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Her name is Sangduen Chailert. But everyone calls her "Lek." She is small of stature, and Lek means "small" in her native Thai language. But Lek Chailert is a determined person, hoping to make a big impact. Ironically, for a person named "small," Lek works with very large animals. Elephants, to be exact. My wife and I had the pleasure of meeting her last fall on a vacation trip with our grandchildren in Thailand.

At Lek's Elephant Nature Park, the animals don't do tricks or give rides. Because most of them have been abused by previous owners, they are given an opportunity to recover and to live as God made them to.

Lek cares for 24 elephants on her mountain property about 60 kilometers outside the ancient Thai capital of Chiang Mai. Her first project was a baby elephant, orphaned when local farmers killed its mother because she was eating their crops. Lek adopted baby Geng Mai, and fed her with a very large baby bottle.

Each of Lek's elephants has a story. Almost all needed some kind of rescue—from physical abuse, from starvation, from neglect, from overwork. The abuse of domesticated Thai elephants begins with the centuries-old training method called phajaan or "the crush." Young elephants are chained into a strong framework where they are poked and cut with sharp implements until their spirits are crushed. The treatment is so brutal that only about 50 percent of the elephants survive. The rest die from infections or other hazards. A few actually commit suicide by standing on their own trunks in order to cut off their air supplies.

Lek Chailert wants to convince Thais that they can train elephants with kindness. She is beginning to get some press exposure. In the United States, National Geographic did a feature package and a documentary film on her. But Lek's message is not welcome in the corridors of power, which have financial interests in the way elephants are currently treated. She has even had her life threatened. One night, her political enemies snuck into her compound and poisoned baby Geng Mai. The young elephant died in her arms. Now Lek varies her movements and stays in a different place every night, just for her own safety.

I tell my friends about Lek Chailert for several reasons. First, because she is inspiring in her determination and commitment. She has named another of her baby elephants Hope, and that says a lot about her. But I also talk about Lek because—even though she's a Buddhist—her life is a parable of what Christian ministry is often about. She is named "small," but her cause and her spirit are great.

A few months ago, I sat down with the leaders of Emmaus Ministries in Chicago to try to understand their work with male prostitutes on the streets of the Windy City. As I was eating lunch with founder John Green and Amy Tracy, the ministry's development director, we realized that our conversation was centering around the theme "small is great." Grassroots ministries like Emmaus are great, in part, because they are small and can do the things that only small ministries with highly committed staff can do.

I admire big ministries. At Christianity Today, we often report on large ministries like World Vision, the Salvation Army, and the Southern Baptist North American Mission Board. All of them have amazing capacity to take on large projects and to deliver the goods. After Hurricane Katrina, the Salvation Army and the North American Mission Board fielded enormous teams in a coordinated fashion to deliver huge amounts of help. Because of their experience, they brought organizational expertise to other groups that were trying to minister to those displaced by the hurricane. By the end of September, the North American Mission Board had served 5.1 million hot meals to Katrina victims. That's amazing capacity.

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February 2006, Vol. 50, No. 2