 Welcome back everybody to another episode of Anabaptist Perspectives. I'm here today with Ernest Ebe, and we're not related that we know of, but it's good to be here with him. And today we're going to be discussing some of the ministry that he's involved here in the state college area in Pennsylvania. So Ernest, thanks for being with us, good to have you here today. And I would just like to start out building some context for the area that you're in and the ministry that you're involved in. Give us some context for your own experience of ministering to the immigrants and the international scholars that are in this area. How do you have access to those people and where do you interact with those? We live in a college town. Normally there are about 50,000 students and scholars here during the school term. And 9 to 10,000 of these are international students and visiting scholars who are studying here and doing research. Because of this there's many ethnic restaurants and grocery stores that cater to these students. Most of the immigrants in our town are either working at the university, working at these food service places, or living in this area because they have family members here and they're here to support their family or help take care of the children, that kind of thing. International people often find it difficult to penetrate the social circles of Americans. Many times they feel like they don't belong if they show up at an event that is mostly American. Many internationals have told us that they never made any local friends all the while they lived here in our town. So we go to parks and meet people. We look for people who are watching us or people who seem to be relaxing and not in a hurry. And then we go and talk to them. If they're going to watch us, we're going to go and make a conversation. We invite them to our home or our backyard for a meal. We invite them for holiday meals such as Thanksgiving and Christmas. And as we eat, we start making conversation, try to discern if there's any religious interest. If there is, we'll tell them more about what we believe and why we believe that. If there's not religious interest, we just continue to be friending them and we try to work in a bit of Christian knowledge in our conversations as best we can. We also meet internationals at a local church that provides free meals. We sit down with them and eat with them and strike up conversation. We invite these people to our home and to our classes. We've had a few helpers who are rather timid about making conversation with international people. So they might help in the kitchen, helping serve food that helps break the ice and get them used to interacting with international people. We also started a student-run campus organization that allows us to use campus facilities for English classes, Bible studies, cultural events, that kind of thing. We provide various services for international people. We offer conversational English classes and English tutoring. We sometimes help people get a driver's license. We help people get furniture. We sometimes end up having regular counseling sessions with people who are dealing with personal issues or relational issues. We provide social activities. We let people come to our little farm, help gather eggs, play with our dogs, feed our goats. We take them kayaking and canoeing with us. Then when it comes time for them to move home or onto another city, we try to help them get rid of their stuff and they're often glad to give us what they don't want. So we keep some, donate some to charity, give some things to others in our community who can use them and help people out in that way. Every week we hold a Bible study at our house for immigrants and international scholars. We want to show the love of Christ to every international person we meet, but in all of the activities that we're doing, we're looking for people who are seeking for truth and wanting to study the Bible. You mentioned it being difficult for these immigrants and international people to feel welcome or at home or, as you put it, be able to penetrate the social circles of America. The question I have then is, why do those people come to you? How are you interacting with them? What incentive do these people have to work with a white American who's also a Christian, what they might consider a radical Christian? Why are they coming to you? That's a good question. We've wondered the same thing. The immigrants and international scholars we interact with are often wishing for local friends. So they're wanting friends, but often they're not getting invitations to being in a local home, so because we're the first one to invite them, this is their only opportunity. We don't preach at them. We invite them to Bible studies, but we make it all invitational. We tell them about our beliefs and values, and since we're often the first people in America who befriend them, they're willing to listen more to what we have to say. There's probably a bit of intrigue with our old-fashionedness, head covering, skirts, no TV, all that kind of thing. It definitely blows their stereotype of the average American, and so that probably draws them in. They wonder what kind of a minority group we are. Some talk about the peace and love they feel in our home. Some are intrigued that we do not get involved in politics, do not go to war, and do not support violence of any kind, and this is different from what they believed about Americans based on what they saw in films and movies from Hollywood. After explaining to one man how many deaths result from wars and how much good could be done, if the same amount of investment was put into loving one's enemies, he asked if he could invite his friends to hear my short presentation. He thought this was just mind-blowing, life-changing, very different from anything he'd ever heard. You've been interacting with the people, the immigrants in this local community for a number of years now, and as you already alluded to, most of these are part of the college in some way, and so these are very intellectual, intelligent people. Have you seen a pattern or what pattern have you seen in how these people respond to what you're offering and as you share with them about your life? Is there a pattern that emerges in these intelligent individuals that are going to college here? Yes, so intellectuals need lots of time to consider what they learn about our beliefs and values. Many are looking for a rational argument for Christianity, and our view of Christianity seems rather irrational. Intellectuals are often interested in learning more and have very good questions about the meaning of life, the purpose of life, the solution to human problems, and so