Hooray hooray, no problem, the College sent a car and driver to pick me up at the airport =and= there was hardly any traffic on the way back. One of the 5th year students who speaks excellent English came with him. The ride is only 35 km but it takes over an hour because of the terrain (yes, that is a road on the side of the hill. To get a real feel for the ride from the airport, get on google maps and track the directions from Lengpui Airport to Aizawl Theological College). We came to the Principal’s house to pick up the key to the apartment, but the Principal was not there. He was invited out to a dinner party, as the student was informed by the Principal’s wife, who was feeding the pigs. While we were waiting for a few things to be brought to the apartment, I asked the student what they did with the pigs. He didn’t say anything, but the look on his face let me know they were going to be consumed, and I asked if this were the case. He said yes, and they are having a big party the next day; they would slaughter a pig and cook it and eat it, and I would surely be invited to the party. I told him I don’t eat pig. He asked me if I was a vegetarian, a situation much more likely than eating kosher in this country. I told him, no, that it was written against in the Bible. He replied that it is written that Jesus/Yeshua declared all foods clean. I started back at Acts 10 and suggested that Peter’s interpretation of the vision was clear and that God had declared all people clean, not all “food” clean. I talked about the Hebrew concept of food, that only what was already food could be clean and that the words ‘declared all foods clean’ were not in the original text and not the intention of the original text. They read the NRSV here and ‘declared all foods clean’ is what it says. He seemed to understand what I was talking about immediately, although sometimes Asian politeness takes precedence over forthrightness.
Please pray for many more openings for such conversations. Thank you and shalom.
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