Me: I am glad you brought a friend today!
Prodigal: Well He has been hearing about the stories and wants to hear one himself.
Me: Well, this one is especially for him.
This is from the book The God Who Hung on the Cross by Dois I. Rosser Jr. and Ellen Vaughn
In early 2002, Randy, an American traveling with us was entertaining the children in one of the Cambodian orphanages. A ventriloquist, Randy uses monkey puppets to tell Bible stories. After the program, the director of the orphanage brought a boy, about nine years old, to Randy. The boy reached out and hugged Randy’s monkey puppet, Squeaker, as if he were a long-lost relative, jabbering with wild monkey noises and gestures.
Then the story came out. The boy, who has Down Syndrome, was born in a fishing village in the jungles of northern Cambodia. The Khmer Rouge was still active in that area in the late 1990’s. They descended on the Great Lake fishing village and slaughtered most of the inhabitants, though some were able to escape to the mountains. When these returned, they assumed that the baby boy had been killed along with his dead family.
But a group of monkeys, who often came into the village at night to steal drying fish, found the baby still alive. They took him back into the jungle and nursed him. He lived with them until he was about three.
Then hunters came into the jungle, looking for monkeys. They found the human child, and brought him to the monks at a local Buddhist temple.
They tried to humanize the boy. But after a year and a half, the Buddhists decided he was too “monkeyized” for them to control. Perhaps he was being punished for the sins of a past life. They turned him out into the streets of a nearby village, where he lived like a stray dog.
Then an orphanage was being built nearby. The construction manager came to know the little monkey boy. He had compassion on him, and brought him to live in the orphanage when it was completed. He’s been there for years now, loved and cared for with dignity. He’s not just “monkey boy” anymore. Now he has a name: Matthias. He is in school, worships God passionately through music, and is an earnest disciple of Jesus Christ.
Deuteronomy 3:24
O Lord God, thou has begun to show thy servant they greatness, and thy mighty hand: for what God is there in heaven or in earth that can do according to thy works, and according to they might?
Jennifer Van Allen
www.theprodigalpig.com
www.faithincounseling.org