forth. One lady we studied the Bible with this past winter, dressed very finely, and she had a rather attractive personality, but we soon discovered that she was suicidal. She was highly educated and very intellectual, but she couldn't make sense of her existence here on this earth. She saw herself as evil and not worth people investing in her. Looking at her, a person would never have guessed that she was miserable on the inside, but there are many people like this. We don't place a premium on post-secondary education, which is puzzling to many internationals, yet we appear to be semi-educated people, and this has them baffled sometimes. Many intellectuals see education as the answer to the world's problems, so they are a little alarmed when they see us not reaching for all the degrees and esteem that they are looking for. One professor who respects me quite highly offered to do whatever it takes to get our girls into the most prestigious universities in his country. So I'm not opposed to higher education, but I don't view it in the same light that he does. Without a Christian worldview, our values are just really different. Overall, I would say that most intellectuals are looking for something that can be proven to be true. They are not particularly worried that the God of the Bible may not treat them right, like many hardened atheists or apostate Christians would be, but they are just not sure if the God of the Bible is a real being, and they're not sure if Christianity is the true religion, or the only true religion, or if it's simply one religion among others. These people really aren't necessarily skeptical or aren't opposed to God, this God that we believe in, but they're really just trying to validate in their own minds and determine whether or not this person exists and have some proof for that. Some people have said that international students are uniquely open to the Gospel. Have you found this to be true in the people you've worked with? Yes, we have. We have found a lot more interest among international people than we do among the average American. There are probably several reasons for this. Many Americans are quite independent and are very opinionated, and many Americans have been inoculated against Christianity because of maybe God and country concepts or other things that have turned them off of Christianity. But there are many people from Asia who have grown up with no religion at all. Many of these people have a religion void. They are like an empty sponge and will listen to anyone tell them anything. The first person to present a religion to them is probably going to have a lot of influence on them. Then there are people from Muslim countries who have big questions about their religion. So in a general sense, I would say international students and scholars are more open-minded and perhaps they are the less loyal ones of their culture to take on the beliefs of their home culture. Can you give us a few more examples or glimpses into the type of interaction that you have or the type of people that have been more open to the Gospel and you being maybe one of the first people to share any sort of religious belief with them? Yes. The first international person we interacted with closely was actually a believer. That gave us a chance to get initiated with someone like that before we went right into unbelievers. The first person we met was a veterinarian researcher from a country that does not allow freedom of religion. This man believed in Jesus but he did not know much about the Bible. He needs to keep his faith mostly to himself or he will lose his job and be persecuted. He grew up in a poor family on a two-acre farm and they had some pigs on this farm and the pigs kept dying. So he wanted to go to school to learn about developing vaccines that would help keep these pigs from dying and his neighbor's pigs from dying. Well then the government built a road right through their property and only paid his parents a very small amount of money so they lost their small farm. But the son continued on with his research and this included some research work he was doing at Penn State University. While he was here he attended with us and we still have contact back and forth with him and enjoy that. And then there was the family we met at the park. The parents were raised in an atheistic culture and they were not interested in religion or Bible study but they were interested in being friends with us and our family. And we were fine with that. The Holy Spirit isn't limited just to those who have religious interests. Well one day this family invited us to their house and this was kind of a big deal for them to invite this American family to their house and everything was going fine until they're five year old through a temper tantrum and started hitting his dad and clawing at him and this lasted maybe five minutes or so. And these parents were just horrified and humiliated in front of their American guests as we can understand. Once they got the boy quieted down and playing with our girls the mom asked can you help us. We need to learn how to train children like the American women do. They must not have known that many American five year olds act the same way but we didn't inform them of that. So for the next hour we had the opportunity to talk about the need to control our spirit when relating to our children. How we need the help of God to be the people that we should be. And by the end of our conversation this lady was writing down verses from the Bible about controlling her spirit and loving her son and she was posting these on her fridge to remind her of the person she ought to be. And so just a little interaction like that was an open door for sharing from the scriptures. And we've found that many people are open to child training. Love child training courses and help in that area. Then there was a literature professor from halfway around the world who was reading the Bible for the very first time. She read the Bible on a mobile app on her phone while waiting at bus stops for the next bus. She had a lot of questions about what she was reading and didn't know any Christians she could talk to about her questions. So most times when I see somebody on their phone I'm assuming that they're listening to music or something like that but this has opened my eyes to the fact that there might be somebody on their phone reading the Bible through for the very first time. In her country Christianity was greatly suppressed so she could not openly ask people about where to find Christians. Then she had the chance to study abroad and she chose to study here at Penn State University. So six months ahead of her planned stay in state college she began looking