Stories from the Field

April 2005

Holding out Hope

By Jordan Tardy, University of Texas

This last summer I went to Boston to work with international students on the MIT campus. Although I had expected to be working with students about my own age, most of my time was spent with students in their late 20s or early 30s. One person I really connected with and was able to minister to was a man named Jiyun.

Jiyun is about 30 years old, from China, and is working on his PhD. in nuclear fusion. As we became friends, one day Jiyun began to ask me a lot of questions about Christianity. We started to meet once a week to compare different religions and look at who Jesus is. One week, I gave him a Bible and asked him to read part of Matthew. When we met the next week, he had read the entire New Testament! He said he wanted to know the whole Christian theory and not some stories about Jesus. Jiyun knew very little of Christianity and was so curious.

At the end of the summer, I met with him to tell him goodbye and he said that I was his first American friend. He has been here three years and had never had an American friend, and I was also the first American to go eat with him in his house. Jiyun said that Chinese people have no hope. He said he wants something to hope in, something to believe in, something to give him purpose. I hope he will soon find his purpose in Christ.