3 year old Vinh Chung and his family were on the run. Once the owners of a sprawling rice milling empire in their homeland of Vietnam, their wealth and Chinese ethnic heritage now made them targets of the new Communist regime.
So they made an excruciating decision. Leaving everything they had ever known – they took to the South China Sea by boat in an effort to escape. The Chung’s first attempt was to reach Malaysia, where they hoped to find refuge and welcome.
Instead, they encountered violence and terror on the Malaysian beaches. Vinh recounts how they crowded onto a tiny vessel and essentially left for dead.
“So my family of ten – my parents and their eight children – found ourselves in a boat with ninety three people. On this little fishing boat.”
“And after they towed us out, they cut the ropes and left us to die. The boat had no working motor. We had no food. We had no water. We were essentially in a floating coffin and waiting to die in the scorching heat in the middle of the South China Sea.”
In the most desperate circumstances, hope made an appearance.
“We languished on for days. Then, on day five, this was one of the most life changing moments for my father. He saw his entire family dying before him. He knew that without water we would just perish very slowly and miserably. It was at this moment that my father, who was not a religious man, somehow in the midst of despair, he just got on his knees and prayed to a Creator God. He didn’t even know the name Jesus. He just said it in the name of God. He believed there was a Creator and he prayed to this Creator – begging him to send water. Almost immediately the clouds darkened and the rain came and that was enough to sustain us for another day.”
That wasn’t the last miracle God would send. After six days adrift, help was on the way.
“So we were stuck in the middle of the sea. There was no way out. There was absolutely nothing that we could do to get ourselves out of this mess. They were so desperate that some of the mothers on board even started talking about drowning their children to end their suffering, because they just didn’t know how much longer it would be.
“That’s what it’s like to be a refugee – to be stuck in nowhere without any hope.”
“But on day six, we ran across World Vision. They found us. They had heard about what was going on in Southeast Asia, and their hearts were broken when they heard about the suffering that was going on. They decided to do something about it, and so their president Stan Mooneyham bought a boat and went out to to offer relief to to the refugees, and that was how they found us.”
