Scars into Stars - Testimony

This is a powerful story of how God touched a couple, in separate incidents turning their scars into stars!

Kafa and Yasmin

The Bible on the Table 

It was a cold wet evening in Katmandu and I went back to our hotel.  I and my husband Kafa were newly married, and had come to Katmandu for a holiday.  I shivered hugging my warm coat around me as I made my way back to the hotel room.  Away from the maddening crowd, I sat on the white sheet on the bed, and gazed down on the red rug in the floor feeling listless in the damp weather.

Though born Christian from a family line, my great grandfather was a Brahmin priest from my father's side, who turned to Christ dramatically and also our ancestry came  from the Mughals as well as Rajput Punjabi from my mother's side!  We were such a mix!   Down the line, many ancestors accepted Christ as their Savior.  In my belief system, Jesus was there somewhere in the sky.  I did not think too much of religion.  I was socially active, people friendly and enjoyed life in its bubbly dimensions.  I was newly married to a Chinese Buddhist.  We had a beautiful baby boy.  We had come for a holiday to Katmandu, enjoying the different famous spots and also at that time, the city was dotted with hundreds of Hindu temples flooded with monkeys, whose presence was a signature of blessing from Hanuman.  The foreigners were drawn from the four corners of the earth attracted to the Hare Krishna movement in India and now its nucleus gravitated to Nepal.

That evening, I noticed a little black book placed on the  glistening wooden bedside table.  I opened it curiously to find it was a Bible, a Gideon's Bible.  I idly flipped the pages and randomly opened it to the book of Isaiah.  The words seemed to jump out from the page Isaiah 54:   Sing, barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the Lord.“Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide,do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes.… And it is I who have created the destroyer to wreak havoc; no weapon forged against you will prevail, and you will refute every tongue that accuses you.  This is the heritage of the servants of the Lord, and this is their vindication from me,” declares the Lord.

I felt as if God was speaking to me for the first time and the words of the entire chapter burned strangely and warmly in my heart and the Bible was a talking Book and I felt alive, "Why!" I exclaimed to myself, "God is speaking to me!" I did not understand what they really meant though, and it was a strange experience.

Busy Years

As the years rolled by, that little incident in the hotel room was forgotten by me.  Life was busy with my 3 boys by now, and my husband and I also lived in a joined Chinese family at that time in  Kolkota, in the area called Tangra, where leather was made and exported and also Tangra was a delicacy joint for the most exotic Chinese food in India.

Then, again, God was trying to get my attention again.  A series of difficult events led me to start thinking of God and praying more to Him.  A kind Christian lady I met gently told me, "Yasmin, you need Jesus in your life, He is the only way, and as the lady started talking about Christ and I was really ready for Jesus in my life.  It was a dynamite experience for me, I felt Jesus touch on my soul and His reality impacted my life a fireball.  I immediately felt a new person, and made some huge lifestyle changes.  People could not believe I was the same person as I went out all the way to follow Him.  I started reading my Bible faithfully, praying all the time, and started attending a Bible fellowship faithfully.

My husband watched with disbelief and a bit of mockery.  He said, "What are you doing reading your Bible all the time, who do you think you are, acting like a saint!"  At that time, Kafa was into social drinking with his friends and it was a difficult season for the family.

Kafa, my husband could not really come in terms with what was happening with me.  He thought I was going through some phase of emotionalism, he was not used to seeing me being "religious" because I did not seem to think so much beyond the silver skies before that.  Kafa's parents especially his mother was a devout Chinese Buddhist and many family members fervently burned their incense, droned chants and muttered prayers.  On Chinese New Year, there was a big party bash every year where a great party was thrown with exotic food.  At midnight, Chinese would gather on the terraces where the Chinese made paper houses for their dead ancestors and dead relatives.  These paper white houses stood still and eerily white in the cold moonlight in their terraces.  Worship of the dead spirits was very prevalent in Buddhism; some of the worshipers even had the power to conjure up these spirits, asking them questions.  Some people even indulged in putting curses on others.  Kafa was a passive spectator to all this.  Religion was something strange and elusive like a slipping shadow that could not really be caught with no reality or truth and nothing really to get out of.  He did not really involve himself with the acts of worship.

