Friday, July 19, 2013

Sharing the Gospel Through Teaching English

God is so wonderful! He is showing my team and me more each day that He is in control, and He can use anything to show His love to others.

The past two days my team has been part of an English camp for teachers. We had about thirty teachers from all over our city come to one place and we taught them how to teach their students better. It was much more fun than I expected, and it was a great segway to share the gospel.

Some men from my group. Cru Nin is in the green.
Each person on my team had about six teachers in their group. I was partnered with a an amazing group of people. One man in my group was named Cru Nin. He had been a monk for 13 years, and he had to leave the temple when his father died so he could care for his mother. He was absolutely delightful, hilarious, and his English was amazing. I got to talk with him about being a monk and how Buddhism compares with Christianity. He told me he believed all the religions teach the same thing, so all of them ultimately lead to the same place. I agreed with him that most religions encourage the believer to do good works and be a good person, but I told him there was one huge difference about Christianity. He guessed is was faith. I said no, and I asked him if he had to have faith to be Buddhist. He admitted that he did. I went on to explain the concept of grace.

Grace is what sets Christianity apart, because none of us are perfect and none of us can be "good enough" to make it to Heaven on our own. That is why God had to send his son to make a way for us to enter the kingdom. He said he thought it was better for people to be good on their own and to earn their way. I asked him if he ever failed at being perfect. He said yes. I asked him if he ever felt like he couldn't be good on his own. He replied with, "No! I am superman."

We continued to talk about our religions for around 15 minutes. He didn't fall on his knees in surrender or anything. However, I know a seed was planted, because later my supervisor told me that that Cru Nin normally sneers and openly mocks Christians when they confront him with Christ. I knew nothing about this prior to talking to him, or I might have been more reserved. Anyway, please pray for this man and his heart. Pray that God will speak with his spirit, and that he will see the love of Christ.