On December 26, 2004, I received the most precious Christmas present I’ve ever had--God kindly gave me a new life. From a hot-tempered, selfish, vengeful, and narrow minded young man I was, the Lord turned me to a better person. For almost 8 months that I have been living a life as a Christian, I still recall that day very clearly.

    Before telling you what happened to me on that day, let me introduce you a little bit of myself. My name is Tom. I am the only child of the family (since my younger brother died when I was 11). Perhaps, being the only child of the family, I was raised with a great care and was overprotected by my father, who loves me more than anything else in the world, I dare say. However, having been raised in such a perfect family doesn’t mean that I grew up as a good person. As a hot-tempered and vengeful young boy, I have never had a good relationship with my father.

    Furthermore, when I grew up as a teenager, I never believed in anything. In other words, I was a man of no religion. As a Thai person, I should be considered as a Buddhist, because Thailand is known as a country of Buddhism. In fact, however, some Thai people take Buddhism for granted—they never behave themselves in accordance with the Buddhist teachings. I was one of those people. I was a Buddhist just by name. I even had prejudice against other religions like Christianity. Now, you can imagine that for such a person like me, converting to Christianity would be the last thing I’d ever think about.

    Praise the Lord, however, that one day He finally softened my heart.

    It all happened on the day of December 26, when I had a chance to visit a Christian church in Bangkok with my father. My father, who has been converted into Christianity 6 months before, came to visit me in Bangkok (my parent and I live separately as I came to study at a university in Bangkok), telling me that we were going to visit my cousin. At first I had no idea where we would meet my cousin because my father told me nothing much. When I found out that we had to meet the person at a Christian church, I got extremely upset, because a Christian church would be the last place!  I wanted  to go. And as I mentioned earlier that my father and I have never had a good relationship, this time our relationship went worse. I had a feeling that my father had fooled me to come to church. I must have talked something really bad to him that made him sad. For once in my life, I saw the tears in his eyes, and that made me realize that my words had hurt him a lot. Feeling guilty, I eventually decided to get into the church with him.

    There, I had a chance to meet a young man, a friend of my cousin’s. He talked to me about Jesus which, at first, I thought it was the same old story which I have already sick of. But once he put his hand over my knee and prayed something for me, it was like his prayer shook my heart. I felt that he was very sincere eventhough we met for the first time. Then I noticed the picture of Jesus from not far away, and my eyes were blurred with tears which I myself did not know why. At that very moment I realized that I have always been a sinner, a bad kid of the family, a bad person of the world. Again, for once in my life that I apologized to my father for what I had said to him, and for every bad thing I had done to him in my whole life. And on my way back from church, I felt !  like I  could not take it anymore. I could not hold the tears which I had hidden when I was in front of my father. I cried hard all the way.

    That is how my story ends, my dear readers. Today, I still think of my experience on that day to remind me of the love of Jesus. I am also really thankful that God gave me the greatest Christmas present of all.

    Tom