Faith, Knowledge, & College - Episode 9

What is Faith, Knowledge, & College?

Navigating the Journey

Unknown Speaker 0:00
This is a Kun V studios original program. The content of this program does not reflect the views or opinions of 91.5 jazz and more the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, or the Board of Regents of the Nevada System of Higher Education. Black ball, triple seven Productions presents the black ball. Triple seven protections, podcast,

Unknown Speaker 0:19
Faith knowledge in college edition, this program has been brought to you by black ball point triple seven predictions. Now here is your host, the black

Unknown Speaker 0:27
ball himself, and welcome back. Yes, we are talking about some more InterVarsity topics. I'm your host, as always. Debris foster I'm joined by two special guests, aka Jared Nixon and AJ panglinan. How are you doing today? So these two over the summer have gone to Bosnia for a mission trip hosted by InterVarsity. Yes, every summer there's one of two mission trips, as far as we know, out of our greater Vegas area, aka Vegas urban services, which we'll be talking about in the future, and Bosnia, which will which will be the topic of this podcast. So my assistant case will be assisting me with some questions. We have limited time, so I'm going to start off with a question number one, what inspired you to go to Bosnia?

Unknown Speaker 1:10
What inspired me to go to Bosnia is when I started college, I a lot of students that do like summer classes during the summer, but I had the dream and like, just the desire to do something for God during the summer and not do any like extracurricular or like for school or like work. So that is one of the things that I told myself when I was in when I am in college, is like, I'm gonna do something like mission related or service related during summer.

Unknown Speaker 1:51
How about you? Jared,

Unknown Speaker 1:53
one main thing I that really pushed me was just the fact of traveling. I knew that I really wanted to travel in the future, and it was a good opportunity for me to leave the country and be around people that I already know, and just be able to be on a mission. And I think that's something that I found, is that this was the first time, this would be the first thing that would show me what I wanted to do, if I wanted to do missions long term or full time ministry, or if this is just something that I want to do smaller and so it gave me that beginning like kind of Ignite if I wanted to do that.

Unknown Speaker 2:32
All right, moving on. Alrighty. So given the expense of prices the ticket for the mission trip, what were some ways that InterVarsity helped you to afford it?

Unknown Speaker 2:45
So we have this called MPD, which is mission, no, like ministry, partnership. What is it?

Unknown Speaker 3:00
It's it's just a way to finance, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 3:02
so it's still way, is a way to, like, do fundraising. So we did not spend any money from our own pockets, and all we did was fundraise for the whole probably, like three months before the trip, we did fundraising. We asked for money, we had meetings with people churches, and we did a lot of asks, like around the valley in Vegas and also in California. And yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 3:38
I guess kind of relating it to how the rest of InterVarsity goes. All the staff here that normally work at UNLV, they do fundraising year long. And so that looked like, yeah, reaching out to churches, reaching out to partners so that they can do this full time. And so for us, because we're only fundraising for that expense of going to Bosnia. We did it a little bit shorter, but we're still trying to get a lot of money. And so all of us, yeah, fundraised out of the generosity of all the people that we met

Unknown Speaker 4:13
up with. Alrighty, so what are some of the ex the activities that you guys have experienced, other than, you know, like spreading the word. Because I'm sure there was a lot of activities you guys have experienced there. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 4:24
absolutely, the main thing we actually were there for was to spread the gospel. But we're also there to host English conversation classes. And so that looked like some of the students in Bosnia coming to these classes weekly, three times a week for two hours, and they would be a part of this conversation course that we had planned. We had set up activities for them to use their English and talk with us, because they don't really see very many American or, I guess, native speaking English. Uh. Native English speakers very often. And so they really wanted to have the chance to do that. Outside of that, a main thing that we like to do was go to coffee with them. And so instead of, because it's predominantly Muslim, and they don't normally, you know, go out to have drinks and stuff, they usually like to do coffee. And so late night, even they, they go out to these coffee shops and have long conversations. Many, many times you would go two or three hours just talking, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 5:31
coffee is a very big culture in Bosnia, like, an hour of coffee, it's like, not like, you have to go get coffee at least like two hours or three hours or longer than that. But we also did a lot of things, like events, like we had paint nights, volleyball game nights, and we just like, like, we say it's like we live life with them, and we learned the Bosnian culture. We eat their food and like ask questions, just like being friends with them. And I personally am in a different group than Jared. So Jared is in the English classes, but I am the social media team. What we did is like, we went out and interview students, and we did like contents for their Instagram and met students. And I think if I'm going to summarize what we did is like, we made friends, we went to coffee, we help with English conversation, and we had fun. Kind

