Buddhism and Shamanism

This week we attended a conference on how to share Christ with people of Buddhist and Shamanist backgrounds. It was a very interesting conference that gave us a better understanding of both the history and the every-day mindset of people here. One of the most encouraging aspects was to see Buryats and Russians at the conference excited about reaching their republic for Christ! Local representatives from different churches here in Ulan Ude and other cities/villages were at this seminar. Today (the last day) Buryats and Russians proposed a plan of meeting regularly together to unite in prayer and in reaching Buryats for Christ. Among other things we went to a local Datsan (Buddhist monestary) to see some of the aspects of the religion. We were able to see things that we learned such as some of the symbols in the artwork as well as see first hand how religious practices are carried out. There is such an emptiness in the religious rituals. The first picture is of prayer wheels that are supposed to build your karma as they turn. An interesting thing we heard is that Dali Lama has actually endorsed prayers that you can download onto your harddrive (which spins much faster than the prayer wheels in the picture) to build good karma. You can also see in the middle picture coins that people have left as an offering in front of the idol. Lamas (Buddhist monks) actually invite spirits to live in different idols. The lamas will also often ask the spirits from these idols to posess their body (kind of a reverse exorcism). It really leaves you with a terrible feeling to see that people are asking evil spirits into their body, especially when you know that God loves them and wants to put His own wonderful Spirit into them to give guidance and strength in freedom. There is so much more that we could say, but I will just end by saying it has given us a lot to think about and pray about. We definitely need our Lord with us every moment.