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They kept up with news from Burma as much as they could, but the reports were never good. During the war, under Japanese occupation, many in the Shan and Lahu churches had renounced their faith.

The situation further deteriorated when the Japanese left, and opium warlords, rebel armies, and thugs took over the countryside of northeastern Burma between the Salween and Mekong Rivers. This area, where my parents had worked, became known as the "Golden Triangle," source of 60 percent of the world's illegal opium and heroin trade. Only in 1997 did rebels sign peace treaties with the Myanmar (Burma) government.

With the signing of these treaties, the Myanmar (Burma) government finally opened the Golden Triangle to outsiders, 57 years after my family left. In November 1997, just months after Mother's death, 15 family members—including my wife Ethel, my two brothers and their wives, two of their daughters, my son and his wife, and Uncle Ray's son and his wife, and their daughter—and five friends made a "roots" trip to the Shan States. There, we found our parents' work had produced results they could never have imagined.

First, we stopped in Taunggyi, the hill city capital of the Shan States. After being flattened by Japanese bombing, the school for missionary children had been rebuilt and was now the Shan Theological Seminary, thriving and active.

Then we traveled to Keng Tung, unofficial capital of the Golden Triangle. The morning after we arrived, some of us walked up to the old mission compound and hospital. We were drawn to a choir signing "He Leadeth Me" in a language we didn't recognize. We entered the open-air building to sit and listen.

I am not an emotional person and have cried only once or twice in my adult life, but the tears rolled down my face as I realized it was an Akha choir practicing. The Akha were an unreached tribe before World War II, but since that time have been evangelized by the Shan and Lahu churches, without any foreign mission presence.

Also in Keng Tung, we met a Shan pastor who'd learned his first Bible lessons and catechism from Uncle Ray; he walked two days from his village just to see us. His church today has more than 1,000 members, one of 70 Shan churches.

On Sunday we visited the little nearby village of Kung Na, which had about 25 bamboo-and-thatch houses in 1940 but now boasted more than 250 well-built wood homes.

More significantly, a large brick-and-mortar church had been built and was packed out for Sunday services. They had a lively Sunday school program, and two choirs filled the front of the church. This had been my first church home, where I had been baptized in a nearby river. What an emotional experience this was for me to return 57 years later!

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