In November 1904, William M. Young encountered a group of Lahu teachers in Kengtung carrying sheets of paper covered with hieroglyphic marks. None of them could actually read the characters, but they treated the documents with profound reverence, convinced that these papers embodied sacred meaning. The villagers explained that the Lahu had once possessed their own script but had lost it, and they believed that one day foreigners would return this sacred book to them. This mythic expectation helped give the Christian texts an immediate resonance. When William began distributing gospel booklets and evangelistic tracts, the Lahu received them not as ordinary religious texts but as tangible fulfillments of prophecy. Each tract was unwrapped and displayed with care, passed through family networks, and even carried across the frontier into Chinese territory. Word spread quickly that the long-lost “holy book” had returned. Some villagers traveled 15–20 days to Kengtung to seek confirmation from William that the prophecy had come true and to invite him to their distant villages. In these early years, literacy and the myth of the lost script became powerful mediating symbols linking Christianity with indigenous cosmology. This connection provided legitimacy to the missionaries’ texts and greatly accelerated their diffusion among the Lahu.