Crossing KCU

Indiana Meets India

At the very beginning of the fall semester every year at K.C.U., they have what is called “Welcome Weekend.” This consists of some basic orientation procedures designed to help the new kids move in smoothly. As an RA that year, I had some responsibilities that were associated with this task. One of my duties was to help the new freshmen guys move into their dorm rooms. It was a good opportunity to meet some of the new students as they arrived, but by the early afternoon of this particular day, I was completely exhausted. It was one of those 90 degree days in late August and I had been moving furniture, appliances, clothes, boxes, and all kinds of things up to the third floor of the dorm all morning. When a break finally rolled around the rest of the RAs started throwing a football around outside, and I went into the front lobby of the dorm to sit in front of the air conditioner.

I was leaning back on a couch with the back of my head directly over the AC when I noticed out of the corner of my eye, something approaching me very quietly as if it didn’t want to disturb me. As I looked up, there before me stood one of the strangest sights I have ever witnessed. At least it was strange at the time. For one thing, this was the very first time I had ever met a person from India. But there I was in shorts and a t-shirt, sweating profusely while cold air was blasting on me, and here was this little dude from India in long dress slacks, a long sleeved, button up shirt, and a sweater over the top. I was completely perplexed by this as I stood up and asked him what was up. He simply wanted to know where the bathroom was, but he was struggling to get it out because his English wasn’t too good. Instead of bathroom he kept asking for the guestroom. Eventually I figured it out, pointed him in the right direction, and went back to my air conditioning. And that was how I first encountered Jeffery Makarios Gujjarlamudi, one of the most dangerous men I’ve ever met in my life.

I use the word dangerous a little differently here. What I mean is that Jeff is the kind of guy that can punch holes in your accepted view of reality without really saying very much at all, and in that way he is dangerous to one’s own accepted view of what is considered to be normal. He came from such a different place and was thinking in such a different way, that to anyone who met him and gave very much thought to him at all, he became a force that turned things upside down, shattered the status quo, and ruined the comfortable lives of anyone who came to know him well. I don’t say all this to build him up into some kind of super-Christian or anything; I’m simply pointing out that this guy had a certain kind of gift that enabled him to shock people into spiritual awareness.

In this country we all too often find ourselves settling into the routine of going to Church, putting our time in, and then programming our spiritual lives around a specific set of rituals, such as praying before meals, or reading the bible for 30 minutes a day, or whatever. Not that those things are bad—it’s just that we can become so comfortable doing them, that we forget to wake up occasionally and listen to what God might be trying to say to us. Jeffery came from a place where his life, and the lives of his family and his church were in perpetual danger for the sole reason that they were Christians. I’m not sure, because I’ve never been in that situation, but I think living in that kind of environment brings with it a sort of spiritual sobriety that we, here in this part of the world, are unable to grasp very easily. Spending time with Jeff and getting to know him, allowed me to catch a glimpse into the kind of close relationship he had with Christ, and it made me hunger for the same thing.

It took a few months before I really started talking to Jeff on a regular basis. In fact, it wasn’t until the second semester of that year that I really became close friends with him. This happened because a few of my closest friends had decided not to come back to the school while they were away for Christmas break. As I often witnessed during my years in and out of K.C.U., the people that I became close with, for a variety of reasons where constantly dropping out, transferring, getting expelled, or just giving up and leaving. This wasn’t much of a surprise by that time because it was becoming increasingly apparent that the environment there was pretty cold and it demanded a lot without giving much in return. One night during the first week of the second semester, after having sat by myself at dinner, I went back to my dorm room and started writing in my journal. I was overcome by how alone I felt so I just started praying and writing down what was going on in my thoughts.

“I’ve not felt what I’m feeling today for a long time. It is like depression in a way, but different. It feels a little like being sick, and it’s beginning to cripple me. My closest friends have all left this place now. I knew they weren’t coming back when I was still at home during the break, but I didn’t imagine it would feel like this without them here. It is so comfortable at home that it is always difficult to imagine the horrible reality of being back at this college while I’m away from it. It’s a battlefield here, and there is no one to help me fight. Lord, I know you are faithful, and for that reason I cannot give up. You have always brought me light whenever I was in darkness. I’m praying right now that you will take the relationships that I still have with others here, and make them into what you want them to be. We need real fellowship, not shallow and fruitless relationships. Draw us closer to you. Speak to us. Help me out of this loneliness, Lord.”

