She sat at the front of the church; I sat at the back. She was new; I was old. She was unbaptized; I was baptized. She was on fire; I was cold.

“Welcome to our church,” she said as she sat down next to me at the lunch table. Her face shone, and her soft brown eyes smiled. Her shoulders pushed forward as if carrying an invisible load. She wore a ponytail, a skirt in the local style and a nonmatching floral top.

I don’t know how old she was, but I knew one thing: she had a story to tell me. “My husband and I, well, we used to live in a big house,” she began after we had gotten acquainted. “We drove a fancy car.” She lifted her eyes to the ceiling as she recalled the memory. “We had our own business, and we had a good life. Everything went well. We made plenty of money.” Then she paused. I could see she was searching for words. Then she described how her best friend had betrayed her, and how she and her husband had lost everything. They had to sell their home and car, pack up their three children, leave the village and move to the city. She told me how she and her husband planned to commit suicide together. She paused again and looked down.

When our eyes met again, something had changed—a light had turned on. “It all changed that day in the parking lot,” she said, now with childlike joy. “I picked this up.” She reached into her handbag and withdrew a tiny GLOW tract from its place of honor in an inner pocket. “It talks about the future,” she said as she handed it carefully to me. “It changed my life. When I saw the phone number on the back, I called the pastor. Now we are doing Bible studies every week and preparing for baptism. We are—or we were—Buddhist. My whole family is Buddhist. But Jesus saved my life.” She carefully returned the precious cargo to its pocket and smiled joyfully.

In this country, we are not allowed to proselytize. A church member must have dropped that precious cargo—knowingly or unknowingly—and it changed this family forever.

I didn’t say anything. I just gave my new friend a hug, resolving in my heart to take more opportunities to drop precious cargo that points hurting people to their Savior.

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