for an apartment online. And as she was searching for an apartment she stumbled across an expired invitation to one of our picnics from the year before. This invitation had been posted by a friend of ours. This friend had attended a church in his home country and felt a peace in his heart when he entered the church building. But having no Bible knowledge at all he could not understand what was being talked about. Then the church building burnt down and he did not know how to make contact with someone about studying the Bible. But then God opened the door for him miraculously to come to the United States. He'd only been in the US for a few weeks whenever a young Anabaptist man met him and it introduced him to the God of the Bible. This Anabaptist man lived about a hundred miles from state college and he had some other young people were in our city passing out Christian literature and talking to people about the Lord. And the young Anabaptist man told him about God and gave him an invitation to one of our Bible studies. So the international man began attending our Bible studies the very next day and wrote home to his wife about the opportunity he had to study the Bible. She not knowing about his interest in Bible study had begun reading the Bible on her own. So they were quite overjoyed to learn about each other's interest in the Bible. And in their culture even husbands and wives don't talk to each other about their religious beliefs because you're not supposed to have any. The international man began bringing his friends to the Bible study as well. Later he helped us organize our first picnic for internationals and he posted the invitation on an online forum where people from his country could read it. He never bothered to take the invitation down. And so it was still online for this literature professor to read the following year when she goes looking for an apartment. Our invitation said nothing about apartments or lodging but as this lady glanced down over this expired invitation she noticed that we gave a Bible presentation at our picnic and she saw my email address on the invitation and copied it down. Six months later I got an email from a stranger who wrote, I'm a visiting scholar at Penn State. I got your email address from this international website. And I just arrived this month and I'm interested in discussing with you about what I have read so far concerning the Old Testament. Best wishes. We discovered that she read the first four books of the Bible and was halfway through Deuteronomy. As you can imagine if you were reading the Bible for the first time you would have a lot of questions by the time you reached Deuteronomy as well. So we invited her to our house and she brought her list of questions. And then every Sunday after that she would come to our house, ask her questions and then she would go along to church with us. She received much more than she had ever hoped for. There were people to answer her questions. She experienced the gospel being incarnated through God's people and she was able to learn some beautiful Christian songs. She was one of the many people who have left our town in tears as they headed back to their home country. This happened about three years ago and we still have regular contact with her. She emails us with questions like these. Would you show me the descriptions about God's will in the Bible? Are the Ten Commandments the original description? How can science help us learn about God? And we have the opportunity then to answer those questions and guide her toward the person who created her. There's some pretty incredible stories and accounts of how God has led you who's willing to work with those people and brought people who are interested in seeking his face, brought those two together and that's really a powerful testimony of God's work when we're willing to be available. And I guess one of the questions I have now is as other people who may live in a place with international students or immigrants, what are some pointers or practical tips that you would give to them to begin interacting with international people? What can they expect? What are some of maybe the road bumps that they may face as they seek to start interacting with people in their local community who may be internationals? If someone is not interacted with many international people they may be in for a surprise. Cultures around the world are really, really different. If you invite people to your house for a meal they may show up a half hour late or longer yet. They may never show up at all. They may never have past dishes around the table before. Some people feel very uncomfortable in such situations and never pursue further interaction with other international people because it's so uncomfortable. Others keep pressing on and adjust their normal ways of doing things and accommodate people of other cultures. They may need to make food that they can sit on the stove for a half an hour or an hour and learn to adjust in that way. I generally have a simple audible prayer before we eat and for many people this is very unfamiliar. It can be hard to get people together at one place if you're outside to have a prayer because they don't even think about we all need to gather for prayer. People are not used to gathering as families you know and praying before they eat. So for having a picnic we gather as many people as we can together and then I try to word the prayer in a way that someone who never prayed in their life can understand what is being said. If we're sitting down at a table I explain that we have a practice of praying before we eat. We bow our heads to pray that's up to them to do what they want to do while we pray before the meal. There are many cultural things we have learned. Here's another one. In some cultures if you extend people and invitation they feel obligated to accept the invitation. Here's what happened to us. We were relating to people from a certain country and we're wanting to learn more about how to relate to these people and how to present the gospel to them. So I invited a Christian young man from that country to come to our house, visit with us and give us some pointers. I also wanted him to share his testimony with our local international friends. Well he lived about seven or eight hours away but he agreed to come and we had a good time. At one point we began asking him questions about communication nuances in his culture and he was explaining how that in his culture if a person receives an invitation to someone's house and there are no options to decline the person is expected to accept this invitation. He was explaining that when you give an invitation you need to say if it suits you or if you want to