A different path in Thailand

Editor's note: The following text is a transcript of a podcast story. To listen to the story, click on the arrow beneath the headline above.

MYRNA BROWN, HOST: Today is Tuesday, March 10th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Myrna Brown.

MARY REICHARD, HOST: And I’m Mary Reichard.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: becoming a Christian in a Buddhist country.

Thailand’s population sits at just over 70 million people. And fewer than 1% are evangelical Christians.

WORLD associate correspondent Abby Young spoke with one Thai woman about her path to Christianity and the challenges she’s faced. We’ve chosen to use a pseudonym for her protection.

ABBY YOUNG: As a young girl, Ploy felt alone and afraid in her bed at night. She would cry and pray to whoever out there was listening.

PLOY: And I pray to the holy things that I want to go to the heaven.

AUDIO: [Thai music]

Ploy is from northern Thailand and grew up in a Buddhist family.

AUDIO: [Bells chiming at a Buddhist temple]

She went to temples and prayed to golden statues of Buddha. Buddhists believe that to get good things in the next life, they must earn merit by doing good deeds.

For Ploy, that never made much sense. There was no way to know if she’d ever earned enough. She wasn’t a well-behaved child, and figured no amount of merit would save her.

PLOY: Some night I cry a lot and I don’t want to die, because I think after I die, I will go to the hell for sure.

Most Thai people live their entire lives as Buddhists. There are temples on every corner. Homes and businesses display spirit houses for offerings to guardian spirits.

TAYLOR: They say to be Thai is to be Buddhist, and to be Buddhist is to be Thai.

Lori Taylor also grew up in northern Thailand.

TAYLOR: So just the spiritual reality of like, wow, this is really sad that 95% of the country is praying to spirits and just praying they have a peaceful life and not really living in hope, but more of living in fear.

Taylor and her husband now serve as missionaries on a college campus there.

TAYLOR: We work on the college campus because we believe that the future is the college students. Those are going to be the next leaders of the country of Thailand.

When Ploy was a freshman in college in 2006, she heard the gospel from a similar campus ministry worker. 

Ploy said it was easy for her to understand that humans are sinful, but she couldn’t fathom that God loved her until she heard about Jesus.

PLOY: Jesus died on the cross for us and he is the real man. He came to the earth 2,000 years ago. Yeah, it’s the real man. It’s not the story, it’s the history.

When Ploy heard the gospel, she realized what she had never believed about a life of earning merit. Faith-based salvation was the missing piece. She became a Christian that day, and her whole life changed. People who knew her before told Ploy she became kinder and gentler.

But her parents weren’t happy. They urged her not to go to church or join the campus ministry, but she didn’t listen. Soon, they stopped paying her tuition.

PLOY: And my mentor encouraged me to follow Christ. She said that if you think the God is true, please continue to follow Christ.

Ploy said it was difficult, but she prayed God would work in her parents’ hearts.

Although it’s legal to evangelize and be Christian, converts can pay a heavy social price. Friends and family may disown them, and parents sometimes kick their kids out of the house.

Ploy said the gospel arrived in Thailand over 200 years ago. But according to the evangelism-tracking organization the Joshua Project, there aren’t enough Christians in Thailand to reach all the others without outside help.

Without the gospel, most Thai people will continue making merit and praying to Buddha, hoping to live good enough lives.

TAYLOR: Thais live in fear as Buddhists, but you share with them that Jesus… they don’t have to like, do anything, and they don’t have to live in fear and it’s not by works, that Jesus did it all. And many times they’re just like, kind of just in awe of this hope they could have in somebody.

Though there are few Thai Christians, Ploy and Taylor both hope to see Thailand go from receiving missionaries to sending them.

After Ploy graduated college, she joined staff with a campus ministry. Today, she continues to meet with students to share the gospel, the way a staff member did for her, and leads worship at weekly events.

Here’s Taylor again:

TAYLOR: The spiritual reality of Thailand as the Buddhist Mecca of the world is just really cool to think about how reach Thailand and the world will be reached, because Thailand will go to the rest of the world.

Taylor says Thai Christians can do substantial work, including outside the country. Thai missionaries can travel to places missionaries from the west can’t.

Ploy is passionate about missions to closed countries too, which means she must be careful to keep her religion off the radar of hostile governments. 

She recently went with a group of college-aged Thai Christians to a closed country, where they shared the gospel with people who may have never heard it otherwise.

PLOY: And when we share the gospel to them, they... Oh, it’s the first time that they heard about the gospel.

AUDIO: [Ploy leading worship]

Five years after becoming a Christian, Ploy visited home for Mothers Day. She followed her parents around town, praying for them constantly. 

That evening, she shared the gospel.

PLOY: And after that, God give me a special gift. They become a Christian.

Ploy’s parents told her that seeing how her life changed when she began to follow God helped them accept the faith.

It brought Ploy back to those moments when she was a little girl, alone and afraid.

PLOY: And remind me, when I think about when I was young that I pray to the holy things that I want my parents to go to the heaven.

That night, over a decade after she first prayed for her parents, God answered her prayer with a yes.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Abby Young in northern Thailand.

WORLD Radio transcripts are created on a rush deadline. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of WORLD Radio programming is the audio record.