It seems a little dramatic in retrospect, but I’m not kidding you; while I was praying and writing this stuff down in my journal, someone knocked on my door. When I opened it, there was Jeff. I asked him what was up because being an RA people sometimes came to my room because they needed something or wanted something, which I didn’t mind because it helped me reach out to the guys living around me. But Jeff lived at the opposite end of the dorm in another section, so I was curious why he had come. All he said to me was that God told him to come to my room… so he came.

I was completely taken back by this. And that was the beginning of our deep friendship. He started coming each night to my room, and while I would share with him from my vast stock of ramen noodles, he would share with me from his experiences growing up in India, and what he was learning from being in the United States. I would give him food for his stomach, and he would give back spiritual nourishment. It was a pretty good deal for me.

One night Jeff told me the story of how he had been persecuted in India. He was on his scooter one day, taking a blind man home after a worship service at one of their churches, and he had decided to take a short cut that passed through an old graveyard. As he did, they were met by a mob of Hindu radicals who pressed in around them, tore them both off the scooter and began beating them severely after stripping the clothes off them.

In this part of India there is a typical procedure that Hindus use when persecuting Christians. It basically involves beating them up, then stabbing them to death, followed by chopping them into pieces, stuffing them into garbage sacks, and then finally dropping them off at the front door of their home for their family to find. This is an honor specifically reserved for preachers and those involved in spreading the Gospel.

While Jeff was in the process of being beaten he looked at his attackers, saw the knives coming out, noticed the garbage bags lying at their feet, and he knew there was only one thing to do—he called out several times for Jesus and then blacked out. When he came to, there was no one around except him and the blind man who was with him. They were both beaten up and bruised pretty bad, and Jeff’s keyboard was smashed to pieces, but they were otherwise unharmed. Apparently, upon hearing the name of Jesus, they had become even angrier, beating him a lot harder until he went unconscious. But their inability to stab him to death (even though they were bent on doing so) had eventually frightened them enough to leave him alone, and they fled the scene.

It’s nearly impossible to have someone who has been beaten up because of their beliefs sitting in front of you, sharing a meal with you, tell you something like that, and it not impact you in some way. Sure, we hear about this kind of thing all the time, but it’s different when you actually know the person it happened to, and you’re hearing it from their own mouth.

My chosen field of study at the university was Intercultural Studies. The focus of the program was toward preparing students for mission work in another culture, which I’ve already mentioned was an interest of mine. The courses I took consisted mostly of theory that dealt with intercultural interactions, communicating across cultures, awareness of global issues, and a deeper understanding of geographical areas and countries. It was a pretty interesting set of classes, and it definitely deepened my understanding of the rest of the world—as much as it could be deepened while sitting comfortably in a classroom.

My friendship with Jeff was the beginning of my real education in intercultural studies. I learned so many things from talking to him, and interacting with him, that I could never have learned from a lecture in a classroom. There I was studying missionaries and reading about mission work, and here was Jeff actually doing mission work; what’s more, he was doing it in the United States, at a Christian campus, the last place you might expect God to send someone. But this, more than anything else, is what created our bond of friendship. I already knew that God had sent me back to Kentucky, and that I was following him there for a purpose that went well beyond my own education, and in meeting and getting to know Jeff, I began realizing that we were both there for the same reasons. It was becoming more apparent to me now (as the Greyhound excursion had taught me previously) that the term “mission work” was sort of misleading. Mission work, according to what I had been taught from being raised in the Church my whole life, was something that happened in other countries outside the U.S., where people had never heard the gospel. But real mission work was something that happened wherever there was a Christian doing what God told them to do—loving people, serving the community they were in, obeying Christ.
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Hanging out with Jeff during that winter and spring really helped me to deal with two difficult situations that came along that semester. The first situation centered around a guy who I will call Lex (he is the only person in this book whose name I have changed). Lex was a middle-aged guy that had been working his way through college for about as long as I had. He had a family and lived over in the apartments, so the only time I really saw him was in the cafeteria. Lex made pizzas every week day, so whenever I was going through the line, he would notice me and ask for me to quote him the first Bible verse that popped into my head right then and there. It was sort of random, but it was out of the ordinary and I thought it was cool, so I would quote him a different verse each day when he asked.

