Snapshots of Compassion: Thailand

Airline Flight Attendant: Ladies and gentlemen, the cabin crew will start doing passenger head count. 

Nora Duncan: I was on an airplane flying over Bangkok with the team from Revive Our Hearts.

Airline Flight Attendant: Please remain in your seat. 

Nora: We were excited, but extremely tired! We had started our journey in Chicago, and then we flew over the Arctic Circle, over Russia, over China, we had a brief layover in South Korea . . . and finally we were about to reach our destination in Thailand! 

(In case you’re wondering, this was five months before COVID-19 and the travel bans.) We descended into Bangkok and saw the huge city spread out all around. We were about to see some heartbreaking situations firsthand. But we were also going to discover that this was a place of hope!

We came hoping to show compassion to those who needed it, but in many ways, we’d be reminded of God’s compassion shown toward us.

Dannah Gresh: This is Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth, co-author of Seeking Him, for Friday, February 12, 2021. I’m Dannah Gresh.

Psalm 37:4 reads: “Delight yourself in the Lord, and he will give you the desires of your heart.”

Nancy, probably not that many people know this about you, but the Lord put a unique desire on your heart as a young woman.

Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth: He really did, Dannah. As we have talked over the years, He put a similar desire in your heart. To me, there was this sense of burden to be involved in sharing the gospel with the nations of the earth.

Now, humanly speaking, I was just a teen at the time, and there was no way this was possible. How could I be involved in sharing the gospel with the nations of the earth?

But that verse says if we delight ourselves in the Lord, He will give us right desires and He will fulfill and bring to pass those desires.

Fast-forward. By God’s grace, He provided a ministry, Revive Our Hearts, and a team committed with me to spreading the gospel, and tools—the existence of the internet and online resources that I could never have dreamed of when I was in my teens.

We’ve been talking this week about some of the ways that God has been fulfilling those desires that you and I have shared for decades to minister to women in the nations of the world.

We’re going to continue today focusing on how God is using a partner ministry, Compassionate Hope Foundation, in the country of Thailand.

This ministry is the fruit of a burden God put on the hearts of my friends, Al and Susan Henson. I first met this couple when Al was pastoring in the Nashville area. During that season, their church began ministering to refugees who had escaped persecution and had settled in Nashville.

That experience gave Al and Susan a love for Asia, and eventually, a vision to establish homes for children who were at risk for human trafficking.

If you’ve supported Revive Our Hearts through your prayers or your finances, you have also helped provide homes for the “least of these.” Revive Our Hearts has supported Compassionate Hope as you have supported us.

Before last year’s pandemic, a team from Revive Our Hearts travelled to Thailand. They visited some of the Homes of Hope that had been started by Al and Susan’s ministry, Compassionate Hope. We wanted to tell some stories of what God is doing there.

Nora Duncan, who is a college student and her dad has served for many years on the staff at Revive Our Hearts, was part of the media team on that trip. Today, she is going to guide us on a journey through Thailand. It is a journey that I hope will help your heart for the world to grow.

Now, here’s Nora.

Nora: A man met us at the airport. He looked like he could be your grandfather. He had a kind smile and very friendly eyes. He nav igated the airports, negotiated with the taxi driver, and helped us get where we needed to go. 

We started driving through the downtown streets of Bangkok. We saw the crowded neighborhoods, the palm trees, the street food stands, shacks made of corrugated metal, and high rises. Every few blocks, tall golden structures would tower over everything else. Those were the Buddhist temples.

I thought the man who picked us up at the airport might just be someone volunteering to help out, someone to help us get around this country that was strange to us. But as we started traveling down the streets, the grandfatherly man started sharing amazing biblical wisdom. It was something he would end up doing pretty much nonstop the entire duration of our trip! 

Grandfatherly host, Pastor Al Henson: Sometimes I say to people, “You just met the richest man in the world!” God has made me rich in what matters. I’m rich in God’s love, mercy, rich in grace, and I’m rich in the opportunity that God has given me to serve the least of these.

Nora: It turned out this volunteer picking us up from the airport was Pastor Al Henson, the founder of Compassionate Hope Foundation.

Pastor Al: People ask me, “Don’t you get tired in the work?” 

I say, “Some, but not a lot, because it’s really not work to me. It’s my life.”

Nora: As we drove, Al started to explain some of the problems here in the country.

Pastor Al: It’s very difficult to understand as an American the extreme pressure that is upon a child—especially the female—to be responsible to take care of her family.

Nora: Children are expected to provide financially for their parents.

Pastor Al: When a child is born, they’re born for the family, for the village, for the temple.