come if it's something that's optional. Well suddenly I suspected that my invitation to this young man did not include a way to decline. So I asked him about this and sure enough I did not give him a way out and he felt obligated to drive the seven or eight hours to come to our house even though he was busy and didn't have money to do it. All I would have needed to have said was if it suits you or if you would like to visit us and he would have felt free to decline the invitation. So we helped him fund his trip. There was no problem with that. He was glad to visit us and he was not telling us about his culture with us in mind. We were asking him questions and we just stumbled into this. So be prepared to stumble into all sorts of cultural misunderstandings. Also be proactive in learning as much as you can about the cultures that you're interacting with. You also need lots of patience when working with people for whom English is a second language. It will take five to ten times as long to have a conversation depending on how fluent they are in English. You often need to repeat back to them in good English what you're hearing them say to you. It may take multiple attempts to understand including spelling words audibly, writing words on paper, drawing pictures, looking up a word in a dictionary or using some translation app just to be able to communicate. We have brought international people to church for services. My wife and I will sometimes type what is being said on a computer screen showing both English and their own language using something like Google Translate and that way they can get something out of the service more than what they would otherwise. After the service a few people smile at them and a few were brave enough to venture into conversation but for most English speaking people communicating with folks who don't know good English is too frustrating and too difficult to be worth the effort. It's easier to visit with friends and acquaintances so consequently many international people do not enjoy attending English church. They much prefer small group Bible studies where they can practice their English, where the leaders of the Bible study have the patience of Job and they can take all the time they need. And patience is needed in all cross cultural relationships even if the person can speak English well. Effective international ministry needs cultivation just like anything else. You want to become a good teacher, you need to practice teaching, you want to be a good carpenter, you need to spend lots of time working with wood and tools and the same thing is true for international ministry. For me the first year or two were probably the most challenging and now I can interact with internationals much more comfortably than what I did five years ago. At the beginning I mentioned some of the ways we find internationals to interact with. I'd like to talk about our picnics since that has been a very successful way of making contact with seekers. The last several years we have hosted picnics at our house and our small hobby farm. We make up a flyer announcing an activity for families and students. We mentioned a farm tour and the opportunity to feed and pet the animals. We planned some games and announcements. We mentioned that there will be a presentation about the Bible at some point during the event. By explaining this in our invitation nobody feels like we pulled the wool over their eyes. And our international friends are glad to help us advertise the event on their social media groups and so forth. We ask people to register for the event. We have had anywhere from 25 to 75 people showed up for these picnics. And I always have a table where people can sign up for English classes and Bible studies and future events. I also have a table of Bibles and other Christian literature for people to take for free. So after I'm finished giving an overview presentation of the Bible, then I go over and stand by the tables and talk with people who have further interest in spiritual things. Many of the people who come to our picnics we never meet again. But they were introduced to the Bible and the Holy Spirit can use other means to water that seed after it's planted. Often though there are a few people who become friends as a result of these picnics and some of these began attending our Bible studies. If you're interested in helping people learn English, it is not really that hard. All you need to do is put up a poster in an international grocery store or a restaurant, someplace like that, with an invitation to tutor people who want to learn better English. You can also volunteer with local organizations that match internationals with native English speakers. Sometimes these organizations refer to it as conversation partners. Then you can get a Oxford picture dictionary, a bilingual one that shows pictures and has the word for that picture printed in both languages. You can help people pronounce the words and work on their enunciation. So it's not really that hard to teach basic English if you have a heart for international people. To bring this to a conclusion I would like to read a few verses from the Apostle Paul's address to the folks in Athens, Greece. He says, God who made the world and everything in it, since he is Lord of heaven and earth, does not dwell in temples made with hands, nor is he worshipped with men's hands as though he needed anything, since he gives to all life, breath, and all things. And he is made from one blood, every nation of men, to dwell on all the face of the earth, and has determined their pre-appointed times and the boundaries of their dwellings so that they should seek the Lord in the hope that they might grope for him and find him, though he is not far from each one of us. Before the world was created, God had appointed that the international people living close to you would be placed there so that they would seek the Lord and find him. Now, not all people realize that they're looking for God, but these verses in Acts seem to indicate that all people are groping for God whether they realize it or not. This is the message that we as God's ambassadors should be communicating to people who are living right here in our country. Well, thank you, Ernest, for sharing those thoughts and, again, many practical pointers for interacting with internationals that may be in our local communities. And thank you for sharing a number of your experiences and potentially awkward situations that you've been a part of in getting to where you are today and, like any skill, it sounds like it requires practice, requires just diligence and perseverance. And thank you for encouraging us to implement that in whatever way we can in our lives.