"Let me put it this way -- I was living the normal college lifestyle," Lange said. "I knew in the depths of my soul the things I was doing weren't right.

"I couldn't stop sinning," he said. "I tried to stop but I couldn't. I cried myself to sleep at night. I knew that God was real, but he wasn't real to me."

All that changed in 1995, when Lange started attending Bible study classes. He rediscovered his faith, and though he graduated from NDSU in 1995 and found a job in his field he ultimately knew he was meant for something else. He went back to school at Masters Baptist College. That education and a 10-day mission trip to Thailand as a student in 1998 helped shape his future.

"I didn't really think much about it until I graduated," Lange said. "I graduated Bible college in 2000 and I got married. I felt that the Lord began to deal with me about a mission in Thailand."

Lange spent time in 2002 and 2003 traveling to Baptist churches to raise money for his mission. He finished the fund-raising at the end of 2003 and left for Thailand in January of 2004.

Lange and the others he works with have spent the past three-plus years living in Bangkok and ministering to both Thai nationals and Hmong refugees who live in camps near Thailand's border with Laos.

Much of the work Lange's group has done has gone toward developing literature targeted toward Thai people. The group has had to overcome many cultural differences in order to do its work. Where in the United States many missionaries start conversations by asking people if they know where they would spend eternity were they to die today, Lange said Thai people would be too offended by the question for it to be effective.

"There's people in our country who may not like that, but culturally speaking that's something we can say," Lange said. "When you ask a Thai person that question -- If you were to die today -- their world view interprets that as, `I just put a curse on you.' You basically offended them immediately.

"To them it's too assertive. It's too much `In your face.' That's just an example of a difference in the culture."

That was just one of the obstacles Lange had to overcome in order to take on his mission work. He had little experience speaking Thai when he left, though he'd taken a class designed to help missionaries pick up languages.

Lange said the results he's seen have been worth the challenges he's faced. He's seen the changes his message has made in people's lives.

"I've had people who spend their whole life enslaved to trying to appease a demon of where they live and they live in fear," Lange said. "I would have Hmong people just weep on my shoulder and say, `Thank you for telling us how we can be free.'"

The group has started an on-call Baptist church in Thailand, the Nam Khao Baptist Church (the name translates to White Water). The church has about 400 baptized members. The group has also trained many Hmong to serve as home-church pastors.

Lange is back in the United States until Dec. 29 to report on the progress of his mission. He hopes his presentation next Thursday in Rosemount will help people realize what kind of impact they can have in the world.

"I would like people to leave thinking, `Wow, if God used Jeff Lange like this, what could he do in my life?' Something along those lines," Lange said. "I'm not planning on preaching a sermon or anything like that, but I will probably have some kind of short challenge, just for people to see the need that's out there. There's all sorts of opportunity for people to serve, even right here in people's own towns or neighborhoods."