Unknown Speaker 6:41
of sounds a little bit similar to our after varsity activities, except we don't. We don't really drink coffee that late at night, but it sounds a lot better than like the average thing that most of us, not, not not not us, but like some people would do, but going out for like, a late night cup of coffee, getting hyper for no reason, losing this.

Unknown Speaker 7:03
Yeah, I guess the main thing was that, because we didn't have cars and everything, we'd have to walk 30 minutes home. And so at least for me, pretty I would, I would drink a cup of coffee, and I would think, like, Oh, I'm gonna be up all night, but I've been walking all day. I walked home. I actually ended up going to bed, pretty reasonably so.

Unknown Speaker 7:22
And like coffee, we used a coffee like Bosnian used coffee. It doesn't have to be like you're drinking coffee. It's like, you just go to a coffee shop or somewhere, and, like, just hang out with friends. And they have this thing called chafe. It's like, it's a Bosnian word for, like, just hanging out and spending time. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 7:43
it's a word for, like, the style of hangout that they do. It's a little, probably, to an American more like lackadaisical and more like just, you know, hanging out and not worrying about what you're doing the next day, not worrying about your job, other stuff, just being in the moment

Unknown Speaker 8:00
for oh, wow, that's pretty interesting, as actually sounds like a lot of fun. Sometimes we love to do yeah,

Unknown Speaker 8:07
definitely was a wake up call for maybe some of us, how we lived in America, for sure, definitely, given

Unknown Speaker 8:15
the fact that Bosnia is predominantly Muslim, where there were the students there, were they open to listening to the Gospel, or did you experience any hesitation while sharing the gospel? How did, how did that go? I'm just curious. Yeah.

Unknown Speaker 8:30
So Bosnia is is predominantly Muslim, especially the city we were in. We were in the capital, Sarajevo, and that's even more Muslim, the percentage of Muslims closer to 9095 I'm pretty sure. And so majority people we talked to were Muslim. I wouldn't say there was any hesitation for me to bring it up. I think that everybody I listened to or talked to were very open. Surprisingly, it felt like a lot of them were really curious as to what we believe in, what we do, why we do it, kind of, I guess, comparing it to a lot of like American people and college students I've met on campus at UNLV, it seemed even more easy to talk to the Bosnians than them. Sometimes I feel like just their willingness to talk. I think that they have less opportunity to talk to Americans in general, so that also brought up more curiosity. And, yeah, I just think that I was really expecting less conversation and and I didn't want to push anything and be like, Hey, let's talk about this. But it almost felt like sometimes they even wanted to bring it up, which is really cool, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 9:42
and, um, I think the reason for that, that sir, like, more open, was because we had, like, a relationship with them beforehand. So we started, like, making, actually, like friends, like we built, like trust with Bosnian and. And a context in like the Bosnia, like religion is very important to them, because it's their religion and their culture are very integrated with each other and their religion and their family. So they know how important faith is, and like religion. And I think the reason why they're also like, very curious about Christianity is because they know that Christianity is also, like, important to us personally. So like getting to know us as friends also mean like talking about our faith. And like, I do feel that the same thing like, I think they are more open to like talking about spiritual conversations, asking questions, and they generally just want to get to know us and know who we are, what we believe in. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 10:57
you know, I've noticed that, especially with a couple of international students sometimes, like they would want, they would want to get to know you. But I'm not trying to talk down or anything. But it seems like the American culture has become so stubborn with like, certain aspects of like, travel cultures, countries, they we we really need like as American people, we really need to all be, be more open to others, like, get to know what their lifestyle is about. And especially after hearing that, I'm surprised, like I'm I'm glad that they were open to get to know your get to know your faith story. I mean, I would have been open to sharing my faith with them as well.

