Those Who Have Never Heard

Divine Leading

"Though I'm Buddhist, I've read and studied about the gods of the Hindus and Muslims as well as other religions," commented Dorji, "but I think Christianity is the true way to God."

My husband, Tim, and I exchanged shocked glances at this comment. Was this really an answer to our prayers? It was 1990, and we had been invited by the government of a small, isolated kingdom in the Himalayas to evaluate their hospitals and propose a project for educating newly graduated doctors who had no opportunity for internship, residency, or further continuing education. For me, as a young family physician and professor, and for Tim, a Colorado environmentalist and wildlife biologist, it was Shangri-La.

Nearly every minute of our three-week approved visit was under close supervision, but finally we had an afternoon to relax without a representative from the department of health. While hiking a trail to admire the architecture of the Buddhist monasteries and the spectacular beauty of the mountains, we met Dorji. We had just finished listening to a cassette tape about evangelizing the world, and we had intensely prayed that the Lord would provide us with an opportunity to share the salvation message with someone in this country of less than 40 known Christians of the predominant people group. Many of the educated in the area spoke English. Dorji, a high school student beginning nursing studies, noticed us (not surprising in a country where few foreigners lived at that time) and offered to accompany us up the steep mountain to the monastery where he would be leading Buddhist prayers. While most of the people in this nation had never even heard the name of Christ, this young man had prayed for a chance to meet the God he did not know.

"Why do you say that Christianity might be the truth, and what do you know of Christianity?" Tim asked.

Dorji told us of his search for salvation and truth. He had worshiped Buddha and many idols. As a Tibetan Buddhist, he believed salvation—that is, escaping from the wheel of life and continual reincarnation—came through meditation and the eight-fold path of suffering taught by Gautama Buddha. Over the course of that day we became Dorji's friends and spiritual parents. His open heart received the message that the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ pays for our sins and breaks the wheel of life. At his first exposure to the gospel, he trusted Christ as his Savior and renounced idolatry. Through prayer and the work of the Holy Spirit, we were ready for the divine appointment that God had prepared prior to our arrival. No Bible had yet been translated into his language, but he could read and write in English. We left him the only Bible we had brought—a large study Bible—and promised to ask the Lord for an opportunity to return and disciple him.

Called to Missions

When we met Dorji, we had been married less than a year. I was in both clinical and academic medicine, teaching residents at a family medicine residency program in Fort Worth, Texas. Tim worked in the environmental department of the US Army Corps of Engineers. After committing to Christ to be a missionary doctor at age seven, I finished medical school at twenty-two, had completed a three-year family medicine residency, and was at a Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary studying missions and theology when we met. My calling was to take the gospel to those who had never heard through medicine, and the imminence of Christ's return drove me to embark into missionary medicine to share Christ as soon as possible. I had served in a traditional mission hospital setting in Ghana during residency, as well as in a mission hospital in the Amazon jungle in Ecuador.

Tim grew up Catholic and came to Christ personally in a charismatic Protestant church while serving in the US Army. Though he knew little about missions or international development, he loved mountain climbing, cross-country skiing, and cycling. He had spent most of his free time in athletic activities and environmental studies, such as tracking moose and wolves. After we met, he served in a short-term international experience with an agriculture mission agency, but God had been preparing him in the years before by giving him the rough adventure spirit that enabled us to survive physically daunting challenges in our future. It took God's sense of humor to bring together two people with such different backgrounds and talents, but it was through this balance, and our team approach, that He used (and continues to use) our skills.

Our meeting with Dorji in Shangri-La was a miracle in itself. Shortly after we were married, Tim and I began calling and sending requests to various mission boards in search of an opportunity that would use our professional skills for the purpose of sharing the gospel in a country with Tibetan Buddhist people groups, and which was closed to traditional missions. I had studied the writings of the Dalai Lama and beliefs of Tibetan Buddhists while in seminary, and God had made it clear to me that He wanted us to work among people groups following this religion. We were convinced that we should be at least partial "tentmakers" just like the apostle Paul, the greatest missionary example in the Bible. Because of this, we searched for opportunities where we would receive a small salary for our work, which we could subsidize with funds that we had been saving for this very calling. After innumerable letters and phone calls, we contacted an international mission agency that worked in the exact country to which we felt God calling us. The telephone conversation went something like this:

"I am a family physician on faculty in a residency program, my husband is an environmentalist, and we feel called to live and work among the Tibetan Buddhists living in the Himalayas, particularly in Shangri-La."