Later, after 8 years of marriage, Kafa, me and our three sons moved to a tannery close to his family's tannery.  

One Stormy Night

One day my eldest son, Shan, around 13 got a terrible stomach pain, we rushed him to the hospital in time to save him from a ruptured appendix.  While he was recuperating in the house, we had an urgent call and needed to go out.  Fortunately, someone was at home, so we left the elder son and took the 2 other sons, Chun and Khat out to finish that business.  As we started to drive out in our green Maruti car, it started to rain heavily in Kolkota.  Our driver, who was driving the car drove cautiously through the flooding waters as the rain poured down heavily, thunder crashed and lightening flashed, the city of Joy as it was known, got hit with one of the worst floods of Kolkota and we were caught in it.  In the meantime, unknown to us, in our house, water seeped in our house as at that time, the ground level had not been raised around the tannery, so black rain water started seeping into the tannery.  The domestic helpers who stayed around the tannery started to help to pour out the water from the house.

In the meantime, as Kafa, me and 2 other children with the driver drove through the heavy rain, the night turned to midnight as we could only drive slowly in the rain.  I had my youngest son, Chun on my lap.  He was 8 years at that time.  My middle son, Khat Sen was sitting in the back.  Suddenly, a truck came out of nowhere in the rain and banged the car badly.  Before we could do anything, the truck drove away hurriedly.  In the meantime, Chun, sitting on my lap got a heavy jolt and hit himself on the windshield of the car.  He started crying badly and saying, "my stomach, my stomach."  On examining him, he looked fine.  "Let's go home." said Kafa.  But I had an instinct said not to go, "no, let's go to the hospital." I said.   "Impossible" retorted Kafa, "cannot go in such heavy rain and no one will be there now, no doctors."  At that time, it was around 1:00 a.m. in the night, an unearthly hour to expect doctors in Kolkota to be on duty.  But we finally managed to make it to the hospital.  Like Kafa said, no doctor was available.  Also, no doctor would have ventured out in the terrible floods of Kolkota!  A medical staff managed to call a surgeon from Assemblies of God Hospital, a Dr. Mukherjee.  He picked up the phone and when we told him the case, he felt something was wrong, he also had a feeling like he never had before, he felt he needed to come out in the floods and see the boy.  It was a strange phenomena.  He was a Hindu doctor and God was speaking and prompting him to come out, something no one would have done.  Every one in his house thought his senses had left him as he made his way out to his car.  By 3:00 a.m., he was checking Chun and felt again very strongly he should perform a surgery as there were no radiologists around to take a scan of his stomach.  He did rightly so, as he discovered Chun's liver was ruptured.  He did the repairs of the liver and transferred him to a hospital bed.  It was a very delicate situation, he was in tremendous pain and he needed 24-hour care.  His older brother was at home, recovering from an appendix operation.

A Testing Time

We rounded the clock to look after both my sons.  In the meantime, as Chun seemed to recover, one day he started crying heavily again.  He was in intense pain.  On scan, it was found that he had a volvulus in his stomach.  It was inevitable that surgery had to be done again to untwist the segment of bowel and possibly re-sect any unsalvageable portion.  Everyone in the family went through the mental agony of helplessly watching him in such agony.  We were besides ourselves in fear.  I was constantly praying beside him.  Slowly, he recovered.  All seemed to be going well, but then again, for the third time, he got that pain and again surgery was inevitable.  It was a stomach volvulus again.  This was too much for everyone.  How could he go through this again.  The child in pain would scream for injections to be given.  At first he was calling me in his pain, later, he called out to God.  God was the ultimate One to call to in that situation.  The preachers and pastors of Assemblies of God came to the hospital also and prayed for Chun. Mrs. Buntain came often and prayed.