Unknown Speaker 11:41
Yeah, absolutely, yeah, definitely, something I didn't really expect. But at the same time, you know, they were learning about who we were, not just our religion, but also what American like, their stereotypes of America. Is it any different than who we are? They're learning about, you know, the colleges that we have, the stuff that we do and integrated in, that was our religion, just because of how much we identify with that.

Unknown Speaker 12:09
And I think they're more personal and like, they really want to know the person and they they did have like thoughts about, like, the American culture and like Christians. But they did not use that to like, judge us, but they use it to like, oh, I want to know more. So they were curious about who we are as a person, and not just because we're Americans or we're from America.

Unknown Speaker 12:39
That makes sense. Yeah, they always say, Never judge a book by its cover. Same up. The same should apply to a person. An individual gets a note, get it, gets a know someone, rather than what they're what they're known for, just gets a Noah person, one word of helpful advice, especially if you have that bad habit. Not gonna lie, I've had that before, and let's move on to the next question. So what are the environmental differences that you've guys noticed, like, come from over there, compared to here in America, anything in particular, like your housing, like everyday life, like shopping. It could be anything,

Unknown Speaker 13:16
yeah, I guess the first thing would be, probably wet weather. That was the main difference. It was a lot more humid. Wasn't as hot as Vegas, but some days it felt just as hot. And main difference, environmentally, that you know definitely changed our way of looking is very little places at AC, especially the place that we lived in, the the office that we do all of our stuff in, there was no AC. And so some days, some days, were worse than others. For sure, used a lot of fans open, opened a lot of windows. But I think something that I've kind of told people a lot is I almost liked it more without the AC, because when you'd go outside, it would be the same, you know, if there's no AC in the building, yeah, you're used to it. Yeah, you're already used to it. And so I almost like this idea of like being having no AC, because yeah, and then, so then, when you compare it to Vegas, you know, you're in this nice, cool, air conditioned room, and then you go out for two minutes and you're dying, because you're just not used to it. And also, you know, it's a lot hotter, but that's something that I definitely took and, yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 14:35
I think another thing is like walking. So we did not have any car. So we walk everywhere, but everywhere, like everything is just like walking distance, which is really good. And what are they? Yeah, well, so

Unknown Speaker 14:55
we went to two churches, and one was actually, like a part of the place we stayed at. It so we didn't need to walk there. And then the other church that we'd go to, it was, it was 4545 minutes, yeah, but we could have taken a tram, yeah. We almost never used the public transport, the auth office where we did our classes, and then also, like downtown, where we went to coffee, was like Max 30 minute walk. And it was, you know, that that seems like an a lot to American but to all the Bosnians, that was small. And over time, you just get so used to it that it was small. So also,

Unknown Speaker 15:32
like, the public transportation is very accessible, like, they're always on time, and like, you can use it wherever you want to go. And like, there are busses, trams, there are scooters where, like that you can rent. It's just, like, more accessible to the public. And like, just the walking is, like, it's good for your health and everything, but it's also, yeah, um, more productive,

Unknown Speaker 16:02
I would say, yeah. It seems, it seems like people take, take a lot of these things for granted, and we need to, like, pray for those people and at least try to get more exercise, you know, like walking distance. I mean, I get it some places. It's not safe in America, but yeah, wherever it is safe, it's best to that's where it's best to, like, practice those things, because not a lot of people have access to AC. Yeah, I'll never, I'll never forget sleep, having to sleep, sleep in a hot room with no power. Like 12 years ago, because my house was not destroyed, but, like, my backyard was destroyed from a bad storm already. So, um, so did you develop any connections with people?