On one particular day I was in the cafeteria pretty late after most everyone else had left. As I was getting my backpack and leaving I bumped into Lex who was mopping the floor. We exchanged greetings and then, for some reason, I decided to ask him if he wanted to get some coffee and talk for awhile. There was something different about Lex. He wasn’t like anyone else on the campus. Lex was always talking about Jesus and he always seemed to be extremely happy. This contrasted with everything else that was going on around us there, so I thought I would at least sit down and talk to this dude to see what was going on with him.

As soon as I asked him if he wanted to talk, he looked directly at me, and as casually as could be, informed me that he already had a time slot set aside on Monday nights at 10pm for he and I to start having discipleship meetings. I was so shocked by his response that I told him I would be there and then I left the cafeteria. It was a little strange I thought, but it seemed to fit with everything else about him, so I just went along with it.

When the following Monday night rolled around I left my dorm and headed over to the married student apartments on the other side of campus. By that time I had accumulated a sense of apprehension about meeting with him. I didn’t know why because it didn’t make any logical sense to me that this might be a bad thing. He was someone who genuinely seemed interested in focusing on God, and he was passionate about doing the Lord’s work. But with every step I took toward his apartment I felt a growing heaviness inside of me.

When I arrived Lex came out and directed me over to the community building. It was a small building right across from his apartment, and even though it was closed at the time, he had the keys, so we were able to go in and sit down to talk without anyone else being there to disturb us.

As we sat down at a table, across from each other, Lex began talking. And Lex did not stop talking for two hours straight. He talked about so many different things, and jumped from one topic to the next so quickly, that it didn’t take me long to get really confused. I had no idea what he was saying most of the time, but the things I did catch, were his proclamations that he was an end times prophet, that it was his life goal to meet one of the two witnesses mentioned in the book of Revelation, that he was going to disciple me and teach me his ways, that I needed to know who Satan was, that I needed to be equal with God (not better than God, just equal), and that I was a special person chosen by the Lord to be where I was.

The whole thing sounded really messed up, but he was going on for so long about these things, and many other things, that I wasn’t grasping what was really being said. Then at the end of the conversation, Lex began hinting at different areas of my life where I was weak, and he started pointing out and speaking about things going on in my life that there was no way he could have known. At one point, I seriously thought he was reading my mind. He was bringing up things I had done in the past, and he was talking about things that I had only ever talked to God about. It was a very unsettling end to an extremely odd conversation.

As I left the community building and headed back to the dorm, I was shaking from the entire experience. I felt sick inside, like I had been pulled inside out, stripped naked, and had every insecurity and fear I had ever felt dumped on top of me. It was the most horrible feeling in the world. This guy had known things about me that he shouldn’t have known, and the way he spoke to me made me feel like I was a complete piece of crap. He had reminded me of past sin, things I had already confessed to God, and things no one else knew about.

And then there was the stuff he had been saying about God. If he hadn’t said that one thing, that I needed to strive for equality with God, I probably wouldn’t have realized that something was seriously wrong with him. As soon as he had said it, this verse came flying into my mind: “Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.” –Philippians 2:5-7

Yet even with this verse in mind, the walk back to the dorm that night was still a tormenting ordeal as I recalled the entire conversation, struggling to make sense of anything he had said. When I got back to my room, I sat down for a minute and just thought about everything. But the more I thought about it, the more depressed and confused I became. Finally, I decided to go to bed, but first decided to go use the restroom and get something to drink.

When I came out of the bathroom I noticed Jeff sitting alone in the lobby. He was typing something on a laptop, but he looked up at me and instantly asked me what was wrong. So I went over to one of the couches, sat down, and just started telling him everything that had just happened to me. He listened really carefully until I was done, then with a smile on his face, told me not to worry about it. He said that Lex had an evil spirit influencing what he said, and that it was just Satan using him to attack me. Jeff went over what I already knew; that my past sin was in the past, and that God would never bring it up to me like that, and most importantly, God would never speak to me in a way that would cause me to feel the way I did. He reminded me that God convicts us of sin very carefully, and he speaks to us with a loving voice that makes us want to serve him and do what’s right. The kind of fear and condemnation I was feeling was a tactic of the enemy, and the real purpose of the entire conversation was to get me listening to Lex and the evil spirit that was using him.

