When young high school graduates – North American or otherwise – set off to distant places for college life abroad, they are not always met with rosy experiences.
While many students mark their overseas academic ventures as satisfying and rewarding, a good number endure unexpected heartbreak. Some facing immense loss along the way.
A Southeast Asia couple loses their precious pre-born in the final month of a full-term pregnancy. Immeasurable sorrow.
A female student is harassed and threatened by a student of her own ethnicity. The threat is forestalled only by the intervention of a sympathetic campus minister and the academy’s threat of expulsion.
In February, 2024 eleven missionary students of diverse nationalities die when a truck with faulty brakes crashes into their vehicle at high speed. Such times call for something beyond human sympathy. In periods of darkness even Scripture can seem to ring hallow.
“And I am convinced that nothing can ever separate us from God’s love.”*
Shortly after arriving as new students on one campus Joyce and Henry met each other. They were soon recognized as a romantic “item”. During their free times in the coming months the two seemed inseparable.
Horror struck during a criminal car-jacking attempt.
The assailant, in a rush to flee police officers pursuing him, accosted the students as they waited in their car at an intersection for a traffic light change. In the chaos that followed the armed man fired a shot, critically wounding young Henry, then ran from the scene. He himself did not survive an officer’s gunfire moments later.
In the aftermath of the terrible end to a couple’s intended happy outing, a bittersweet saga – long and arduous – began. Whatever possible ray of light may somehow lie ahead, offering any glimmer of hope, seemed elusive at best.
©2024 Jerry Lout *Romans 8:38