"We have never had a request like that, and the area is now closed, not requesting any volunteers," explained the administrator.

The very next day she returned our call and explained, with excitement in her voice, "I have just received a request for a family physician with academic qualifications to start a residency (postgraduate) program among the Tibetan Buddhist people of the Himalayas in Shangri-La; there is also a school training the country's leaders in environmental sciences which needs a teacher. This has never happened before, but we must do all we can to get you into this position." Clearly, this direction was the hand of God.

A few months later, the director of health in Shangri-La granted us a one-month visa so that I could visit and prepare a report on the condition of medical education in the country, as well as write my recommendations for a post-graduate training program for their doctors. Depending on this proposal, we might, or might not, be offered a more permanent position. During the long waiting period, we had already promised to provide two months of relief to overworked doctors at a mission hospital in Bangladesh. After much prayer, we decided to combine the relief work with the fact-finding tour of Shangri-La.

First, we spent two months in the hill tracts of Bangladesh in a desperately poor, underserved area, prayerfully considering it as a possibility for long-term work. While I examined and treated patients from dawn to dusk, Tim assisted in environmental work, evangelism, and video production for the hospital. Though our time was short, the experiences of examining hundreds of patients suffering from end-stage preventable diseases deeply influenced my views on the hopelessness of curative care and necessity of preventive health care in the developing world. From there, we flew to Shangri-La and traveled for a month through the country, gleaning information on the condition of health care and medical education of doctors. It was during this time that we met Dorji.

We returned to our jobs to await the government's decision on whether my proposal for the internship would be accepted. About six months after the visit, just when we were beginning to wonder if God would open a door for us to go, we arrived home and found our mailbox missing. It had been vandalized! Worried that there could have been a letter from the government, we prayed about the missing mail. The following morning, someone scattered mail covered with tire tracks across our front yard. In that mail was a letter from the ministry of health, offering a two-year visa and job assignment in Shangri-La. God had opened the door for us to return, fulfilling our promise to Dorji!

We were able to serve as professionals for two amazing years, utilizing our skills, sharing our lives, teaching the gospel, and discipling through friendships in the spectacular land of Shangri-La. (Fig 1.1-1.6) We had never before experienced the depth of spiritual darkness or the physical and mental oppression one senses when people worship demonic spirits. In spite of hardships, we grew to love the people whose country we shared. Both Tim and I developed deep and meaningful friendships. He spent hours playing and coaching basketball (and participated in a tournament in which his team defeated the king's team), while I enjoyed baking cookies with the queen's sister and cousins or inviting a hundred guests for Christmas goodies. Before and after work, our tiny apartment averaged thirty visitors a day, including many neighborhood children who came to hear Bible stories, or just to see a foreigner.

Initially, our greatest culture shock stemmed from simple annoyances. In this Buddhist society, stray dogs could not be killed (except during a rabies epidemic), so nighttime became a competition: sleep versus noise from packs of howling dogs and chanting lamas7 performing incantations. On one occasion, we arrived home to find our third-floor wood apartment surrounded by smoke. Relieved that it was not a fire, we were shocked to realize our downstairs neighbor was conducting a puja. A notoriously picky eater from childhood, I determined to do my best at cultural adjustment and eat whatever the locals ate. The entire country had only one "western" store which sold poor quality cocoa powder and absolutely no chocolate candy, so meals consisted of rice, chilies, yak cheese, and lentils. Initially convinced by the condition of the local meat market to be a vegetarian, Tim later learned to decapitate chickens and patiently waited in line for the leanest piece of pork—an easy task since pork fat was a local favorite and the lean cuts were always the last to be purchased. Lemon tea was our preference over the more locally popular butter tea (made with rancid butter), but both were palatable when it was cold enough outside. Though daily life was difficult, the novelty of the culture and our commitment to demonstrating the love of Christ made these years a time when we built some of our deepest friendships.

An Impossible Task

Not long after unloading hundreds of books we had shipped for a medical library, I came to the realization that my official task to develop a program for the newly graduated medical doctors was likely impossible. Though the country's director of health approved my position, the few existing local physicians did not support me. I was forced to work in a system over which I had no control, sometimes under the authority of arrogant, poorly trained doctors. Consequently, I soon realized I could either quit, or be flexible and assume a different role.

