Tony Lee Series: A Phone Call from God

OCTOBER 31, 2025    |    5 MINUTE READ
TONY LEE, WGM MISSIONARY with REV. EMILY HINES, STORYTELLING PARTNER

Due to the sensitive area this global worker is serving in, we are using the pseudonym of Tony Lee in order to protect his identity. This incident took place during a training trip in a Creative Access Area.

After arriving in the new city well after nightfall, my two fellow teachers and I (Tony Lee) followed the group leader, BH, down a couple of short alleys. We were not completely sure of the location; BH yelled to us to get our attention in the dark.

Our base location for the next several days was in a small apartment building with five floors and a central staircase connecting each floor.

On the second day, my fellow teacher, CL, got a text message from our two coworkers who were training in a different province. This message informed us they had both been arrested and in jail (“hospitalized”) for two days. We were concerned about them, but we did not know any details about their situation.

As we prayed for them, we also prayed for wisdom to know what we should do as well. “Would their situation impact us? If so, how and when?” One concern was CL’s frequent phone contact with both coworkers over the last week. If the police started to compare phone logs, we might be compromised even though we were a long distance away. We discussed possible options but decided we would teach the next class and revisit it at the next break later that afternoon.

While I was teaching the afternoon lesson, CL went out to the public phone to try to call our coworkers, but their phones were turned off. CL was finally able to make contact with someone in the area near them, and she said the police had completely surrounded the training site and arrested everyone—over 35 people. No one escaped!

After finishing the afternoon teaching session, I quickly went down to the third floor to continue our discussion and pray about what we should do. While we were talking, the building hostess came to our room and told us that three policemen were downstairs intending to search the building, supposedly looking for a criminal. We found out later this was not true but was just an excuse to search the place after a neighbor lady had reported seeing "a foreigner."

After telling us about the situation, the hostess went back down to try to persuade the police to come back the next day instead because, "her son and husband weren't home at the time." But the harder she tried to keep the police from coming in, the more they insisted!

As soon as the hostess had left our room, I remembered my backpack was on the fourth floor where our training was taking place. This bag carried all my important documents: my passport, money, tickets, personal information, and my Bible. I always carry my backpack with me, but I had inadvertently left it right by the door of the training room after rushing downstairs earlier.

I asked my colleague, JB, if he could quickly run up to get it since everything valuable was in that bag! As he opened the door and took one step into the hallway, someone quickly pushed him back inside and told him to lock the door. The police were coming up the stairs!

Time to Pray

We immediately began crying out to God while shredding any incriminating evidence. CL hid his phone chip in the sole of his shoe. He later told me he felt that this time, arrest was inevitable, and we needed to destroy all possible evidence.

As I prayed, I prayed very specifically: firstly, for God's protection, especially praying three different biblical scenarios. I prayed that God would either: (1) blind the eyes of the seeing—the opposite of Jesus’ miracles; (2) post guardian angels outside the door like at the Garden of Eden; or (3) put a cloud between us and them like He had when the Egyptians chased the Israelites when they left Egypt and got to the Red Sea.

The second petition I prayed for was for God to prompt other people to pray for us. I asked specifically that He would wake up my prayer warriors in the U.S. since it was in the middle of the night with the time difference and get them on their knees on our behalf! I also asked Him to remind people around the world and especially from my home community to pray. I prayed that God would let my wife, Megan, know so that she could be praying for me, too.

The police came all the way up the stairs and started searching the roof. When they got down to the fourth floor, the police found all our students and started questioning them. A woman told the police she had a farm outside of town, and that she had gathered these people here because she was going to hire them to work on her farm!

They believed her but decided to register all the students anyway. Because they all denied having their ID cards with them, the police decided to record the students’ names instead. Providentially, the police did not press the students to produce their IDs, so many of the students gave false names! One brother in particular was especially concerned because he had just been released from a nine-month jail term last month yet was spared! Miraculously, the police did not see my backpack, even though it was right by the door!

The police then proceeded down to the third floor, where we were. I heard them talking right outside the door, but they never knocked on the door or asked the building owner to open the door. It was as if our door simply did not exist. I do not know if God blinded their eyes, put angels at the doorway, or put a cloud between our door and them, but regardless, God intervened again!