Every word that Jeff spoke for the next hour healed the wounds that I had suffered from listening to Lex. When I finally went to bed I fell asleep with peace in my mind. But that wasn’t the end of this thing. I was going to see Lex in the cafeteria the next day, and he was still expecting me to come and talk to him and have discipleship meetings once a week. In preparation I did the only thing I could do—I prayed.

The following week I met with Lex again, for the second and final time. He spoke a lot about how powerful Satan was, and that he could really hurt us if we didn’t know him and how he works. This time I sensed the attack coming with each word he said, and I felt the Holy Spirit protecting me. Lex, or whatever was using him, was trying to instill fear in me again. I began praying silently in my mind as Lex talked, and as I did, he began losing his words and started to become agitated and excited, speaking louder and louder. It was a little scary to sit there and watch this happening, but even more, it was just surreal. It was difficult to watch this guy who on the surface seemed to be so passionate about God, but deeper inside was being completely controlled by a spirit from the enemy. It made me feel sorry for him in a way, and I wondered what had happened to him that made him this way.

That last conversation ended with Lex standing up, placing his hands in front of me, and asking if he could lay hands on me. He said that he wanted to give me everything that was inside of him, including his power and knowledge. No one had ever said anything like that to me before, but as soon as the words came out of his mouth, the Holy Spirit instantly filled my mind very loudly with one word… No!

That was my final interaction with Lex. It was an interesting lesson I learned from talking to him. It taught me how careful we have to be when people claim to be speaking God’s word to us, and they aren’t using the Bible. But also, it taught me again how important it is that we know the Lord, and how we must learn to sense when the Holy Spirit speaks to us, and discern when the voices coming at us are from something other than the Spirit of God. There were times that Lex had quoted scripture to me, but it was twisted around and made to mean something different. This is what Satan did to Jesus when he spoke to him in the desert, using passages from the Old Testament to try and deceive the Lord, as if that were actually possible. I also learned from this encounter, that evil spirits typically don’t come against us announcing their presence. They come against us to deceive and manipulate us through fear, and unless we are walking with the Lord, we may never even be aware they are there. Likewise, if they can, they will come against us in ways where we won’t expect them, or even through people who appear to being doing the work of God.
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Well, that was the first trying situation that I had to endure during the final part of that year. The second one centered around a girl named Lena from the Ukraine. But before I get into this I want to make it clear that the situation with Lex and the incident with Lena were two completely different lessons. Lena was in fact one of the most spiritually minded girls I had ever met. She had a real relationship with Christ that was evident by the way she conducted herself. I really believe that’s why we became friends so easily. She was taking a Hebrew language class that I was in, and since there were only five students in this class we naturally started talking one day.

There had been Russian and Ukrainian students on our campus ever since I had started going there, but Lena stood out among all the others I had met. Lena was really a Christian, and she was there for reasons that pertained to God. Some of the other girls that came to study at our college were only pretending to be Christians so they could come to America. But it was obvious from the first time I spoke with her, that this wasn’t the case with Lena. I found as I began getting to know her that she had a deep spiritual life, was focused intently on God’s Word, and above all else, her heart was good and she loved God.

Now it was around this time, that I was facing a major decision in terms of my college career. The Intercultural Studies major required me to spend some time in another culture for at least a ten week period, and more if possible. This particular year was when I had to decide where I was going and make the necessary arrangements.

There were few limits to where I could go which made the decision a little overwhelming. After talking to my academic advisor, we narrowed my choices down to three. The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities conducted top of the line study abroad programs, and as our college was affiliated with them, I decided to attend one of these. My possible choices were England, China, and Russia. These programs were the most logical because I could attend universities in these countries and transfer the credits back to my home institution. So I took these before God, and I asked him to lead me to the right one.

