Chaos.
Gunfire echoed through the hills. Bombs exploded in the distance. Families scattered in every direction, fleeing the violence in Myanmar. Some ran into the mountains. Others headed toward the Thai border, hoping to find a place where the fighting could no longer reach them.
"I was running too, with my family," Wijit recalls. "I made it across, but not everyone did."
The two uncles who fled with him never reached safety. They were shot and killed by the Burmese military.
Wijit belonged to the Karen tribe, a group of people living in the jungles of Myanmar. For years, their communities had lived in the middle of conflict, forcing many families to flee across the border into Thailand.
Like so many refugees, war forced Wijit to begin a new life in a foreign land.
He was only twelve years old when he arrived in Thailand with almost nothing.
He had no identification. No official records. He didn't even know the date he was born. The only thing he knew was that he had come into the world on a Monday.
He had known poverty in Myanmar. But now, living in refugee camps, grieving the family members he had lost, and separated from friends he wasn't sure he would ever see again, loneliness became part of everyday life.
"I felt insignificant," he says. "I felt completely alone."
Looking for purpose, Wijit eventually became a Buddhist monk. In their culture, young men are encouraged to serve as a monk at least twice in their life, first to seek forgiveness for their sins and to gain merit and good karma.
"We had always been religious people," he says. "So I gave myself completely to it."
He woke before dawn. He prayed. He followed every discipline expected of him.
But deep inside, something was still missing.
Later on, his parents made another heartbreaking decision. Hoping to give their children opportunities they could never afford, they sent Wijit and his brothers to be adopted by another family so they could receive an education and a better life.
That decision changed the direction of his life.
His adoptive family enrolled him in a Christian school run by missionaries.
"Before that, I thought Buddhism was the only religion," Wijit remembers. "I had never seen a Bible before. I had never been to church. It was the first time I had ever heard the name of Jesus."
Before classes began, however, a friend gave him a warning.
"Be careful," the friend said. "They'll be kind to you. They'll give you biscuits."
The warning stayed with him.
So when someone first offered him a biscuit, Wijit politely refused.
He had already made up his mind.
Their kindness is just a trick.
But the days turned into weeks. The kindness never stopped.
Whether he accepted the biscuits or not, the missionaries continued to care for him. They listened to him. They welcomed him. They loved him the same way every single day.
Slowly, the walls around his heart began to come down.
"There was no trick," Wijit realized. "It was love."
For the first time, he encountered Jesus not simply as another religious figure but as a Savior who knew him personally and loved him unconditionally.
As he opened his heart to the gospel, he discovered forgiveness, grace, and a relationship with God unlike anything he had ever known.
Following Jesus wasn't just about believing something new. It was about meeting the God who had been reaching for him all along.
On December 1, 2013, Wijit chose to follow Christ.
To this day, he still doesn't know the date he was born. But he knows the day he was born again, and he celebrates that day as his birthday.
Today, Wijit and his wife, Poppy, serve as missionaries at Within Reach Global, bringing the hope of Jesus to villages where many people have never heard the gospel.
The boy who once crossed a border searching for safety now crosses into remote villages carrying hope.
His story is more than a journey from monk to missionary.
It is the story of a refugee who found a home.
Not in a place.
But in Christ.
Editor's Note: For those who wish to view Wijit's testimony in its original video format, the complete recording is available on YouTube through this link.
