Imagine trying to describe your first encounter with Jesus when you had never even heard of him before.
Let's eavesdrop on the earliest days of the faith journey of Buddhist students
One of the hardest things to understand as someone living in a Christianized country like the USA is how bewildered Asian people can be when they encounter Christians and their communities for the first time.
Think about their perspective.
For example:
They don’t know one character from the Bible or any of the stories about them.
They’ve likely never met a Christian
Never even seen a Bible
Their culture has no Christian concepts buried within it (Like “In God We Trust” on America’s money, or celebrating Christmas as a national holiday etc.
Theirs is a world of many gods and mysterious forces and systems of cosmic payback. Their mind is already formed religiously and they “know” these truths as their foundation knowledge.
So if you ask them if they’d “like to receive Jesus,” they have no idea what you’re talking about any more than you would if a new friend asked you to receive Saraswati as your Lord (She’s the Hindu goddess of knowledge and learning).
Now imagine that this new friend just won’t let it go and they keep pressing you to bow to Saraswati. You’d probably just distance yourself from them socially.
This is the world we live in as missionaries in Southeast Asia.
This Special Interview
That's why this interview is so special. It's not a conversion story. It's a conversation between Mark Rosacay, the leader of our campus outreach in Thailand, and two Buddhist students who are attending the outreaches and being awakened through them.
These students fled military repression in Myanmar and got themselves enrolled in a nearby Thai university (to justify with their government why they needed to leave).
One nearby university just accepted 700 new freshmen from Myanmar. It’s a very unique opportunity to make a hope filled gospel impact in a nation that is in extreme pain.
How We Approach Them
We approach our work differently. Most of the Burmese students have been traumatized in some way. Few are interested in discussing religion. We start with their pressing needs—what matters to them—finding peace, healing, and hope for their future.
Our outreach team goes to their campus twice a week for conversation and fun, upbeat mental health workshops. Through these workshops, we establish a relationship and invite them to come to our campus, just a few miles away, for a deeper time each weekend. We play games. They get a good meal (some have little money for good food) and attend small groups to talk about the burdens of their lives.
We tell them openly that we have discovered the transformation of life we needed through following Jesus. We detail how he is changing us and we invite them to establish communication with him through prayer. We work on following one of the practices of Jesus each week. Not studying, but doing what he said.
It's low pressure. It's not a church service. It's a conversation in a therapeutic community that ends in a simple prayer of gratitude to the creator God and asking Him to help and guide us all.
Taking them deeper
After a year of these meetings, the team thought it was time to take them deeper. They have been practicing seven commands of Jesus for a year.
A camp was designed, different than anything they had experienced before, but now they trusted us enough to open their hearts to it.
Here’s what it was like:
Every day opened with worship songs to learn and sing. Then you sat in a circle and shared your problems.
Everybody in the circle, Buddhists, Hindu and Muslims included, laid their hands on you and prayed for you, (led by our staff members). Then they gave you hugs (not a common practice).
The prayer was in the name of Jesus, which was now very normal for them. We’ve learned that when we pray to the Creator God in the name of Jesus, He shows up.
We want them to have a person-to-person encounter with the Son of God through his Spirit, even if they don't fully understand what is happening to them. What they do know is that they are being transformed from glory to glory by Jesus who loves them. Their friends see the difference and then invite him to join the group also.
Eventually, they will, of course, start the lifetime journey of studying the Bible, growing as a disciple, connecting to a church, and becoming a light to others.
In our work in Northern Thailand we’re at the very, very beginning of this story trying to get it started on the right road.
Setting up This Story
This video conversation is with two students who simply describe the process of what is happening to them.
It's a different kind of conversation because there's just so much nuance to hearing them try and describe what is going on inside of them.
We think it’s beautiful to watch. Babies are being born. Sherry and I wanted to share this with you.
Thanks for standing behind us. It’s working!
Love,
Chuck and Sherry