International students find comfort in worship

LAFAYETTE, Ind. (WTW) — A little more than three years ago, Suman Maity moved to West Lafayette from his home in Kolkata, India, to study ecological sciences and engineering at Purdue University. But trying circumstances — stress, loneliness and two car accidents — prompted Maity to seek answers outside the lab.

At a house of worship.

He walked away from his first accident in 2009 on Interstate 70, but another one, this time on Interstate 65 in August 2010, shook him up.

“I had a little bit of concussion and laceration … but this experience actually changed me,” said the 27-year-old, who graduated in December and now is working as a research scientist at Purdue. “I came out alive. I was unsure what to do with my life at that point in time. After the two accidents, I could’ve been dead, but I was not.”

A friend referred Maity to Paul Briggs, the campus pastor at Kossuth Street Baptist Church in Lafayette, where Maity has been attending services since November 2010.

“You cannot live in isolation,” he said. “You need some type of friends or family. The (Briggs) family is very helpful in treating you as a friend.”

Aside from terrifying accidents, just relocating to a foreign world rife with differences can be difficult for international students. Some, like Maity, find comfort in local worship centers. These spiritual houses help foreign students find community by welcoming them or creating an environment that feels just like home.

The story of a spiritual community embracing foreign students plays itself out often in Greater Lafayette, thanks to Purdue boasting one of the largest international student populations in the country.

The university’s total international enrollment ranks second among U.S. public institutions, second in the Big Ten and fourth in the nation, according to the university’s Fall 2011 International Student and Scholar Enrollment and Statistical Report. This school year, 7,934 students — 20 percent of the total 39,637 undergraduate, graduate and professional students at Purdue University — are international.

Some places of worship are seeing their international student populations grow, too. Purdue’s international student population has grown 68.9 percent in the past 10 years, increasing from 4,695 to 7,934 last year.

Pastor Tom He of Greater Lafayette Chinese Alliance Church said he has seen the international student population increase since he became pastor in 2004.

About 80 people, including students and residents, attended the church in 2004, but now about 140 people attend on a given Sunday. More than 50 percent of his congregants are international students. Most are from mainland China; some are from Taiwan, Hong Kong or Malaysia.

“There is an emptiness in students’ hearts,” He said. “That is what we have witnessed in the last eight years. I think Chinese students are more interested in the Gospel.”

Father Patrick Baikauskas, director of campus ministry at St. Thomas Aquinas in West Lafayette said the international student population has grown significantly during the last five years.

“Purdue is doing so much with respect to attracting Asians to the campus, and we are responding to their spiritual needs,” he said.

Houses of worship use a variety of ways to try to meet the needs of international students. Kossuth Street Baptist aims to integrate prospective followers into Sunday services and other activities.

“We want to see people from every spectrum, poor to rich, black and white, national and international,” Briggs said. “We’re growing at that. It’s never a finished product. It’s something you work at.”

He said between 30 and 50 international students from Purdue attend Sunday services. Most are from China, India and Malaysia. About 15 years ago, only a few international students attended, he said.

In addition to offering Bible study sessions, the church offers parenting and English language classes.

Even though he is new to the community, Maity said he never felt like an outsider at his church.

“I didn’t sense an invisible glass wall,” he said. “As an outsider, some societies will be mean to you. But others won’t be mean — they will just avoid you. It’s not like discrimination. It’s like avoidance. You get this feeling that you are not welcome here. I don’t see that in this church.”

Baikauskas said the church tries to integrate and accommodate international students at the same time, depending on their needs.

For instance, the church has about 100 Korean Catholics who attend, including students, faculty and family members, and about 60 Indonesian students.

Both groups have their own Bible studies and social groups. The Korean Catholics have a separate Mass, in Korean, at the church.

“What they want is not so much to set themselves apart but to be integrated into our parish,” Baikauskas said. “These are all students who are receiving their course instruction in English. They want to be part of the English-speaking congregation. We do everything we can in accommodating them.”

Once comfortable in the church, the students integrate into the larger parish on their own. That technique worked for Bella Handojo, a junior at Purdue.

But before Handojo arrived in the United States, she was drenched in tears at the airport in her home city of Jakarta, Indonesia. Handojo didn’t want to trade the tropical weather, the familiar food and city life for the foreign world awaiting her.

In the three years since her arrival, Handojo has become acclimated to her new surroundings, especially due to her church. Handojo sings in the choir at St. Thomas Aquinas, attends daily Mass and has met other students from Indonesia at the church.

“I think the church has a lot to do with me not being homesick anymore,” the 19-year-old said. “This is probably the only place I would call home here. I feel so strange on the outside. Here, I feel like I’m just normal.”

Sylvia Swandono, an Indonesian professional student at Purdue, agreed. Swandono moved to West Lafayette in 2006. Soon after her arrival, she started attending Masses at St. Thomas Aquinas and quickly became involved in other activities, such as choir.

“Even though everything else is different … Mass is the same,” the 23-year-old said. “It reminds me of home. A Catholic Mass is the same all over the world. It’s another community. I can hang on to something like that.”

Equipped with food, language and faces that strike a familiar chord, some worship centers simply provide a place that feels like home in a foreign world.

Hillel at Purdue is one of those places. About five of the 50 students who regularly attend religious services at Hillel come from all over the world — Israel, Colombia, Panama, Great Britain and Turkey, director Philip Schlossberg said.

At Hillel, the students find common ground.

“It really doesn’t matter what stream of Judaism you practice, there are certain things that are the same all around the world,” Schlossberg said.

“Hebrew is generally part of the religious services. If you go to services in your home country there will be a little bit of Hebrew that sounds familiar. (Also) Jewish food doesn’t change from country to country. There are different additions (but) the basic food is always the same.”

Common language makes the Greater Lafayette Chinese Alliance Church feel familiar. The church holds a bilingual service in Mandarin and English every Sunday.

For Purdue senior William Tao, the cultural transition from Wuxi, China, to West Lafayette was almost seamless because both communities are small and quiet, he said. The most difficult aspect was leaving his family.

“They didn’t want me to leave,” the 23-year-old said. “They still want me to come home every year. For me, it’s difficult too.”

But the church in West Lafayette has become his adopted family.

“I treat everybody as a family member here. I know they love me, and I love them too. I get guidance from the mentors in Bible study group and from the pastor.

“I feel like going to a church where the spoken language is my mother language makes more sense. The culture suits me better.”

Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.