Rather than the leadership role I had enjoyed both during short-term international experiences and as a faculty and clinician in the United States, I found myself in a service-oriented role developing continuing medical education courses for the doctors in remote areas of the country, utilizing my expertise, and that of others, to provide up-to-date information. Since the specialty of family medicine was unknown, I filled whatever need the country's referral hospital had, depending on who was available. Most of the local physicians had little more than a medical diploma, and volunteers for a few months to a few years from countries all over Asia filled the "consultant" positions. These professionals varied greatly in their professional ability and degree of concern for the locals, presenting an interesting combination of care at the one tertiary care center of the nation. I saw patients with every imaginable condition and grew greatly in my understanding and knowledge of diseases common to the Himalayan people. I spent several months supervising rows of critically ill children or babies, followed by months handling complicated gynecologic affairs. When there were no experienced physicians in adult medicine, my role became supervising the nation's drug-resistant tuberculosis treatment while managing the most complicated internal medicine cases. During this time, I continued to make attempts to develop at least a rotating internship for new graduates, but the majority of these bright young men were not from the ethnicity of the ruling class. I soon began to realize that the government had begun a program of ethnic cleansing, and young doctors of the wrong ethnicity were daily "disappearing" to a refugee camp or to places unknown.

Tim's teaching position was more collegial, but both of us experienced roles unlike that of a traditional missionary or international development worker. As we desired to live lives of service to Christ, sharing our faith in Him as we developed friendships, these opportunities were priceless. During my days in the clinic and hospital, Tim taught environmental science courses and drank tea while talking about politics, religion, or life. One day, while Tim was enjoying a cup of tea and conversation with a prominent young man, Sonam, he leaned over and confided to Tim, "you're not like the other foreigners; you really are my friend." Tim also enjoyed riding his mountain bike over 17,000-foot peaks and through yak herds, and playing basketball with his students and others. Most importantly, we learned how to minister and work together as a couple in a totally different culture with minimal support and rare letters from home.

In 1991, Shangri-La had strict laws forbidding outside radio, television, newspapers, or communication, and even legally dictated a dress code. As two of six Americans in the country, our open apartment attracted visitors of all types. Buddhist monks, beggars, and high-ranking officials found their way into our living room. Some stayed for an hour and talked politics. Others stayed for a week and stole small items they could find. We began to understand more of the struggles, culture, and religion of the people whom we loved. We were not there just to share the truth of the Gospel and teach them more in the areas of medicine and ecology, we were there to learn from them as well. We were working as professionals, as salt and light in a nation full of darkness and demonic spirits—not in a protected mission compound environment surrounded by like-minded laborers. While this was incredibly difficult, it taught us humility and a servant's heart that won the respect and friendship of our colleagues, allowing them to see Christ in us in a way that they otherwise could have never witnessed. We quietly taught the Bible to a small group of national believers, including Dorji, while building true friendships with those of other beliefs.

Through our friendships, we began to appreciate deep truths of the spiritual world, which we had never appreciated in the West. One friend, Pasang, had never heard of Christ but confided, "During a time of serious illness, when my family gave me up to death, I saw a man in white talking with a man in black. The man in white was kind, and He refused to let the man in black take me. I awoke, and I later realized the one who saved me from death was Christ."

John, from a neighboring country, was translating the Bible into his local language. He came to visit his daughter, who was our dear friend, and we learned how God miraculously revealed Himself to John while he was a lama in the Buddhist monastery. We also experienced the harsh realities of life when he and most of his family died from multidrug-resistant tuberculosis; only his daughter survived the disease.

The price believers paid in this part of the world was not limited to loss of family ties and finances; it often included prison, death, or spiritual attack. As we recognized the strong spiritual and cultural barriers to following Christ, we were faced with a sobering fact: the very few young believers were predominately of a different ethnicity than the ruling class, and they were illiterate, uneducated, and desperately poor. They were ill-equipped to share the good news of Christ with their own families, much less with other ethnic groups within their country. Their daily battles involved simple survival.

Sonam and Karma, a middle-class Buddhist couple, were but one example of the intense spiritual warfare faced by those interested in the gospel. Close national Christian friends came over one evening, seeking our help with Karma. She had recently delivered a baby, then three months old, and over the past weeks had refused to feed the baby. Sonam was desperate; formula was not available, and he was searching for another lactating mother to keep his baby alive. Our friends recognized this was more than just post-partum depression. It was a spiritual attack. At the request of Sonam, who was searching to know the true God, we began praying for Karma. She began shrieking and crying out, demanding in another voice that we stop. When we started singing praises to Christ, it became clear that she was demon possessed, as she demanded, "Stop it, stop that singing." After hours of prayer with no change in her demeanor, we searched for any items that could be hindering God's work. We saw that Sonam wore a Buddhist image on his necklace.