ANTOINE THENIN - Friends International
“‘I am not a scholar.’ ‘I know, but isn’t it important for you to know?’”
Bournemouth International Outreach has come to an end. The last two weeks of July have been really busy for me and the teams joining this outreach. Two weeks of welcoming international students in The Hub from the 4 corners of the earth: Columbia to Tanzania, Saudi to India, Thailand to Japan and many, many more nations. Every evening we had between 20 to 30 international students joining our events; and every evening in Room 2 there was an option to look at the life of Jesus. You might be thinking that the best conversations were around the Bible study table, but they were not. While the Bible study helped the students to read for themselves what Jesus has said and done, the best conversations were in The Hub. They were those one to one conversations where not many people were around to hear what was discussed.
What questions were we asked around those tables? Well, some were quite funny ‘What’s wrong with your toilets?' Another was flattering - 'Antoine, you’re not English?!?!' And others made our whole outreach 'How did you become a Christian? How do you pray? Why are you doing those events? Do you have the Bible in Arabic?' And many more...
A conversation that I really appreciated was with a Muslim student from Saudi who shared with us about fasting and Ramadan. I told him 'Do you know what Jesus said about fasting?' 'No' - 'Let me show you, look at Matthew 6. Jesus said to fast in private, no one should know, and God will reward you. Why do Muslims tell everyone when they fast? Jesus said to keep it private between you and God.' 'I am not a scholar' 'I know, but isn’t it important for you to know?’ And I continued 'Why not take the Injil (new testament) in arabic, you can read it in private and God will reward you.'
This student took different resources that day but not the Injil. However, other students took the Gospels in their own languages, some took them when no other students were watching. With another student we had to check online if it would be safe for him to take the Injil back to his home country Saudi. He now has the Arabic Bible on his phone...
Pray they will search for themselves and turn to our wonderful Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Antoine, Friends International