Through the many ministries that now serve near and inside of this country we begin to see the real North Korea. Not the Pyongyang fantsasyland. Not Juche and its mindless parrots. Not the Kims, fattening themselves in every generation on the backs of their helpless subjects. That is not the real. The real is the true. The true is the one who clings to Christ even more than clinging to life itself. The real and true Korea is her true church. Here lives the truth, the reality, as in every land where darkness prevails in the government. God is not discouraged or dismayed. He shines His brightest lights in men's most pitiable places.

Consider. True story. A young woman escapes from Korea! Free at last! The horrors behind her! China is like Heaven, and she has gotten there.

Not so fast. There, up ahead, one is beckoning her to come along. Help, so quickly? What a wonderful place this must be, with help behind every tree! She goes with her new-found friend. She goes to bondage.

For her helper is hired by a lonely Chinese man who has no wife, and wants one desperately. Even Korean, if necessary. The struggling - but in vain - young woman is brought to the home of this Chinese man and forced into a marriage with him. What are her options? To deny his offer is to be sent back immediately to North Korea.

Life goes on. A child is born. But then a mistake is made. She is discovered by the ever-snooping Chinese police who are duty-bound to send her back to her homeland. There she will go. Never to be heard from again.

Not end of story. I said a child was born of this union. The Chinese man has no need for a child, if the wife is gone. As in many cases, if not most, the child is separated from the mother and becomes essentially an orphan. Mother probably in prison or dead. Father far removed.

Where does such a child go? There are tens of thousands of such children. Tens of thousands. Who will care for them?

Here is where God steps in to the picture in a visible way. God stirs his people to care for such children. I know of such a boy, an orphan. But an orphan no more. He is a 13-year-old boy living in a safe house in China this very day. God's people have surrounded him, cared for him, introduced him to the Lord and the church.

He is autistic, and the members of that church have laid hands on him for prayer. Autistic children do not care much for the laying on of any hands! But these praying hands on him were also loving hands, and in some mysterious way the love of God was communicated to him. He has learned to cry, and to appreciate human touch.