Korean Baptist missionaries Daniel and Hepshubah Soh knew they would be up against great odds during their stint in the Fiji islands. They just didn’t realize how great.
The Sohs who have returned to Korea after spending two years in Fiji, focused their ministry on the Fiji Indians who live in the rugged hills and farmland in the interior part of the northernmost island, Lanua Levu. They witnessed firsthand that life for many of the Fiji Indians is a struggle in survival.
The Fiji Indians make up 44 percent of the islands’ population but they do not enjoy the full economic and social benefits of native Fijians.
“The Indians work very hard, but they are still very poor,” said Soh, who compares Indians in rural Fiji to Koreans in Japan- “still second class citizens after generations of toil.”
There is not a lot of violence between the two ethnic groups that both consider Fiji their homeland. But there is widespread discrimination against the Fiji Indians, and the two groups tend to avoid each other outside the major cities.
Not surprisingly, discrimination crosses over into religious arenas as well. This further distances native Christian Fijians from reaching out to their Indian brethren who are usually practicing Hindus and Muslims. This dilemma is what drew the Sohs to Fiji.
“Fijian people have many opportunities to hear the gospel, but it’s hard for Fijians to reach out to Indians,” Soh explained. “Indians need overseas missionaries and that’s why we went to Fiji,” he said.
The Sohs arrival in Fiji in 1997 was a whirlwind of activity that began with language study and work with an Indian church that had long been without a pastor. The Sohs’ initiation into their new calling was a sobering one as they found themselves coping with several different languages in a new environment with their two young daughters. They spoke little English and no Fijian or Hindu, which was the language of the Indians in Fiji. There were no other Koreans or Christians living in their new hometown of Labasa.
The Sohs began their ministry in a one-room, tin-roofed structure standing alongside a dusty road. “It looked like a shed,” Mrs. Soh recalled.
The Sohs tried not to get discouraged in their efforts to share Christianity with the Fiji Indians but at times they were not sure how many souls they were winning in their uphill battle.
“After I shared the gospel and asked them to pray to receive the Lord Jesus, they said yes. But when I invited them to church, they said no, they have to go to the Hindu temple. When I asked why, they said the god in the Hindu temple was the same as the god in the church. They have 300 million gods, so another one is no problem for them. It’s very hard to explain that there is only one God.”
Soh said when a convert accepts Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior he or she is ostracized in the community. (Compiled from an article in the December 1998 issue of the IMB magazine, The Commission)
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