At the age of 16, Jantana was a very attractive girl. So much so that a young man persuaded her to leave her home and live with him.
All went well until Jantana became pregnant. When she refused to have an abortion, her boyfriend left her. Totally heartbroken, she wept herself to sleep that night.
As she slept she had a dream about her grandmother who had hung herself a few years before. In the dream, Jantana's grandmother called out to her saying, "Come to me. You will be much happier. Come to me."
Believing that her dead grandmother was correct, Jantana tried to commit suicide. Fortunately she was found by her neighbors and taken to the hospital in time to save her.
She awakened in the hospital to find that the surgeons had removed a part of her throat which had been crushed in her attempted suicide. One day as she lay in the hospital in deep despair, she heard a radio program that mentioned Asia's Little Ones.
Being attracted to what she was hearing, she wrote a letter asking for help. A few weeks later, I received that letter. After reading it, my wife Margaret and I set off to find Jantana.
Now 17, Jantana was living with her father in a tin shack on the edge of Phuket City. Eight months pregnant, she was walking the streets trying to sell turnips.
Jantana's eyes filled with tears when we told her who we were, and that we had come to help her. It was her first encounter with unconditional love ... the love of Christ.
Jantana accepted Christ as her Savior, and one month later we went with her to the hospital as she gave birth to a wonderful baby boy. She named him Neung, which means Number One.
Though Jantana had been healed spiritually, she still had major physical problems because of the damage to her throat. The doctors said that she would never talk again and that her throat was irreparable. They said that she could have a lengthy operation which might mean that the hole in her throat would heal, but that would mean a week's stay in the hospital in Hatyai, a day's journey from Phuket. However, because there was some hope, she decided to have the surgery.
The Sunday morning before her operation, Jantana came to the front of the church for prayer. We prayed in faith, believing that God could do what the surgeon could not.
We were all amazed when she walked into the church the next Tuesday with nothing but a bandaid over her throat! Full of praises to God she told us that she was in the hospital for only 30 minutes! The doctor told her there was nothing to be done. Miraculously, her throat had healed itself.
Of course, we knew something that the doctor didn't, and on top of that, Jantana could talk -- something the doctors had said could not happen even with a successful operation.
Visitors to Phuket Christian Center might be surprised to find a pretty young woman of 19 shouting, "Neung! Neung!" as she looks for her 16-month-old bundle of energy, but no one here minds. For they see a woman who shouldn't be able to speak looking for her son who might never have been born -- all because of the love of Jesus Christ and a radio program about an Asia's Little Ones outreach that ministers to the needs of children and young people in the slums of Phuket.
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