so that he and his brothers plotted to kill him. He didn’t go into detail except to say that the plot did not work out. All it did was end his childhood. I could hear the regret.

As a young adult, he fell into bad habits. His mother suffered. Already living with the difficulties of her husband, she was now seeing her beloved son make bad choices.

He saw this, too. Byato tried to stop them to ease her pain. He described trying to wash the smell of tobacco out of his clothes without much success and the subsequent pain of not being able to either stop or successfully hide his habit from his mom, which he knew caused her pain. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t stop all the bad habits. He could not get the smell out of his clothes.

When he went into a church for the first time, he heard people singing as he approached. It drew him in. The people were singing about the cleansing power of Jesus’ blood, how it could make a person truly clean. It wasn’t just the smell of tobacco on the surface of his clothes, but the utter failure in his soul that they were singing about—cleansing from the inside out. Somehow, by the Holy Spirit, he knew it was true and, in that truth, change and life came to him. We talked more about his work as a Christian broadcaster.

Then breakfast was over. Time to go our separate ways. There was so much more I wanted to know.

Every year, I tell the story of Hudson Taylor to the Kindergarteners--a similar story of faith in curriculum I inherited from Linda Murphy. Mr Ni was an idol worshipper. Yet he never could get over his sense of sin. One night he heard a bell ringing, and he followed the sound and found people in front of a building. It was Hudson’s home.

One of the people told him that a man was in the building who would tell them about God. Curious, Mr. Ni went in and sat down. Hudson told of Jesus and the forgiveness of sins. Mr. Ni raised his hand and stood up in the middle of the message. Hudson shared more and Mr. Ni believed.

A few days later Mr. Ni asked Hudson how long it had been since they had first heard about Jesus in his home country. Thinking he would hear 20 or 30 years, Mr. Ni was shocked when Hudson told him that it had been hundreds of years.

Mr. Ni thought of his father, who had died never hearing about Jesus. “Why did it take you so long?” he asked.

In his good and loving sovereignty, God directs our paths. Working now on our Cream of Wheaton display, I’m praying for opportunities this summer, that we might have the courage to sing the song and ring the bell.