Tea Time

I was invited to have tea at my English Students home last week (We will call her YJ).  It was nice to be invited into the culture.  I am here in a foreign land but it seems I spend all my time in my house teaching or preparing to teach.  the only language I hear or use is the once a week fellowship meetings or when I walk to the grocers.

Anyhow YJ asked me and the mother of the family whose kids I teach over for tea one afternoon.  We went and were warmly welcomed into her home.  Almost immediately we were served chai and a plate full  of goodies.  Since I was fasting I offered my cookies to  Hannah the American families youngest (the baby whose birth I got to be a part of last time I was here – 3 years ago)  With out intending to I hurt YJ feelings as I was refusing her hospitality.  So through my friend translation I explained I was fasting. 

The Muslim culture fasts for 40 days every year.  During that holy month they abstain from food, water, sex, smoking etc during daylight hours but once it is dark they feast.  In fact they consume more food during that month than any other time during the year.   Special food are sold then too that aren't offered at another time.  They fast out of duty, as it is a requirement of Allah. 

So I started off by explaining that for Christians, if they fast they may abstain from food and still consume juice or tea, or some fast on only water or some fasts are abstaining from media or outside distractions.  YJ was bewildered, she had never considered a fast could look different, she was also shocked that this was a fast I had chosen, not out of duty or obligation.   This allowed me to share about hearing the voice of God and about not relation to Him as some distant cool deity but as a loving Dad.

At this point of the conversation a friend of mine (who had joined us) from Sweden jumped in. she speaks the language because as a child she and her family had fled Iraq as refuges, lived here for  few years before seeking solace in Sweden.    Any how she shared her story of growing up in a mus family, being a refugee in three nations, of her terrible home life, witnessing her father murder her mother, turning to alcohol for comfort.  She was placed in the foster system, bounced from home to home for years, and eventually being rescued by an encounter with J-s-s. 

I know YJ was hit with a lot of new ideas that are outside her box, but I hope it inspires in her a real hunger for TRUTH.  I also hope that we who visited her home were salty enough to cause her to thirst after Living Water.