In a WWII POW camp the dying Olympic runner, Eric Liddell, gave Steve his running shoes and challenged him to pray for the Japanese. But how could he? Steve and his classmates at the Chefoo school in China--for the most part the children of missionaries--were interned in 1942. Resentment of the Japanese, particularly the brutal prison guards, became a way of life. Eric Liddell, by then a missionary and fellow internee, and a hero to the boy, charged him with an impossible challenge--pray for his enemies. But was it really possible to pray for the men who stood guard over them with guns?
Painfully, reluctantly, Steve began to pray and as he continued to pray, his heart was profoundly changed. At the end of the war the China Inland Mission (now OMF International) was seeking young men willing to go to Japan. Steve trained, packed, and went. Thus began Steve's lifelong love of Japan. Over the years he would tussle with a culture where courtesy wins over truth; where suicide is an honorable choice; where to be foreign is to be forever alien. Time after time he would encounter miracles of healing, provision, and protection as God looked after him, his wife, Evelyn, and their growing family. In a resistant culture--that at the time had been recently bombed by the Christian nation of America--he would see many come to Christ. This is the story of how a boy's grudging prayers were remarkably answered.