Nora: Many children end up going to work in factories when they’re only twelve or thirteen. They might be forced to work long hours or in dangerous conditions, even as children. Many children even leave their homes because they’ve been promised a factory job, but instead, they’re forced into prostitution.

Pastor Al: You would be surprised that often these girls return home for a festival or a Buddhist festival, and they’re literally celebrated and nobody just ever says anything about what’s going on in their life. They feel alone, slowly dying inside. I’ve looked into their eyes. It’s as if they’re hollow, as if there’s no soul there. . . and yet, there is.

Nora: Prostitution is such a big industry in Thailand that it now draws tourists from around the world.

Over 40 percent of all the tourist dollars, in Thailand specifically, is directly and indirectly equated to this industry of human trafficking, exploitation, people coming in—especially people coming back and forth from Europe, America, and Australia.

I can take you into a number of red-light districts—not one or two, but dozens of red-light districts—in Bangkok and walk for a fifteen-minute walk. With your eyes you would potentially see 500–1,000 beautiful young girls out on the streets. 

That’s what you would see with your eyes, but if you go into the alleys and the six-story buildings, there potentially could be 10,000 or 15,000 just in that one walk!

Nora: God called Al and Susan Henson to do something about all of this. They could have retired and begun to take it easy, but God put a burden on their hearts to share the love of Jesus with those they like to call, “the least of these.”

Pastor Al: It’s what I love doing, and I love it because I hear the Father going, “Ahhh! Thank you. It’s good.” And, I see changed lives.

Nora: They founded the Compassionate Hope Foundation, and they’ve established what they call Homes of Hope in a number of Asian countries. What I didn’t realize was that this compassion was about to awaken in my heart, too, as we arrived at one of these Homes of Hope. Here’s Al’s wife, Susan Henson. 

Susan Henson: Right now we’re sitting in the Home of Hope. I hear the stories of the children, and I know where they’ve come from and how horrific are these painful things that these children have gone through. Most all of them have been abandoned by their own parents.

A good majority of them have been abused in some form or fashion. We have some that have been trafficked; some have been labor trafficked. Some we were able to rescue before they were going to be sold as child brides.

I just see the beauty of God’s love all around me—especially when you look into these children’s eyes. You just see love! If you walk on this property, you better be ready for bear hugs, because they’re going to come run and tackle you with lots of love and hugs!

Nora: This home was run by a young woman named Ning. She cared for nine girls, and they all came running out of the house to give hugs to Pastor Henson. They all called him Papa Al.

Pastor Al: We really want to develop our young people in four areas: spiritually, educationally, in their character, and we also want to see them fully healed.

Susan: So we want to give them hope for a future!

Nora: Ning and some ladies from her church made lunch for us. We had amazing Thai soup! It was so good; I wish I could capture the taste of it through this microphone for you! While we were eating lunch, all of the girls started to sing a song for us.

I’ve been singing at church my entire life, and I think for a lot of us, worship can start feeling mundane. We just go through the motions and don’t really think about who we are singing to. But when I was at the Home of Hope, these girls taught me something about worship—especially about passionate worship! 

Those girls sang the very first day we arrived, and they kept singing all the time! These songs were not polished or perfect, but they were heartfelt cries from girls who knew what it meant to be rescued! 

The girls invited me to sit down with them in the dining room and invited me to worship with them. Their joy was contagious! It reminded me of the reasons I have to worship. Ning came in to join us, she brought her guitar. As she played, some of the girls started to have tears streaming down their face.

I learned a lot about worship that night. Instead of focusing on what Jesus has done for us, isn’t it so easy to get distracted? I mean, we start to wonder if we’re hitting all the right notes; we start to wonder if our hair looks okay to the person sitting behind us.

Over the past year it’s just gotten more complicated. Maybe you’re trying to connect to your church over YouTube or Zoom, and maybe we get caught up in whether we should wear masks or shouldn’t wear masks.

But these girls weren’t worrying about distractions. They had been through so much pain, and now they were able to celebrate like those who have been set free. And actually, when you think about it, you and I are called to celebrate freedom, too!

You see, the ultimate problem that these girls were facing wasn’t human slavery. As horrible and tragic as that is, their ultimate problem—and our ultimate problem—is the slavery to sin. These girls had felt trapped by their society, by their parents. In the process of being set free, they had learned about Jesus. He was the One who set them—and us—free from the ultimate slavery to sin!

Those of us who have put our faith in Christ have been rescued; we have been adopted! We have reasons to passionately sing! 

Singing: 

“Who the Son sets free,
Oh is free indeed;
I’m a child of God, yes I am! 