Spiritual Encounter
Kafa could not bear it.  He started quietly slipping in the Assemblies of God on Sunday mornings.  I had no idea he was going there!  He felt peaceful going there.  One Sunday evening as the Assemblies of God had their evening service, the preacher, Pastor David Grant from America, was giving an alter call, Kafa, a Buddhist, felt as if a magnet was drawing him to the alter.  He said in his own words, "I felt a magnet pulling me to the altar!"  He went forward and surrendered his life to Jesus.  As Kafa knelt at the alter and surrendered his life to Christ, Chun Sen back in the hospital was healed instantly!  Mrs. Buntain at the same time went running up to Chun's room at the same time.  It was an amazing miracle!  One morning after his recovery, Chun Sen recounted a dream.  He saw little devils throwing stones at him, and then he saw angels coming to protect and cover him.  He never got that attack again.  The home was surrounded with prayer and angels.

A miraculous change in Kafa was noticed by his leather business partners.  He stopped all his social drinking with them.  His friends would jeer him, "Come Kafa, we will take you back to the devil, join us for a drink," but he firmly refused.  He had found a Gideon's bible in the house and started voraciously reading it.  He previously only read newspapers and comics, having no patience for books, but now was hungrily reading the Bible cover to cover.  It was as if the Spirit was illumining its truths to his heart.  One night, the Ghissing family, Colonel Ghissing and his wife called the family for dinner.  Though the food was continental and Kafa actually hated continental food, he later said it was the best food he had ever had in his life.  It was as if a spiritual blessing was on that evening as (late) Bulu Ghissing, Colonel's sister-in-law was praying for Kafa and as she was praying, he started weeping. He was not a man to weep before others, especially as Chinese do not easily show emotions before people, but clearly, the Spirit was God was touching and working in his life deeply.

God's Touch

Our whole family started attending Assemblies of God Church.  We got fully immersed in church attendance and activities.  Over the years, we would hold prayer meetings in their home and even all night prayer times.  Our home was always an open home for all people.  Many people would come over and even it a place of shelter if they were going through personal problems.  We started getting involved in distributing Gideons' Bibles and even storing the Bibles in our home for distribution.  There was a little village beyond our home.  We would go with a group of other people from the church and share Bible stories and the gospel with the little village children.

The Call

The time came when doors opened in a new way.  It was at that time, that God seemed to be opening the door of the children's ministry.  At that point, I lost all interest in business ventures.  We were exporting leather to Russia and other parts but I desired more and more to do something with children.  The verse that I got when I was newly married in the Katmandu hotel came back to me clearly now. The words from the Bible:  came back in a fresh wave of awakening to a God's beckoning, He was calling me.  I felt the Lord was opening the way for the children's ministry.  Some children were scarred from a previous life of neglect or abuse, and we felt a promise that God was opening a new way to start a work with unwanted children.

Like the promise of Abraham, whom God showed the myriad of stars in the heavens, we felt that those stars symbolize children, and God would turn those scars to stars, and they would be like stars for God.  We also experienced that when God touches a person's life, that life is precious like a promise a star before the Heavens.  We started opening our home to shelter to these unwanted children, mostly at that time from Nepal.  Many of the children's guardians or others would have thrown them to an outside world of prostitution or child labor to cruel masters.  We called this ministry Stars Welfare Society.

We now have classrooms and class teachers came to teach the smaller children. The children of the shelter home are taught the Bible.  We also have a free day school for the very poor children and around 140 children come for school in the day.  They are given snacks and lunch, taught all subjects as well as learn extracurricular activities such as singing, dancing, and sewing.  The children from the day school are poor children who live in nearby.  They have regular classes with teachers coming to teach, the children are taught sewing.

We live by faith day to day, mostly.  Though there are no steady funds, we have never seen a day hungry and God is faithful to provide each month.

In all this, we have learned that God can turn scars into stars and our own lives shine in the darkness, turning our own scars into stars that shine in the darkness dispelling evil and destruction.  When we trust and love God, we have no idea where He will take us or what He will do, but it will definitely be very wonderful and you will never be disappointed!

Yasmin Chung

About Yasmin and Kafa Chung:  As they pray much and trust God, God is faithful to give them the grace and strength for what they do.  They have opened their home to accommodate children who would otherwise be on the streets or victims of some other evil.  They also are running a free day school with a help of trained teachers.  Children from outside as well attend this free school, and are well educated.  The power of God's touch can transforms lives and turn scars into stars.

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Only God is the true  converter of a human soul.  No human can convert anyone.  It is God's Spirit to a human's spirit that converts.