Tue Jul 16 09:25 EDT 1996
Phonesay Xayachack

Last night, we went over to a friend's house for dinner.  They
served us steak tenderloin and it was absolutely the best steak
I'd ever had.

Phonesay (pronounced pon-sigh) and Debbie (pronounced Deb-bee)
Xayachack (pronounced Zi-ah-chak) were our hosts.  Phonesay was
born in Laos and came to the United Staes in 1980.  I asked him
to tell me some of his story.  I had heard some of it in a testimony
at church one night but only pieces of it.   Phonesay speaks in broken,
but understandable English, but I may leave out some of the details
because I can't remember it all or I didn't understand all that
he was telling me.

Phonesay told me that when he was very young, he went to live with some
relatives.  He told me that it was (is) common in that culture to send
a child to live with relatives without so much as a thought. He went
to school, I think to the fourth grade before returning as a teenager
to the village where his relatives lived.  As a teenager, he felt
more and more out of place, partly because the language was different
from the different regions of Laos.  It is probably worse than
getting southern and northern U.S. Americans together (although I have
heard some pretty unintelligible Southern drawls).

Phonesay told me of a time he spent a few days in jail, in a cell that
was about 10'x12' that housed 28 people.  His father was in the same jail,
though he didn't know it at the time.  His mother brought food to his
father and Phonesay caught her attention.  He told her that he had some
official papers stashed away in a hiding place and that if she would
get them, he would be able to get out of jail.  She did and Phonesay
and his cousin were let out.

At 17, Phonesay joined the rebel army in Laos to fight the communists.
He told me that one time he had a tremendous fever.  He and his troop
were walking through the mountains and he would periodically dive
into cool pools of water to cool off. His compatriots would be angry
because they thought the communists could follow his trail and endanger
them all.  When they were about to scale this one peak, Phonesay could
go no further and sat down by a tree.  His companaions went off a little
ways to discuss killing him rather than let him be caught by the
communists.  Phonesay said that he was ready to die. However, the
companions couldn't or wouldn't kill him.  They pointed him in
two directions: one to surrender at a communist held village, one to
another villiage where he might find help.  Then they left him.

Phonesay made his way to the helpful village which put him into hiding
for 4 or 5 days.  He was delirious and didn't know what day it was.
When he regained some strength, the villagers had to send him on his
way because he could not pass as one of their sons or nephews because
his dialect was different than theirs and they were afraid for themselves
if the communists came.  Phonesay made his way back to his father's
home and his father took him to the hospital where he recuperated.

[Here I leave out some facinating details because I know what I've
told you so far would be okay with Phonesay.]

On several occasions, he made up his mind to leave the country.
He went to Bankok, Thialand, and cut sugar cane, then worked in
a chinese noodle factory, then as a construction worker before
deciding to head to a refugee camp to await emigration.  He wanted
to go anywhere, but had hoped for Canada or France.  He wrote to his
brothers (his older brother was killed in the war; and he has two
other brothers) to come to the refugee camp to also emigrate. The
United States was the country that responded quickly.

He felt that he was in a dream as he headed for the airport, and
it wasn't until he landed in Alaska, after a stop in Hong Kong,
that he felt that someone wouldn't stop the emigration and send
him back.  From Alaska, they went to San Fransisco where they got
their I94 papers.  On to Nevada, then Chicago, then to Wisconsin
where his sponsor took responsibility for him.  Phonesay's
sponsor was a farmer who did not pay them, nor feed them.
When the farmer "was mean to" Phonesay, he would say
"Go back [to] Lao[s]!"  (From what Phonesay described, it seems
*to me* that this farmer sponsored emigrees as cheap (free) labor
on his farm.

Abbreviating the story even more, Phonesay's younger brother's
sponsor was a Catholic Christian family in Billerica, MA.  They
went out to Wisconsin and rescued (my word for it) Phonesay and
brought him back to Massachusetts and set him up.

There's more to the story, much more, and I am grateful that he
told me his story.  I'm glad to be part of his story starting a
few years back, but it really made me think of how sheltered and
blessed we've been when our concerns as teenagers are over pimples
and being liked.

Phonesay and Debbie are examples of miracle after miracle and God
has more in store for them and their children.  Isn't it neat to
be around to witness such people?

Mark
Mark Metcalfe, Cadence Design Systems, Inc.     _      metcalfe@cadence.com
                 ___                           (_)           (508) 446-6451
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