In my Father’s house, 
There’s a place for me; 
I’m a child of God, yes I am!”

Dannah:  Nora Duncan will be right back. We are visiting Thailand today. A team from Revive Our Hearts travelled with Al and Susan Henson not too long ago.

Nancy: Al and Susan have been dear friends of mine for many years. They founded and lead a ministry called Compassionate Hope. It’s one that we here at Revive Our Hearts has had the privilege of supporting financially for many years.

Your gifts to Revive Our Hearts also helps support Al and Susan Henson as they reach many women and girls who are hurting throughout Southeast Asia. Thank you for giving! We’ll never know this side of heaven the full extent of how God has used your gifts.

Dannah: That’s so true, Nancy.

Now, let’s get to our report from Thailand. Here’s Nora Duncan.

Nora: We started talking to one of the older girls who lived at Ning’s Home of Hope—let’s just call her Emma. She mentioned that she helped build the hotel where we were staying. We told her how grateful we were, but as we set up the microphones and the cameras to interview her, we realized there was more to her story.

Emma (through a translator): I never knew my father; he died when I was young. My mother got remarried, and I lived with my mom and my stepfather. My stepfather was an alcoholic. I remember, when I was young, our house was taken from us. 

He spent all his money on alcohol. I dropped out of school at age thirteen and started working because I was a daughter. I had to work so hard!

Nora: She told us that as a girl she left school and began supporting her family by carrying cement at construction sites.

Emma: I had to take care of my mom and my family.

Nora: Emma and I are the same age. So that meant while I was learning stuff like biology, algebra, spelling, she was mixing cement and doing heavy manual labor.

Emma: Every night I would cry, but I couldn’t let my mom see my tears, and I couldn’t let my big sister see my tears. But I would ask, “Why do I have to work so hard? Why can’t I go to school?”

Nora: So when the team at Compassionate Hope invited Emma to live at Ning’s house, they were pulling her from a terrible situation.

Emma: The first time I met Papa Al was the first time I knew the love of a father. And when he hugged me, I knew for the first time what it was like to be hugged by a father.

Nora: Emma thrived! She was a natural leader to some of the younger girls. But she didn’t think that this was going to last. You see, Emma’s family had pressured her into signing a contract. The contract said that when she turned eighteen, she was promised to be married.

Emma: My mom had never really seen money before, so when a man offered her 30,000 baht (which is about a thousand U. S. dollars), it really got her attention. He said that was the amount he would pay if I agreed to marry him when I turned eighteen.

Nora: She would have to leave the Home of Hope and marry a much older man.

Emma: I didn’t want to marry him, and I cried for three days. Our house mom, Ning, and Papa Al came to me. They told me I could make my own choice, and they gave me courage to say “no” to this marriage. 

When I was growing up, I didn’t think I was going to have a good future, but now that I’ve come to the Home of Hope, I know I’m going to have a good future!

Pastor Al: What a joy it is to be able to take these beautiful, priceless treasures and give them a home, food, shelter, a safe place, a high quality education, teach them about Jesus, and allow them to begin to hope again and to dream. I love to hear them talk about what they want to be when they grow up someday!

Nora: On our last night, we all gathered with the girls from the Homes of Hope, and each of them went around the room and shared their hope for the future. One girl mentioned that her mom had become sick, her mom then became blind and then she died. 

This girl said she wanted to become an eye doctor and help people like her mom. When it was Emma’s turn, she said she wanted to be a mom at a Home of Hope. 

Emma: I want to have land and a house and start a Home of Hope, just like Ning did! I know the struggles that girls go through, and it makes me want to help them.

Nora: She’s wanting to live out her life like 2 Corinthians 1:3–4, which says, 

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.

Emma: I want to give girls a good future, just like the future I was given!

Nora: The rest of the girls finished sharing their dreams for the future. But this meeting wasn’t over. One of the newest members at Ning’s Home of Hope was a little girl named Pai. She had been adopted only several months earlier. As we finished our sharing time, the rest of her sisters were giggling and laughing around her like little fireflies. They knew that today was a special day for Pai. 

Ning put her hands over her daughter’s eyes and said to keep them closed. Al and Susan entered the room carrying a small, round object lit with candles. Little Pai’s pigtails almost seemed to be quivering with excitement. Ning bent down to Pai and told her she could open her eyes and everyone in the room let out a, “Happy Birthday!”

It was a beautiful little birthday cake! Her reaction was not what I expected! She turned to Papa Al, who was standing next to her, buried her face in his stomach, threw her arms around him and started to cry . . . and she kept crying for several minutes.

