My name is Daw La*, and I grew up where opium grows.
I was born and raised in a remote village in the Golden Triangle ‒ one of the world’s largest opium-producing regions. My parents planted it, used it and largely disappeared into it. I followed them into that same bondage. Hopelessness was the air I breathed.
Then, last December, strangers came to my village. They brought noodle packs, pamphlets and a message: Jesus loves you. I stood there holding their gifts and asked myself, How could anyone love me, a boy whose parents had looked past him and a young man who was already caught in addiction. How?
That question wouldn’t let me go.
The pastor and his wife who had come weren’t far away, and they were kind in a way I wasn’t used to. They invited me to their home, sat with me and told me about Jesus. As they spoke, something shifted. The Holy Spirit moved, and I opened my heart and invited Christ in.
But the addiction held on.
No matter how much I wanted freedom, I could not break the chains myself. In early February, the pastor and his wife invited me to a day of fasting and prayer. They told me plainly: Human strength cannot win this battle ‒ only the power of God can.
I wanted to be free. So, I went.
That day, I experienced what Paul described in 2 Corinthians 5:17 (NIV): “Therefore, if anyone is in Christ, the new creation has come. The old has gone, the new has come!” The power of God broke what years of addiction could not. I was set free.
I began attending church. In March, I was baptized.
“It is for freedom that Christ has set us free …” (Galatians 5:1, NIV).
Born into a world shaped by addiction and despair, I seemed destined to follow the same path as generations before me. But Jesus stepped into my story and changed everything. The addictions of my childhood no longer define me. I am a son of the King, part of the family of God’s kingdom ‒ and living proof that no bondage is too strong for the One Who sets the captive free.
Praise be to the Lord!
- A fictitious name is used for protection of the individual.
