Growing up in Shandong, China, Hou Fangyu was just 9 when his father died. The people he expected to be there for him — his friends and relatives — suddenly wanted nothing to do with him. In fact, they shunned him and his family, leaving Hou feeling very alone and insecure.

As a young man, Hou treated his insecurity with alcohol — lots of it. At one point, he was so intoxicated that he stumbled into the middle of the road and just missed being hit by a car. “I got my mother very worried,” Hou recalls.

His mother wasn’t the only one who worried about Hou. His brother and sister had become Christians, and they wanted Hou to find God’s peace in his life.

“My sister planted the Gospel seed in me, but I didn’t respond immediately — until the day when my brother, who worked as a sailor, went missing in the sea. Unexpectedly, I received Christ then,” Hou says.

His mother, who practiced ancestral worship, didn’t like the choices her children were making. Undeterred, Hou dug into God’s Word, and his life began to change — a change noticed by his mother.

“Initially, she tried persuading me to change my mind, but after seeing the changes in me after my conversion, and being concerned that if she did not come to faith I would revert to my old ways, she reluctantly converted. Within two weeks of coming to know God, she found herself regretting that she had not done so earlier!”

Today, twenty years later, Hou serves as an elder in several churches and as an official of the Christian Church in China. Without the faithful support of American Bible Society’s financial partners, he would not be where he is — expanding the church in China. Seminary was expensive, and the Bible reference books he needed as a pastor were beyond his meager income as a potato farmer. But through our financial partners’ generosity, the Bible Society was able to supply sets of reference books for Hou.

He received several study Bibles, various commentaries, a Bible concordance, and a Bible dictionary. Hou is equipped to be a better teacher and more informed pastor.

To the generous friends of American Bible Society, Hou offers the following words of thanks: “Thank you for these precious Bible resources,” Hou says. “I wouldn’t have the means to afford them and wouldn’t know where to buy them even it I had the means.” Thanks to your gifts, Hou is able to pastor his church, and share the life-changing power of Jesus with believers in China.