Just returned from the first full day of the Casas Missions Fair. Seven Casas missionaries (including yours truly), were presented to the church. Two were people I haven't seen in at least five to seven years. It was great touching base with them again, as well as additional people who have been praying for Eagle TV for many years. It was great to meet people who told me of their prayers for Eagle TV—and I had no idea they even knew about us in the first place.Stefani helped run the Mongolia booth. I forgot to snap photos of it, I was so busy running back and forth between the booth and my stand-up time in the morning services. I'll try to get someone else's photos to post later.
Our booth featured an old jeep with a projector on top playing Mongolian TV programming. A large map the Steppe-by-Steppe team made for me before I left Mongolia pin-pointed the 84 communities they have touched for Christ (and the ten churches they have planted so far). The level of excitement about the ministry was so high it energized me. Thanks to the folks at Casas for inviting me back and putting together a great display for us.
Right next to our display was a sort of "Welcome to Asia" area where participants presented passports for entry and were greeted by Buddhist monks. Of course, they weren't real Buddhist monks, they were three white guys wearing orange wraps looking like they needed just a bit of a tan.
One of the guys got my attention when he turned around and I saw the Hebrew lettering on his back. Now, forget for a moment that the guys were wearing too few cloths for a monk. Just seeing someone in a fake monk's outfit with Hebrew writing on his back was a head turner. "Dude, not to many monks have Hebrew on the back. What's that mean?" I asked.
"It's a phrase that King David used to praise God as his Lord and King."
"That's not something you'd hear a monk say either," I noted. Buddhism is built entirely around "self." It doesn't subscribe to the idea of an all-powerful, loving Creator that demonstrated selflessness. I'm sure a Buddhist somewhere will disagree with that, saying that Buddhism is about denying self. But I don't buy it, and neither should you. Jesus said, "By their fruits you will know them." Cultures dominated by Buddhism don't create selfless societies. Quite the contrary. A Buddhist blogger best summed up the selfishness of Buddhism, and what it does to societies, like this (pay attention, this is golden):