SAN ANTONIO (ABP) — Two students — one a Mexican, the other a Nicaraguan — have just completed a semester doing missionary work in India through an Atlanta-based missions agency and their Texas theological school.
Juan Acuña, a Californian who was born in Monterrey, Mexico, and Allan Escobar, who lived in Nicaragua until age 16, spent the fall semester working with Banjara Gypsies in India. They are students at the Baptist University of the Americas in San Antonio. The school is the Baptist General Convention of Texas' theological seminary for Spanish-speaking students.
BUA leaders hope all their students have the opportunity for a similar short-term, cross-cultural missions experience before they graduate, said Javier Elizondo, the school's dean of academic affairs.
He worked with two former BUA students, Eddie and Macarena Aldape, and their Cooperative Baptist Fellowship-sponsored missionary colleagues in India, James and Robbi Francovich, to plan the semester-long missions immersion program.
As he learned about the Aldapes' and Francoviches' work with the Banjara Gypsy people in India and their desire to have students serve alongside them for short-term internships, Elizondo grew intrigued by the possibility of placing BUA students in India for a semester.
“India, Africa and the Arab world are exactly where we'd like to place some of our students for missions service,” he said.
One reason the Baptist University of the Americas wants to do that, Elizondo explained, is because Hispanics share many physical characteristics with people in those parts of the world and can blend in with the general population.
Elizondo had a clear idea of what kind of student he wanted to enlist for the pilot project in India.
“I wanted somebody who was bicultural, bilingual and self-motivated,” he said.
He also wanted somebody with roots in Latin America, who would not be so overwhelmed by Third World poverty that he would be unable to serve effectively.
The idea of placing a student from Catholic-dominated Latin America in a culture permeated by non-Christian religions also captivated Elizondo.
“I wanted the students to have the challenging task of reaching a group of people who are not easy to reach,” he said. “In Latin America, there is still a Christian influence. I wanted them to see how to evangelize in an unreached place like India and to see how much distance there is to bridge there, as opposed to bridging the distance from Catholic non-born-again to evangelical born-again.”
Elizondo enlisted Acuña and Escobar when he moved to Fort Worth. The students served through CBF's Student.go short-term missions program.
Francovich served as field supervisor and professor of record for the students' fall semester, and they received class credit at the Baptist University of the Americas for their work in India. He directed their studies as they read a book a week, and he provided mentorship for their cross-cultural learning experience.
Acuña and Escobar spent the first half of their semester in India with the Francoviches, visiting Banjara Gypsy villages, learning about the people and sharing their faith when given the opportunity.
The students said they experienced some culture shock upon arriving in India.
Escobar acknowledged the first challenge he faced on arriving in India was to “see beyond the poverty.”
They also learned that British English spoken with an Indian accent and Texas English spoken with a Spanish accent bear little resemblance to each other. Slang acceptable to one group could be offensive to a different group, they discovered.
Escobar also was taken aback when he saw Indian men holding hands and embracing each other closely — until he recognized it as a common phenomenon in the culture.
Even so, Acuña insisted the greatest surprise for him was not the differences he observed but the parallels with his own culture. “Indian culture has a lot of similarities with Hispanic culture,” he noted. “Both are very family-oriented.”
During the second half of their time in India, the students worked with the Aldapes and focused primarily on youth. They visited clinics, preached in several churches and taught at a conference for youth leaders.
At one clinic, Acuña performed a sleight-of-hand illusion to capture the attention of young people who were waiting in line. “Once I grabbed their attention, I was able to share Christ with them,” he recalled.
Acuña noted Indian young people in the cities are more Westernized than their rural peers, and their curiosity about all things American provided the Texas students an open door to sharing their faith.
“They're interested in talking with people from the United States, and we had several opportunities to share Christ,” he said.
He recalled an encounter with two girls in a coffee shop who initially started talking with him about movies. In time, the conversation shifted to a school project one of the girls was researching about the causes of depression among young people.
Acuña explained his belief that many young people experience depression because they lack a relationship with God. He gave one of the young women a copy of Philip Yancey's book, “Disappointment with God.”
“She wrote an e-mail to me and she said she's reading it,” Acuña said, adding he has continued to stay in e-mail contact with several young people he met in India.
Elizondo already has made arrangements for Escobar and Acuña to share their insights with students at the Baptist University of the Americas in a variety of venues, including a chapel service and several classes. He hopes they will be “the first of many” BUA students who will have similar semester-long missions experiences.
“We are really excited about the mission of BUA to provide cross-cultural mission experiences for their students and for the great opportunity to guide students through first-hand experiences among an unreached people group in a Third World country,” Francovich wrote in an e-mail.
“Many Latin Americans have responded to the call to missions and are living in our country. And we pray that through this partnership between BUA and CBF, many more Hispanic Americans and Latin American students will be challenged to find their place of service in making disciples of all nations.”