Missions/Cross Cultural Communication

I was reminded of why I want to be a missionary when I met a Vietnamese man at church yesterday (I go to an international church). He told me that less than 1% of the population of Vietnam is Christian, and people are not allowed to share the gospel in the countryside. Christians there are still persecuted. Because there are no Bible schools in Vietnam, he had to travel to the Philippines to study the Bible.

Then he asked me what I’m planning to do after I graduate, and I said that I’m planning to get married and will probably work in the province [in the Philippines] for a while. He said that he had only wanted to send his prayer letter to me since there aren’t many Christians in Vietnam to pray for him. I’m just not sure if he thought that I was telling him that I plan to get married because I thought he was looking for a wife, or if he thought that I was offering to marry him (everybody in Asia thinks that Americans are very direct). Hummmm…I don’t know about my cross-cultural skills sometimes.