Del Hayes Press

Grace Will Lead Me Home

grace will lead me home: Albert Cheng's Story

 

April 17, 1975.  A meek, mild-mannered young man huddles in the dark, terrified by the constant whump of rockets exploding, and the chatter of machine guns. As morning dawns, all is silent. Phnom Penh, capital of Cambodia, has fallen to the Khmer Rouge. Their reign of terror, the Killing Fields, are about to begin. He knows he must somehow escape.

For weeks he walks, barefooted, living on scraps foraged at night from pig pens, anything he can find without exposing himself to the constant threat from roaming squads of the menacing soldiers. But it is all in vain. Without warning, he suddenly is captured. His two-plus years of hell are about to start.

Somehow, Albert Cheng survives. His parents, and some of his brothers and sisters, do not. At times, he begs his captors to kill him, to get it over with. But he survives. One day, gunfire erupts around his prison camp. His captors begin to flee, as Viet Cong attack the compound. Albert and fourteen others see their chance, fleeing into the jungle, hoping to make it to Thailand.

Uncounted weeks later, after surviving on cobras and rats, they see lights of a refugee camp, across the Thai border. But the Thai government does not want Cambodian refugees. The border is mined. Only Albert and one other survive to make it to the camp.

Fast forward several years. Albert is in Richardson, Texas, near Dallas, the custodian at a Presbyterian church. But his nightmares won’t leave him, and he searches fervently for a “god with a capital G” to save him, bring him peace. He wonders about the Christians with whom he works, how it is that they always seem to smile, and be happy.

One night, in a dream, Christ the Savior appeared to Albert. He began to ask people of the church to help him learn the Bible. Over time, his nightmares vanished and he found peace. He found his God with a capital G. God’s grace has led Albert home, to become a constant messenger, spreading the word about God’s love, God’s grace.