Editor’s Note: During the summer, two short-term volunteer teams joined journeyman Viktor Raimund and his colleagues in India. The first came from East Cooper Baptist Church in Mount Pleasant. The second came from Louisiana. Here Raimund reports on how the Lord worked through these volunteers.
Thank you for all your prayers for the volunteer teams this summer. It was a blessing to have them here to work together for the gospel! There were many open doors for them to share their testimonies and present the Good News to lost college students – Hindus, Muslims and Buddhists.
Our team now has a large number of contacts to try to follow up with – or hand off to national believers to pursue – in order that the seeds that were planted can continue to be watered and, Lord willing, bring a harvest. Please pray for these students. Ask that God’s Spirit would keep working on their hearts to lead them to the truth and a saving relationship with Christ Jesus.
Let me share three short stories with you about encounters the volunteers had.
Some of the girls from East Cooper Baptist Church went to a modern, Western-style mall in the city to find students to share with. They met a group of girls from a local college. Three are Muslims and one is a Hindu. They told stories from the Old and New Testaments about Adam, Noah, Abraham, and, of course, Jesus (Islam considers all of these prophets). They also shared their own personal testimonies of how Christ has changed their lives. The Indian girls asked lots of questions about the Bible, praying, the need for forgiveness, good works versus grace, and assurance of salvation. After multiple meetings together, the volunteers gave the college girls Bibles and shared the gospel with them. Since it is not appropriate in this culture for me as a man to follow up with these females and since there are no women on our team, pray for some female Indian believers who can continue ministering to these girls!
Of the quarter-million college students in this city, there are a large number of international students. Many come from Muslim stronghold nations in the Middle East and Africa to study in colleges here. Some guys from the team met Muslim men from Afghanistan, Iran, Sudan, Yemen and Saudi Arabia. Although my ministry thus far has primarily been to higher-caste Hindus, please pray that the Lord would teach me to also reach out to and share the gospel with young Muslim men in a culturally appropriate way.
One of the college students who came from Louisiana is Nikhil.* He is a native Indian who attends college in the U.S. During his time in the States, the Lord has led him to believers who witnessed to him and a local church who embraced him as one of their own. He decided to follow Jesus less than two years ago, but when he found out his church was organizing a trip to reach Indian students with the gospel, Nikhil was eager to return to share with his own people the change that Christ has made in his heart.
I share this last testimony with you to encourage my fellow church members back home. Please realize that you can be a part of accomplishing the Great Commission right where you are!
When I was a college student at Clemson, God opened my eyes to the nations right there among us at home, especially with all the Indian and Chinese international students that come to the U.S. to study. I discovered it is such an incredible blessing to love and serve these foreigners in our midst, and that through doing so, God opened so many doors for me to share the love of Christ with them! God commands us in Deuteronomy 10:19 to love the sojourner, the foreigner, the alien. In fact, we should all view ourselves as “aliens and strangers on earth” temporarily away from our heavenly home until Christ returns or takes us home (see Hebrews 11:13-16).
I urge you, as one who has, and is, experiencing separation from my earthly home, to love these people. Seek them out and pursue a relationship with them. Invite them into your homes and share meals together with them. Allow them to experience holidays with your family. (Christmas and Easter are wonderful opportunities to share the gospel of what Jesus has accomplished through his birth, sinless life, substitutionary death, and resurrection from the grave to overcome death.)
As they are missing their families, become their new family. Pray for them, that God would bring them into the family of faith. Bring them to church with you to experience this spiritual family together in worship. We are fellow laborers in the harvest field – I go out as a representative from among you, not as the only one to be involved in the work!?Join God in his saving work to all the peoples of the earth (see Genesis 12:3; Psalm 67; Isaiah 45:22; Isaiah 49:6; and Revelation 5:9).
*Names changed for security reasons. Raimund graduated from Clemson University and is now serving a two-year term in South Asia as a journeyman with the Southern Baptist International Mission Board. He is a member of Utica Baptist Church in Seneca.