Unknown Speaker 16:46
Yes, I definitely develop a lot of friendship that until now, even if I'm back, I'm like, connected to them, like we talk and like text and we met a lot of people, but I like 20 to 30 people, but I think I really made friends with five to six of them. And I can say that these are the friends that I want to keep, like connection with and talk, even if we're not together, we're like, in different places, other side of the world. And yeah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 17:33
I think a lot of this trip was based on building connection that would the main that was the main thing. And so, yeah, I think I agree with AJ. There was 2025, students we probably saw only, you know, three or four we'd maybe gotten really close with and shared, you know, things that we had did and then. And you know, the hope is that we keep up with those and text them. It's a little hard with the the time difference, but I, I really value those people. I feel like we we got close super quick compared to some of the people that I've been friends with. So we

Unknown Speaker 18:14
got really close super quick, and it was so hard to leave because saying goodbye to them, meaning probably we're not going to see each other ever again, or we might see each other we don't know. So like, we had this connection, this good friendship, and it was genuine, and I know, like I miss them, like, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 18:37
I personally don't blame you, because I not that I've traveled outside of the US, but I'd probably feel the same way if I were to meet someone and connect with them in person, alrighty. So were there any high or low expectations that you or any staff had during the trip? So that could be like during as far as preaching like gospel or those people accepting Christ?

Unknown Speaker 19:02
I guess, before coming to Bosnia, the staff told us that to have a lower expectation that we might not even see a student come to Christ, or we might not even see a student go to a Bible study or go to Sunday service, and we might not even have spiritual conversations with them, and that's okay, because that's like the context of Bosnia. So we had low expectations coming to Bosnia, but that coming there we I think our expectations exceeded, like all our expectations. So, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 19:43
I don't think we necessarily had any high expectations of anything we were we had things to do and we knew our plan. We didn't expect anything to go like I guess. Yes, yeah, like, like, AJ said we wouldn't likely see anybody just start, you know, following Christianity and stuff like that. And so there wasn't really any expectation. I think that the main expectation probably we had was that we as Americans going there had were expected to kind of be more outgoing and and start conversation and start Hangouts. That was not necessarily a high expectation, but just something that we had to consider when going here and yeah,

Unknown Speaker 20:32
and what they said to us is like, just make friends. Like, get to know them, and just you go there, talk to them, ask questions and be friends.

Unknown Speaker 20:46
When I come, when it came to them, considering accepting Christ, like, how did they feel about it? Or, what did you notice?

Unknown Speaker 20:53
Um, there was only a couple opportunities for for us to, like, ask that, and I feel like a lot of them didn't really give answers or or sort of, I guess they didn't. They didn't, we didn't really give opportunity to, like, go further into, you know, what does that look like for you to follow Christ? Because

Unknown Speaker 21:16
following Christ like choosing your own religion, not the religion of your family, is a lot to ask, a lot of pressure, a lot of pressure, because some family, they might disown you for saying that you stop believing in their religion, or it's just the judgment of the community and the family, and it's a lot to ask, and just them going to Bible study, it's like a very big win for us. And our goal was not to, like, convert them. Our goal is to just be friends with them and for them to say that, Oh, I have a Christian friend, and I have a good, like relationship with this Christian friend, and to show them how we live our lives as Christians, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 22:10
and I guess for especially Bosnians, that map of like converting to Christ can be anywhere from five to 10 to maybe even 15 years. It looks like we really don't know what that looks like, and our goal is to just keep doing what we're doing, keep preaching, keep telling them what we believe in, and hopefully they can, can can they can consider it so from

Unknown Speaker 22:39
for those who are listening, I'll get to the gospel in a couple of minutes. So, but given your responses to that question, we need to pray for the unsaved, not just there, but everywhere and all right, let's move on to the next question. So what were your thoughts on the mission trip itself, and would you recommend it to other students?

