Hi-Dong Chai

Amazing Grace through Depression Hi-Dong Chai

In 1953, a 16-year-old boy, a son of a Christian minister who was kidnapped by the North Korean Communists in the Korean War, came to America, where highways were reportedly paved with 'gold' and money trees grew in abundance. To his great disappointment, he found no money trees. Without a penny from home, he had to work hard and educate himself through school. The first few years, he washed dishes, dug ditches, mixed cement, painted walls, cleaned the restrooms, cleaned the classrooms, ... To save money for school, he ate two raw eggs for breakfast and three pieces of Wonder bread with peanut butter and grape jelly in between. Sometimes he felt so lonely in his room that he ate sitting in front of a vanity mirror to keep company with the person he saw in the mirror. But he persisted, received a Ph. D. in electrical engineering, established himself as an authority in his field with 52 inventions, 40 publications, and a textbook. But he thought he was a failure because he did not invent an earthshaking device. In 1989, he fell into a major depression. The depression took him to the brink of no return, but the fear of eternal Hell-fire prevented him from crossing the bridge. He decided to seek a therapist's help. Then in 1990, in the therapist's office, he experienced God's Amazing Grace, the inner peace and freedom that he had never thought possible to experience in his life. This inner peace and freedom are still with him to this day. And he decided to share his story with the world