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Building Relationships with International Students

By Mallory Parmerlee

During the years our family was privileged to serve with ABWE as church planters in Australia, a few of our cherished friends were from mainland China. Through them we were introduced to the Asian people and culture, which were then so foreign to us. What we didn’t know was that God was preparing us to minister to Asians. 

Many years later, in God’s providence, we moved back to America, where millions of internationals are scattered across the United States. Many of these internationals are often found around our universities and are probably their nations’ scholars and future leaders.
Strangers among us

In the middle of the corn and soybean fields of our town, Ames, Iowa, is Iowa State University. Of the approximately 25,000 students, about 3,000 are from countries other than the US—the vast majority is from China, India, and South Korea. For more than twenty-five years, our church, Campus Baptist, has been reaching out to international students at Iowa State, even bringing missionaries on staff to lead this vital ministry, called Helping Internationals.  

Several years ago, a group of international students came to our church for a winter break retreat. We enjoyed playing table tennis with them and answering their questions, which revealed a mostly atheistic, surely agnostic, and evolutionary life view. It was not long before God directed my wife, Judy, and me to join the Helping Internationals team. It is a blessing to minister to these students and to worship each week in a setting where about 20 percent of the worshippers are from different lands. We are constantly reminded of heaven’s population, which is comprised of every tribe and nation.   

Having experienced culture shock for ourselves, it is easy to empathize with these strangers among us. Most everything about American culture is new and different to them. Americans drive cars (as opposed to riding bicycles or public transportation), eat strange foods, and speak, read, and write a difficult language called English. Often, when one of my international friends overcomes their cultural habit of “saving face” and tells it like it is, they will indicate that most Americans shy away from them and consider them a burden. International students experience natural insecurities in their new environment, and followers of Jesus have much to offer them.

Campus Baptist Church has a ministry center across from the campus of Iowa State University, where we seek to meet new students each semester by having welcoming picnics and offering American cooking classes. We also hold English as a Second Language classes and help students prepare for the Test of English as a Foreign Language. It takes time and patience, mixed with a lot of love, to help an international try to correctly pronounce our strange words with sounds that their mouths have never made before. Of course, if I try to pronounce Mandarin words, my tongue does not easily make new sounds, either. I must listen carefully, interjecting many “I beg your pardons” and often ask them to write down their words. But as we patiently work with them, these students become comfortable with us, and we establish many lifelong relationships.

Bringing them in

When we help them adjust to their new setting, many students readily accept an invitation to attend our church services because they sense God’s love through us. Others come out of curiosity or because they think church attendance is part of the American culture into which they desire to fit. Families in our church are encouraged to “adopt” students, have them in their home periodically, and sit with them during the church services. Many international students ask for conversational English partners. Our goal is to eventually turn these conversations toward the Bible, which starts Bible studies that often last for months and even years. Just being a hospitable friend makes such an impact on their lives, and of course it is fun when one of these students reciprocates and invites us to his or her apartment for some real Asian cooking.     

Each Sunday morning at Campus Baptist Church, it is our privilege to join with a class of several dear international friends and give them their first introduction to God’s precious Word. What a joy it is to be allowed to have a part in exposing them to God’s truth! We patiently field their questions, often referring to Answers in Genesis materials to answer their complex questions. John Cross’s chronological study, The Stranger on the Road to Emmaus, has been a useful tool. This book helps people previously unexposed to the Bible to understand that God is holy, we are helpless sinners, and God has graciously provided a deliverer. ABWE has recently published a similar, chronological study called The Way to Joy for use in world-wide ministries.

Repentance for any unbeliever requires a change of mind, and a lot of mind-changing is required if one has been taught all his life that there is no God and we are here by means of evolution. Therefore, teaching the truth requires much patience on our part. You can imagine our joy when, after months or years of Bible study, one of the students says, “I am satisfied with the answers in the Bible, and I am ready to believe in Jesus.”

Reaching even farther

When international students come to know Christ, they often create a ripple effect as their testimonies impact their friends and family members in their home countries. Three years ago a Chinese couple came to Ames, Iowa, to help their daughter with her newborn baby (a common practice of the Chinese). Because we were friends of their daughter, they gave us a gift, and in return we gave them The Stranger On The Road to Emmaus. After reading the book, the couple both believed and were baptized.

I was able to spend some time leading the husband through discipleship lessons, which he took back to China and translated into Mandarin. He then returned to the US to revise his manuscript, which he hopes to publish for discipleship use in China, where such materials are desperately needed.

Who is in your neighborhood?
We thoroughly enjoy this ministry that meets the practical needs of so many students and introduces them and their families to our loving Savior. Maybe God has wired you similarly. Do you enjoy a challenge? Do you enjoy different cultures? Perhaps you can join with others in your church and begin to reach out to internationals in your community. Over the past years, many international students who have come to Ames, Iowa, have been introduced to Jesus and have become His disciples. They have now returned to their homelands to continue the process of “making disciples of all nations.” What a privilege we have! We can minister to the uttermost part of the world without leaving our Jerusalem. 

Mallory Parmerlee and his wife, Judy, served with ABWE in Australia from 1977 to 1986. He has provided wisdom and leadership on the ABWE Advisory Council since 1993.

Click here to view what two international students, who have had a long-term relationship with Mallory Parmerlee and Campus Baptist Church, have to say about the struggles they faced upon coming to the US, how God’s people impacted them, and how Christ changed their lives.