Australian Elder
Having
been betrayed by the town's
local pastors, Kristin and I withdrew from
them, continued to pray, read the Bible, and cast out demons together.
One day, after taking turns with Kristin to read the Bible at a café, I noticed an older white guy a few tables away from us. He was writing on a notebook and had a Bible on his table. He must have heard us read ours in English as the three of us were the only foreigners in the café. Was he the member of an expat church in the area that we didn't know about? I waited for him to look my way to greet him but he didn't, so I approached him and asked him if he is a Christian. He looked up and said yes. Did he live in town? No, he was visiting from the capital city. Did he know of any expat churches in the area? He said no and then asked me if he could have a word with me outside, so I said sure.
After walking outside and about ten yards away from the café, he turned around and said that while I hadn't recognized him, he was the Australian elder from the large expat church in the capital city with whose family I had had dinner a couple of years earlier and whom I had emailed about a woman with a demon arriving from China.
He asked if the young woman I was with in the café was that woman. When I said yes, he said in an aggressive tone that since I was a single man, I shouldn't be with her.
After pausing for a second, I told him that he is right, and because a single man shouldn't minister alone to a single woman, I had looked for the body of Christ, including women, to gather around her to minister to her. In fact, he and his church were the very first people to whom I had reached out. And what happened? He, the church's elder, passed off my request to a woman and then remained silent when she refused to even pray for Kristin. And when I went to his church, his pastor and the director of the Christian foundation that rents him the building had both lied to me and wouldn't even let me have a room to pray for her myself. He and they all have families, live in houses, and are far better equipped to help Kristin than a single man renting a room at a cheap guest house. Yet they didn't help her, and neither would anyone else, and now he is telling me that I shouldn't help her either?
The Australian elder replied that I hadn't looked hard enough, so I told him that I had called every expat church in the capital city, and all of them either didn't get back to me or declined to help. When I took her to one that advertised deliverance ministry, instead of letting us inside and at least praying for Kristin, they had called the cops and forced us into and hauled us away in an ambulance. Eventually I had sent her to Korea with a Korean pastor and his family. When he told me that he wants to send her back to me, I had declined and found her a young American pastor and his family in Korea to care for her. When they returned to the States and she was about to be homeless, I had had no choice but to take her back. So I had looked very, very hard. After not helping, who was he to tell me to not help her?
He repeated that a single man still shouldn't be ministering to a single woman. So I asked him if the Samaritan should have walked past the robbed and beaten victim on the road to Jericho if the victim were a woman?
He then tried to pull rank. He said he is not only an elder of the large expat church in the capital city but also the regional director of Navigators, a large missionary organization. Based on his experience, he knew that it shouldn't be so difficult for me to find a woman or a family to help a single woman.
I congratulated him on his lofty credentials and told him that since he is so highly placed and saying that it shouldn't be hard to find a woman or a family to help Kristin, he should just do it. In fact, if they have a room for Kristin but don't want to get involved in casting demons out of her, just have them provide a room for her and I will go and minister to her. She really needs a room to start.
He confidently said that that shouldn't be a problem, said he will email me shortly, and left.
After not hearing back from him for four days, I emailed him and reminded him of his commitment. He replied that he had found a woman in the capital city who had "offered to sit with" Kristin to "hear her story." So I reminded him that he had said he will find someone to house Kristin, not just hear her story. Why would Kristin or any other woman in her situation tell her story, which is extremely personal and painful, to a stranger? Did the woman he mentioned or any other woman he knew want to house Kristin?
The esteemed elder did not reply.