Moss Doerksen: Day 39?

Ack! I have so much to write about piling up that I'm not sure I can say or remember all the good stuff I want to. Let me make a quick list for myself...

e-day to school
princess visit
speaker on Sunday
STEP outing
faith trip
other e-day
friends, cabin mates etc.
general reflections

OK, I'm sure I'm forgetting stuff, and I probably can't cover all that.

So the E-day. I said I would figure out what the deal was with the anti-proselytizing warning we were given concerning the "World Vision" school we were going to visit. I talked to the Line-Up department, the people that go ahead of the ship to each port to arrange everything, and they explained that these are public schools where World Vision is involved. As public schools they are naturally Buddhist. Line-Up said that we could share our testimonies and mention our beliefs but we shouldn't preach to them or be to forceful in our speech. This sounded a lot more reasonable and I was glad to clear that up before we went. In the end though I was dissapointed with the day. One problem was that we had no translator of our own and had to depend on one of the teachers whose English was not much better than the children's. This made things confusing and awkward. We played some games, and did some skits and talked about the ship, but in the end I don't think anything was mentioned about Jesus or Christianity. I think we left a positive impression; the kids had some fun and maybe learned some stuff and the teachers were thankful toward us, but I think we could have done better.

This would be a good time to talk about the next E-day. This time, the schools came to our ship rather than us going out. We performed a program 3 times with about 150, 300 and 350 students and teachers. The program involved introductions of the Douloi involved (Douloi is apparently the plural of Douloid), demonstrations of various cultural greetings, a video about the ship (it is really cool, you should see it) a powerpoint quiz about countries of the world and a skit called "Work, Eat, Sleep" or in this case "Study, Eat Sleep". This skit involves one person saying the words "study...eat...sleep" repeatedly while beating a drum. Meanwhile other people mime these activities. The "study...eat...sleep" cycle is occasionally interjected with, "party", "sports" and "shopping". The words and beat become faster and faster until the mimers can't keep up and the last word is "death!" Then the drummer/speaker asks, "Is there more to life than this?" The short answer is of course "Yes: Jesus!"

This skit came at the end of the program and on our first run through, when the MC was explaining the meaning of the skit to the students I couldn't help but notice that there was no mention about Jesus or God or anything useful like that. I thought, um, is there some more rules I wasn't aware of that we can't share the gospel to these students? Then I thought, this is ridiculous, they are coming to our ship, if they don't like the message they can leave and they have seen the whole program by then anyway. I already know what the Line-Up had said so I talked to our leader and the MC and aked that we kick it up a notch on the giving glory to God. For the next run, the MC did mention that he was a Christian but that was it. I hoped the last time would be more bold but actually he went back to just talking about how the decisions we make in life can effect others. I was really dissapointed about this and gently said so to our team in our debriefing. The longer term Douloi where like "Yeah, well, you know...this and that..." I was not convinced.

If you are one of my non-Christian friends reading this you may be glad that we didn't try foisting our religious baggage onto these perfectly happy Buddhist students. But if you are somebody who loves God and wants other people to know him, you will understand what a big let down this is. Doulos is one giant opportunity to share the gospel with whoever comes near it or us. We had 800 people come to our program yesterday to hear whatever we had to say and the most meaningful thing that was said was "Consider the decisions you make in life". Besides being next to useless, such advice only reinforces Buddhist beliefs. They already have their Eightfold Path with its Right Thoughts and Right Action and Right Efforts etc. They need to hear that there is a God out there that loves them, and sent his Son to do everything right for us and pay once and for all for our sins. I'm noticing that a lot of us get scared and intimidated when we here rumours that we should be careful what we say to these schools. So scared apparently that we say nothing of value and our message amounts to a bunch of bland fluff. I remembered afterwards that I was given the opportunity to be the MC but I thought somebody else could probably do a better job. I don't mean to insult the guy who was our MC, God bless him, but I think that was a lesson to me that I should step up and take opportunities to speak when they are presented.

Well, that is two items off my list. I have vastly overshot the 30 minute time limit for computer use here, so I will bid you adieu for today.

Prayer requests: