Christopher Coen
Melissa Sogard
nancylee1
An article in The Roanoke Times tells the case of a retired Southern
Baptist couple and the Nepali refugees they have assisted. It seems as if the couple have good hearts, and they have obviously been enormously helpful to the Nepali community. While claiming that they don’t proselytize (the act of attempting to convert people to another opinion and, particularly, another religion) the couple have begun Christian services for the Hindu Nepalis.
…By the time Diana and Jim Martin heard about the July 29 fire at Westover Manor apartments, the building was about to be condemned.
The morning after the fire, the Botetourt County couple stood in the Westover parking lot next to their matching minivans. They were surrounded, as they usually are, by a couple dozen Nepali refugees who live in the southwest Roanoke complex — including one family of four that was displaced by the fire…
…Before the Nepalis became their calling, the lifelong Southern Baptists knew nothing about ritual cremations or eating goat stew, the kind you chew carefully before spitting out the bones.
A retired social worker, Diana had never owned a passport or traveled outside the country — unless you count the Canadian side of Niagara Falls. She concedes that she still struggles to adapt to some of the customs, including Hindu funerals and ritual cremations: “They put chrysanthemums in the body’s mouth!”
But the couple sealed their commitment when they traded in their cars for minivans so they could haul refugees around to appointments and classes, to doctor visits and radiation treatments, and — in several cases, with four more soon to deliver — to the birth of a child. Their gas bill is $500 a month…
…They met the Nepalis three years before the fire, in the same Westover complex. New volunteers for Commonwealth Catholic Charities’ Refugee and Immigration Services, the Martins were assigned as mentors to an Iraqi woman and her two sons…
…On a recent afternoon, Diana’s list is several items long and growing by the minute: drop off eye medication for a man with allergies, buy $97 worth of groceries for a woman whose food stamp card had been deactivated, deliver her standard birthday gift of four helium balloons to a girl…
“Dinah, you come to my home! Come to my home!” exclaims 4-year-old Salina Kadariya, on the stoop of a Mountain Avenue apartment building where several Nepali families have gathered to greet Dinah Mom. Salina wants a princess backpack for school; all the girls do…
…”Servant evangelism” is her term for what they do, an experience she doesn’t believe is easily replicated in modern America — or even on exotic foreign mission trips. “We’re showing our love by serving them, doing what Jesus did,” she says, adding that they don’t proselytize.
They do pick up more than 75 adults and children every Sunday for the Nepali-led Christian service they began in their Jefferson Center space.
Most of the Roanoke Nepalis are Hindu, including many of those attending the church. As Lutjen put it, “For many of them, they’ve got so many gods, they’ve just added Jesus to the list.”
Indeed, most are religiously inclusive, according to translator Laxman Bhandari, a Nepali refugee who arrived in 2009 and lives in southwest Roanoke’s Terrace Apartments with his wife, Lalita.
Though he admires the social work the Martins do, he doesn’t attend their service, preferring the Indian-founded Hindu temple in Roanoke County. “We lost everything — our country, our land. The only wealth we came here with is our culture and religion,” Bhandari said.
“We will celebrate with other religions, as long as there is mutual respect.”… Read more here