So this process of prayer and decision about where I was going to spend the next fall semester coincided with the time where I was getting to know Lena. In this way God began showing me that he wanted me to go to Russia. I had a pretty good window into the culture through Lena, and so it made more sense to go there than anywhere else. So I applied to the program and was accepted in the early spring. I was excited about it, but I was also a little apprehensive. I had never been out of the country for more than a week, and that was just Mexico, and I was with eighty other people from my home church. This was going to be four months spent away from everyone I knew, in the company of complete strangers.

So I did have some initial anxiety about the whole thing, but after dinner this one night, a few days after it became official that I was going to Russia, a conversation with Lena took these minor, normal concerns that I had and kicked them up a notch, so to speak. Lena said that she had something really important to tell me on this particular night, which I thought seemed a little ominous. Then she went on to explain to me that I should not go to Russia. She informed me, as kindly as possible, yet in very blunt, simple language, that I was too overweight to go to Russia, and as a result, I would hate it there, and the people would laugh at me, and that no one would ever listen to anything I had to say—that, in short, I would be extremely miserable there, and I should not go. Lena was crying by the time she finished telling me all this, and abruptly left the dinner table, leaving me there to ponder this sudden barrage of information.

Now the truth is, I have indeed been the fat dude for most of my life, and even though I have grown used to the occasional comment from people, it still hurts when someone uses this to make an abstract judgment about me… even if it’s the truth. It was no different in this situation with my Ukrainian friend, aside from the fact that in my mind she represented an entire culture of people that I knew little about, and in which I was about to spend four months. Coupled with the fact that Lena was a good friend, I considered the information to be pretty trustworthy, regardless of how much it hurt. I would be lying if I said that it wasn’t a concern that had already passed through my mind anyway, even before this conversation. But having the conversation took a small concern that I had, and transformed it into a huge wall of fear that made me seriously question whether or not I should really embark on this excursion. When you add to all this the fact that our conversation happened in the spring, and I had all summer to think about it until I was to leave in the following autumn, perhaps you can imagine the state of mind I was in during the weeks before I finally left for Russia.

Eventually I was able to get over being mad at Lena, knowing that she really was concerned about me, and we remained friends. Regardless however, one of the difficult things about being overweight is that it makes you inescapably more vulnerable to the armchair-quarterback scrutiny of other people. It’s not something that you can hide. Everyone has weaknesses of some kind or another, but physical weakness isn’t usually something you can cover up—it’s just out there for everyone to see.

Being overweight also makes you consider things that anyone who isn’t overweight would never think about. For example, whenever I go to a restaurant with friends, the first thing I think about upon entering is if I will be able to comfortably fit into the booths there. I’ve been in situations where I couldn’t fit into a booth, and our entire party had to move. That’s kind of embarrassing. Another thing that sometimes happens is that my friends will decide to go on a hike in the woods or something, and while it is great fun and relaxing to them, it is tremendous work for me, and I often have to stop and go back, or just be left behind. This kind of thing over time has produced certain sensitivities to my environment that cause me to constantly size things up and make decisions based on whether or not I will physically be able to manage something. I’ve learned to live with it, but it is a weakness, and sometimes it’s a little frustrating to deal with.

Deciding to go to Russia was going to be a test. I knew that from the beginning, but I hadn’t expected to get dealt such a heavy blow that early on, before I even left. What I was basically left with, after talking to Lena, was a decision about what I was going to do—listen to God, or listen to my own fear.
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Jeff ended up staying at my house for a few weeks that summer, and God really used him to encourage me. But more than that, God used him to show me some things that were important. I would wake up some nights to find Jeff praying over me, and the longer he was around, the more I began realizing that this guy didn’t take for granted the time he spent in anyone’s house. He would even sneak outside in the middle of the night and walk around the house praying when he thought everyone was asleep. The main thing I saw in Jeff was that he took seriously the responsibility that God had given him in coming to this country. I knew it was a lesson for me, that God was showing me the responsibility that I had as well, and that soon it would be my turn to be the stranger. I was going to be the foreigner in someone else’s house.

As the time drew near for me to leave, I shoved out of my mind all the fears and anxieties that had been building up, and I resolved to do this thing, no matter what was going to happen. God had given me confirmation that it was his will for me to go to Russia, and that was all I needed to know.

“But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’ Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ’s power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ’s sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong.” –2 Corinthians 12:9-10