A disciple named Rebecca Goldman walked into a laundromat in Lowell, Massachusetts, armed with four small slips of paper, each with her name and number written on them. She handed the slips out to four women there, inviting them to church and adding that they would have friends if they came.
The third woman, Niramol Pichetshote, a fifty-two-year-old native of Thailand, took the piece of paper without saying a word and put it in her pocket. When her laundry was finished, she went home and thought long and hard about Rebecca and her invitation to church.
Niramol Pichetshote (Ni for short) was born in Thailand to a moderately wealthy factory owner. Her fortunate financial situation allowed her to attend university in Thailand. There she received her bachelor’s degree, and later traveled to the United States to earn her master’s. After that, she returned to Thailand and worked as a regional sales manager for Amway Corporation, a multi-billion dollar company with customers in more than 80 countries. Being the high-power professional that she was, Ni only settled for the best: diamonds, brand names, designer clothes. As the years went on, she decided that she would move to the United States and start a business there with one of her brothers. But when she arrived, he cheated her out of thousands of dollars, beat her when she would not give him more money, and finally kicked her out onto the streets one night when she refused to let him use her social security number to get benefits for one of his illegal employees. Her sister lived in Wayland, but would have nothing to do with her because she had been partnering with her brother, against whom she had a grudge. Thankfully, a woman from Newport took her in. To make ends meet, Ni worked in a nearby hair salon. She longed to escape from her problems in Newport, but lacked the money to leave. To make matters worse, the woman who had kindly taken her in began to increase the rent more and more every three months until Ni was living on only five dollars a day for food.
One night, while walking home from work, she heard music coming from a nearby church. Intrigued, she went in and sat in the back of the auditorium. As she listened, she looked around and noticed a large cross. Having no background in Christianity, and not knowing how to name this new God, she called him, “The Holy Spirit.” She decided to pray to him. “Holy Spirit,” she asked, “please help me. I want to move out from here.” After about a year with the woman from Newport, she was again kicked out onto the streets. As God would have it, that was the same time another one of her brothers moved from Thailand to Wayland to get treatment for his colon cancer and asked that Ni be his medical interpreter. She began to believe.
During the course of her brother’s surgery, his intestines were ruptured in such a way that they could not be stitched together again. Ni stayed by her brother’s bedside for five days straight without sleeping and watched him suffer endless agony. At the end of the fifth day, unable to stay awake any longer, Ni went home. That night she prayed again to the Holy Spirit. “Holy Spirit,” she said, “you can help me. If my brother needs to go, let him go easily. If you say he [should] still be here, heal him now.” The next morning, her niece informed her that her brother had awoken every ten minutes that night to stand up for about ten seconds at a time. For three more days, he continued to force himself out of the bed again and again to stand. On the fourth day, his wound was almost entirely healed. Again, Ni’s faith in God grew.
Unfortunately, although his wounded intestine healed, Ni’s brother never recovered from the colon cancer. After six months, he passed away. Some time later, while Ni was living in Lowell and working as a hair stylist in North Andover, she remembered how nice the members of the Newport church had been to her. “If I had friends in Lowell,” she thought to herself, “that would be good.” Two weeks later, Rebecca Goldman invited her to church, telling her, “We have friends here.”
After much deliberation, Ni called Rebecca that Saturday night and told her that she would be at church the next morning. As it happened, the church was meeting at Lowell High School, only a short walk from Ni’s apartment. Ni stayed up late that night considering whether or not to go to church in the morning. The next day, at around 10:45 am, Ni walked up to the front doors of Lowell High School. Much to her surprise and delight, Rebecca – who had been waiting the entire time – was still outside, overjoyed to see that Ni had finally arrived.
Because of her very poor English skills, Ni could not understand a word that was said. Indeed, Wyndham Shaw’s hearty exclamations throughout the sermon were particularly perplexing. As she looked around her, she noticed that everyone was reading along in a book and taking notes very studiously. After service, Ni asked Rebecca what book everyone was reading, and Rebecca gave her a copy of the Bible. Ni took it home and began to study it word by word. Literally. In the beginning, each sentence took weeks to understand, but she was driven by an insatiable hunger to know God’s word. She prayed fervently, read commentaries, got various translations of the Bible, and spent endless hours listening to it on audio so that she could understand what God desired for her life. On January 19, 2007, after a year of Bible studies with Rebecca and her own intensive investigation of the Scriptures, Ni was baptized into Christ.
Eight years later, her zeal for God has not diminished. She still pours over Scripture until she understands. Instead of weeks, each verse takes only days now to grasp the meaning. When she understands, she prays, “God, give me power, that I can do it.” Her favorite thing about being a disciple of Christ is the peace that it brings her. Back in Thailand with her high-powered job, her brand names, designer clothes, and expensive jewelry, she was constantly anxious and unsatisfied with what she had. Now in Lowell, working humbly in a local salon, bereft of nearly all her worldly wealth, she is totally content and at peace with whatever God has planned for her future. She only wishes that she had met him sooner.
