An hour before we were supposed to meet, Khedir called me and said he was working on a group project with some friends but that I was welcome to come join them and meet some people in his class. We met on the top floor of Rickel where all the English classes are, and he introduced me to his friends that he was working with.
James was a foreign student from China. He was kind of quiet but I did learn that he was pre-med like me. There were also two other guys from Saudi Arabia named Muhammad and Saied. I didn’t find out too much about them because they were in a different group I think and they were speaking Arabic the whole time… except when their teacher came in the room. There was also a guy there from El Salvador named Sebastian. Sebastian was a very talkative person and it was really cool to meet him. He, Khedir, and I talked for most of the time about all kinds of stuff. We initially started talking about where everyone was from and stuff but I asked Sebastian and he told me it was because his father told him to come. Apparently his father is a business owner in El Salvador and wanted to give the business over to his son one day but he wasn’t going to unless he earned a degree in America and learned English.
This was interesting to me. I took Spanish for seven years and studied the culture along with the language. It occurred to me that this was probably not a very uncommon thing in the more developed parts of the world. Lots of people in the United States send their children away for school. I am the perfect example. I am not originally from Texas, I just saw coming to TCU as a great opportunity to get a world class education and gain some valuable life experience so that I can grow as a person and be successful later in life with whatever I decide to do. Sebastian was basically doing the same thing but his plan was to return back home eventually to help out his family which I thought was really cool.
I also noticed both he and Khedir had soccer shirts on that day, so I asked them about it. I know almost nothing about soccer; basically just what I know from playing FIFA. Let me tell you, that is not the case for most people my age almost anywhere else in the world. They are crazy about it. I asked if Sebastian played soccer here or anything and he told me he was on both the club team and the intramural team but his main sport was tennis. It turns out that Sebastian played tennis professionally in El Salvador during and shortly after high school. He thought he was going to play here and actually tried out and made the team. However, he decided to quit because he and one of his coaches did not get along at all. Besides, he told me, he would have been too busy trying to play competitive tennis and traveling with the team and everything.
We all talked for a long time and I’m not sure how, maybe it was their project, but the last thing I remember talking about was religion. With that many people from that many different places, we had just about all the major religions represented. Most of them were followers of Islam but Sebastian was orthodox Christian or Catholic. They asked me about my beliefs and I told them about my Christian faith and what kind of church I went to and all that kind of stuff. After talking for a little bit Sebastian said, “I don’t know, to me all religions are basically the same. God, or someone, is at the top in heaven and we have to do certain good things to get there when we die.” Everyone in the group kind of nodded in agreement. This immediately reminded me of a book I read over the summer by a Christian author who traveled abroad and met with a group of spiritual leaders from several different major religions. They all essentially agreed the same thing. I told them about the book and the side the author took and recited his argument for them saying that. Basically, they all see God as this perfect being at the top of a mountain. Each path up the mountain is a different religion and each have their differences but all of them lead to the same place. The author of this book however, responded by asking them what they would think if the God at the top of the mountain came down to us. Everyone kind of thought that sounded like a nice idea. He then proceeded to tell them about Jesus.
It took me a little while to explain that. Most of them had heard of and knew the story of Jesus but they didn’t learn it in the same way I did and didn’t see the birth, atonement, and resurrection in the same way or even as having much significance. I explained to them all about how this was the foundation of the Christian faith and without Jesus, the Son, we could never enter Heaven because of our sin. It’s not a list of works you have to check off a bucket-list before you die, it’s a relationship and God’s grace, and that’s it. Fundamentally, for people who have grown up learning that story in a different way and for people who don’t center their lives around it, it was probably hard to understand, but it was a good exercise in relating to other cultures for me. I honestly could have talked to those guys for hours, I was having a blast, but I finally had to leave. This was by far my favorite meeting yet just because I go to school with these students, live in the same area, use the same buildings, and yet, I would have probably never talked to them had it not been for Khedir.
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