By the end of the raid, the police searched the entire house except for the room where we were. Since they never saw any "foreigners," the neighbor lady's police report was discredited, and the police left the building.

Even though we had escaped this time, my coworkers and students were concerned the police would come back later "in force." We felt it was critical to get me offsite as soon as possible, even though it was still light outside.

A few of my students backed up a covered cart to the doorway of the apartment building where I could sneak off to the train station! CL and JB followed shortly afterwards, and the rest of the students left as soon as it was possible to not draw attention to themselves.

Calling Home

When I got to the train station, I asked for the first train out of town, but had a little while to wait. I called my wife, Megan, to let her know what was happening and to be praying. At 5:50 p.m., I called our home phone, but no one was home to answer the phone yet. I left a message on the answering machine and told her to call me as soon as she arrived home. I thought she would be back any minute from picking up the girls at school. But by 6:10 p.m., she still had not called. Knowing the security risks involved, I did something I had never done before: I called her cell phone from my cell phone using my local SIM card.

The call went through. Even though her phone showed that the call came from a "private number," she answered. I asked where she was, and she said she was just parking the van at our house. I told her to call me back immediately when she got into the house! When she called, I briefly told her about the situation using code, gave her a list of things to do, and told her to be “thinking about [code for: praying for] me, our group and the group already in jail in another province!”

At about 7:15 p.m., CL texted me and told me all our friends who had been arrested in the other city had been released, and everyone at our place had gotten out safely, too. I immediately made a second call to update Megan on her cell phone around 7:30 p.m.

Around 2:00 a.m., after a day and a half of travel, I finally made it home. When I crawled into bed, Megan woke up, and I told her the whole situation since she had only heard pieces of it in code.

A Phone Call from God

The next morning, Megan said that something did not add up. She asked me about my first call to her cell phone. I told her I had made a total of three calls: the first call to the house on the answering machine, the second to her cell phone when she was parking the van, and the third to her cell phone at the Bible study. But she insisted that I had made an earlier call on her cell phone.

She said her cell phone rang as she was getting into the van after school. When she answered it, she heard MY voice saying to her, “all of the people at ____ have been hospitalized [code for: arrested], but I need to go because there are three doctors [code for: policemen] right outside my window [although it was actually the door],” and then I hung up.

I told her, “I did not call you! How could I dare risk making a phone call when the police were right outside my door at that exact time?” And my home cell phone card had been in my backpack on the fourth floor when I was on the third floor at that time. But she insisted that I had. She said that she had heard my voice!

I got her cell phone out to check the recent call log. There was a phone call at 5:06 p.m., and it was from me! The other two times I called her cell phone, I called from my “private number” SIM, not my home SIM. I never put my home SIM card in my cell phone the entire time I was out of the country.

God or His angel called Megan on her cell phone to let her know she needed to be praying for me! Miracle upon miracle. Praise God for His amazing work!

ACTION STEPS:

PRAY: Missionaries rely on your faithful prayers. Your prayers prompt God to heal, give clarity, or even rescue His people in hard times. When God prompts you to pray for your missionary, remember your prayers are affecting lives in ways you may never see!

GO: God calls us to be bold and share the Gospel even when it doesn’t feel easy. What has He called you to do? If your heart is drawn to missions, check out our opportunities for you to get involved and live out your calling with Him.

READ: Tony Lee wrote more stories about the Lord stepping in for believers. Read about Christ-followers finding faith in prison walls and the Lord’s intervention in a compromising situation.

Author Bios:

Rev. Emily Hines is an adjunct professor of Bible and Theology with Indiana Wesleyan University and Wesley Seminary and staff writer for Resonant Services, with over a decade of local church ministry experience. Outside of writing and ministry, Emily enjoys baking, crafting, raising houseplants, and perennial gardening. Emily and her husband Dave have two clever, kind, and curious kids: Petra and Simon.

Tony Lee has been a global worker in East Asia for four decades. He and his wife have three grown children. Tony is a father figure to countless believers in East Asia and represents the image of a loving and caring God to his people.