Unknown Speaker 23:00
I think the mission trip itself was wonderful. I think that it was probably one of the coolest things I've ever done. Actually, I'd never been to Eastern Europe. It was a completely different area to explore, and new people and new food and just everything was different than what I had lived in and what I've traveled to previously. And one thing that I also really liked is that I was actually I was able to engage in a lot of their culture based on the people. And so sometimes you travel, sometimes you go and you don't really meet locals, you don't really meet people. You're kind of just there to to look and so to be inside of the city and talk with Bosnians and stay there for more than two or, you know, a week, was really cool. It showed me a lot. And, yeah, I wouldn't, I would, I wouldn't trade it for anything. And so yeah, and then I definitely would recommend it to others, just based on that, but also for people looking to help others, but also like grow in your own faith. And so something that I felt tested sometimes was when people, you know, some of the Muslim students, would ask me hard questions about, like, why do you believe Jesus is God? And, you know, what do you actually believe in? And sometimes, as Christians, we just have this, like, straightforward thought, and it makes us think a lot more like makes us think about what we truly believe in and why we believe in it, and so definitely a test, but

Unknown Speaker 24:47
helped me grow a lot, for sure, really quick. AJ, because we're kind of running short on time. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 24:52
I recommend for anyone, or like students, to actually go to Bosnia. Because you learn a lot about yourself. You learn a lot about a different culture, but you learn a lot about yourself. It's definitely a challenge. And stepping out of your bound like your comfort zone, and risking it's just good for yourself, and just learning about God and yourself. It's just yeah, if that's what, something.

Unknown Speaker 25:26
Thank you. If you're a student at UNLV. So fun fact, Jared and AJ, they both lead, they both lead Bible studies. You can Jared leads his Bible studies on Thursdays at 4pm and AJ leads her studies that on Wednesdays at 4pm as well. Where do you, where do you? Where are your studies located at

Unknown Speaker 25:49
mine? Is it architecture building?

Unknown Speaker 25:51
Mine's on the first floor of the library, alrighty.

Unknown Speaker 25:54
So you can follow InterVarsity on Instagram, whether you're a student at UNLV CSN or Nevada State InterVarsity at UNLV on Instagram, or InterVarsity at Nevada State on Instagram. So how do you so? How do you come to Christ? Say something like this, Dear God, I admit I'm a sinner and need of a Savior. I believe Jesus died on the cross for your past, present and future sins, that He was buried and rose again on the third day. Remember John 316 sums up so well, For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son that whosoever believeth in him shall not perish but have everlasting life. Romans, eight, one, there's therefore now no condemnation to those who are in Christ, Jesus, henceforth are simply put. One saved, always saved. The Holy Spirit will lead you, guide you. He will be your best friend. The pictures of that angel on the demon on your shoulders, the angel will, once you have the Holy Spirit, the angel will unleash, like Superman style, well far beyond Superman and blackball triple seven productions. You can follow me on Instagram, and I'm also following InterVarsity, UNLV and CSN or Nevada State. I'm not sure if they have an Instagram, but if you're looking for a Christian group on campus, either of those campuses, UNLV, CSN, Nevada State, I'd highly recommend InterVarsity, hope, church, or every nation campus. Those, those are the three that I would recommend personally. And yeah, so I thank you AJ, and thank you Jared for for being here with me. I really appreciate it, and I hope this was a great encouragement, and I hope we plant a lot of we planted a lot of seeds today, and soon I'll be talking about what it's like to be a Christian on campus. I'll be inviting another podcaster on his name is, his name is JoJo Fitz, and I'll be inviting an InterVarsity staff member. So thank you.

Unknown Speaker 27:47
Yeah. Thanks, Jabri forever. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 27:49
Alrighty, so until next time black balls gotta bounce. You.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai