By Mark Ellis
Raised in a strict Buddhist family in Chanthaburi, about three hours east of Bangkok, her parents didn’t understand when she became a born again Christian.
“My parents brought me to the temple, but I never felt connected to those things,” says Blue Erika Ployamporn. “They prayed in a language I didn’t understand.”
An unusual thing happened to her as a young teen. “When I was 13 brushing my teeth God called me,” Blue recalls. Her mother had been ill, and she told Blue she would have to take care of her brother and sister if she died.
She began to weep because she realized she didn’t know where her mother would go after she died. “I didn’t know how to see her again,” she says. “They said there is the next life, but you can’t choose where you go. I felt so hopeless.”
Where will I go when I die? she wondered. Will I remember myself after I die? Will I remember my name is Blue?
Shortly after that experience, she moved to Bangkok, where she attended school and lived with her cousin. One day a Christian neighbor knocked on her door.
“Hello. How are you?… Do you know Jesus?” the woman asked.
“Who is Jesus?” Blue replied. She had never heard the name of Jesus.
“Do you want to know Him?” the woman inquired.
“Yes…who is he?”
The woman told Blue about the life of Jesus, how he demonstrated he was God in human flesh by performing many miracles, how he died on the cross for our sins, was raised bodily from the dead, and ascended to the right hand of the majesty on high.
The truth penetrated Blue’s heart and the Spirit imparted saving faith. “It made sense,” she realized. “At that time I accepted Him and I believed right away.”
In the ensuing weeks, Blue began to read the Bible and attend church. She became part of a cell group. “I began to love Him (Jesus),” she says.
But she soon faced spiritual warfare within her own home. “My parents found out I became a Christian and they were concerned,” she recounts. As they observed the changes in their daughter – attending church or other meetings three times a week, questions arose.
“How can a 14-year-old girl be so crazy about religion?” they asked. “Why is she praying so much?” They thought she might be involved in something sinister or dangerous.
Then the hammer fell. They asked her to stop attending church. Out of obedience to her parents, she complied, but never returned to the Buddhist temple.
For the next 10 years, she ceased all church involvement. “I became an actress, a party girl,” she recalls. She began smoking, but never got involved with hard drugs.
While Blue had a successful career as a model, a TV host, and as part of a TV series, her heart was empty. “It was a very hard life,” she says. At 22 she reached the bottom, as hopelessness and despair overwhelmed her. “I tried suicide by taking 20 pills. I wanted to sleep for a long time.”
Mercifully, the suicide attempt was unsuccessful. When she woke up in the hospital in Bangkok, her parents were standing by the side of her bed weeping.
After her parents left she began to pray. “Lord, this is not the life I want. Bring me back to you.”
After her release from the hospital, she drove by Tai Church, located on a busy street near the university, and felt God pulling her toward that church. Then a friend who had become a Christian in California invited her to the same church.
“God heard my prayers,” she says. “Seven years ago I came back to Him and started my life again.” Two years later she invited her parents to church, they believed, and began to follow Jesus.
Blue and her husband currently devote their time to a company she started that sells nutritional supplements and she is very active as one of the worship leaders at Tai Church.