The candles were burning, everyone was ready to celebrate, but the birthday girl was just standing there sobbing. Pai never had a birthday celebration at her local city bounce house; she had never been to Chuck E. Cheese; she had never even received a birthday cake before. In fact, I don’t think her life had been celebrated before that night.

Pai wasn’t really hungry for a piece of cake. You see, before coming to the Home of Hope, she had been starved for love. For the first time she was being told, “You were created by a God who loves you, and that’s worth celebrating!” To her, it was overwhelming.

As I watched Pai’s reaction to receiving the cake, it reminded me of the day when I received a really special gift as well. It was the day when I realized that God had sent His Son to come to earth, not to live for Himself, but to die. He died to take my sin and give me new life.

Jesus is the best gift I have ever received, and when I really understood that for the first time, I cried, too. Pai finally let go of Al’s shirt. She took the cake. She didn’t say a word, and she set it on the ground. She took a knife and cut straight through those beautifully iced flowers. She cut out a huge piece. She set it on a plate, and instead of eating it herself, she brought it straight to Al. 

And then she went around the room and offered a piece to Ning, to every single one of her sisters, and to every member on our team. Once every single person had been served, she finally took a piece of cake for herself.

Throughout our time at the Home of Hope, I saw something powerful in action: when we realize how much God has given to us, we can’t help but give to others. When we realize that God has rescued us from sin, it makes us want to worship Him and share our songs with the world!

When God takes the broken pieces in our lives and turns them into something beautiful, we’re called to find hurting people and comfort them. And when we receive the greatest gift of all—Jesus Himself—we can’t help but share that gift with the people all around us.

Pastor Al: I see the power of the gospel, the power of the love of God, and the power of family and home and hope and education—all of that working together: spiritually, emotionally, mentally—to bring healing unto them and to see their lives changed and to know the pleasure of God.

I see the power of the gospel and lives changed. I see them living with smiles and hope—no longer hungry, not afraid. Words cannot express the gratitude that I feel, the thankfulness and humility. I really am humbled that God would grant me this opportunity to wash the feet of “the least of these.”

Nancy: Isn’t it refreshing to hear some good news these days? While anger and confusion seem to dominate the headlines in the United States and around the world, it’s so good to know that heaven still rules, and God’s people are quietly going about His business all around the world!

Dannah: Yes. Nora Duncan has actually been there, explaining some of what God is doing through Compassionate Hope Foundation. It’s a ministry led by Al and Susan Henson.

And if you have supported Revive Our Hearts over the years, you have played a role in making these beautiful stories possible!

Pastor Al: Revive Our Hearts was one of our first and initial partners that joined with us, Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth and the team. They are such kindred hearts, which is God’s heart and God’s Spirit. Nancy and Revive Our Hearts were specifically not only touched with “the least of these,” but specifically for the persecuted church.

They began initially to give the best funding that we get, and that’s regular monthly support. Every month, I’m thinking for maybe seven or eight years now, we know that that check is going to come from Revive Our Hearts and the team and those that work with Nancy and the supporters that they have.

Nancy: When you support Revive Our Hearts financially, you help make it possible for us to bring you this program day after day. Not only that, you also allow us to support partner ministries like Compassionate Hope Foundation.

We can’t all be in Thailand working with “the least of these” one on one. But day after day we see God at work through our friends Al and Susan Henson and the Compassionate Hope Foundation.

What a joy it is for Revive Our Hearts to be able to give a small portion of the donations we receive to ministries like Compassionate Hope, both in the United States and abroad, that are doing a wonderful job of reaching women and girls with the gospel of Jesus Christ. So if you’ve supported this ministry, thank you for your part in helping make stories like these possible.

If you’d like to learn more about the international outreaches of Revive Our Hearts, you can find that on our website at ReviveOurHearts.com. You’ll also find an opportunity there to donate to Revive Our Hearts, if God is laying that on your heart. Of course, you can always call us at 1–800–569–5959. 

Thank you so much for partnering with us as we take the gospel of Jesus to women and girls in the United States and all around the world!

Dannah: That warms my heart! I’m just so grateful, Nancy, to be a part of the beautiful international outreach of Revive Our Hearts. Nancy says discouragement is one of the most effective tools of the enemy. Next week she’ll show us how to find encouragement in the Lord. 

We sure hope you have a wonderful, God-glorifying weekend, and be sure to join us Monday, as we ask Him again to revive our hearts. 

Revive Our Hearts with Nancy DeMoss Wolgemuth wants to help awaken compassion among God’s people! It’s an outreach of Life Action Ministries.

*Offers available only during the broadcast of the podcast season.