Prayer for a friend

[Davidizer13]

Right, so I'm in college, pursuing a double major in environmental science and geology, and over the past couple years, I've made friends with a Chinese exchange student in the geology department, who goes by the name Peter. He's a wilder soul than I; I'm here to study and get my degree, while I think he's more here to live like an American college kid and come out with a degree. I live way off campus, and commute by bus to campus. Last year, he went on academic probation and had to appeal, or something, to stay at the college.

As it so happens, we have had a few classes together, and since we're friends, we've partnered up on a few projects, and I've ended up doing a lot of the work. Part of it might be the language barrier, but from what I've seen, he isn't much of a hard worker or a great student. In our latest project, we have to present a scientific journal article, and he had a couple that he found. The better one turned out not to be an article, but a dissertation that wasn't available at the college. So I e-mailed him back last night about it...

...and finally, I unloaded all this frustration our relationship this quarter has put on me. I told him, bluntly, that he needs to take more responsibility in this partnership: he's taking a lighter load of classes on purpose, and so one would expect higher quality work overall, and that's not happening. Furthermore, he's cheating on his girlfriend (currently in China) three nights a week with someone who he's trying to keep at arm's length; a fake girlfriend, if you will. All this came out in the e-mail.

And then I told him that we need to get back to work, and apologized for how cowardly I was in not doing this in person, and that I had a duty as a friend to point out where things are going horribly wrong so we can fix them, and then explained that I had been praying for him all this time, and that I had failed as an ambassador of Christ by getting so frustrated with everything and not showing God's love to him. I don't know how hypocritical those last two parts came across as, in the context of the rest of the message, but they had an effect on him.

The next day in class, he said he respected that I had prayed for him. He said that the part about his fake girlfriend made him feel guilty, and then asked if I believed in "heaven and hell;" as you probably know, there's not a whole lot of precedent for Christianity in modern China. I told him that I did; I had said several things to that effect once before. So now he's interested in Christianity, or at least my faith, so please pray that I'll have the right words to tell him when we meet tomorrow: that I can explain more clearly what I believe and that it'll stick. Thanks.

[Kankokujin]

Hey. Whether or not you misrepresented Christianity or not, don't beat yourself about it. We all make mistakes. If only you knew the similar mistakes I made, you'd feel so much better. I think overall, God is really using this situation to call out to him so I think you're on the right track. I really respect that you are trying to help him out so much. In this world, it's not easy to find people like you are who are willing to go out of their way to help others that way. Trust me, I feel like that guy a lot of times too. Well, I'll be praying for you.