Living in a city of 12 million people means you see new faces all the time. Unlike in the United States, where I can almost guarantee I’ll run into someone I know in the grocery store, it’s a rarity to see the same person twice in South Asia.

This plethora of new faces is not just a number but people who need to hear and respond to the gospel. It’s an opportunity for discipleship to begin with those who need it most.

For example, take Priya*. She’s a nursing student whom I met a year and a half ago. At that time, my teammates and I were leading her and her first-year classmates in a Bible study on discipleship. It was our prayer that several girls from this study would want to lead the next group of “first years” in the same Bible study during the next school year.

We began praying and talked with the girls to see who would be interested in knowing more about being a leader. To our surprise, Priya was one of the girls who was interested. She was one of the more soft-spoken girls participating in the Bible study and not one we thought of as a leader.

OK, blog readers. It’s confession time.

In a season when I find myself living in one country but longing for the comfort of the one I call home, I have to admit that being authentic in my relationships is hard.

So when I was asked to write a blog post about that exact topic, well . . . you see the dilemma.

In the country I live in, I don’t tell everyone that I’m a cross-cultural worker because, for my safety, not everyone needs to know. Several friends do know more about what I’m doing here and why, but I struggle to share the details of what my life is like even with those friends.

As a result, I tend to open up more to my American friends who understand life here and less to my South Asian friends.

The longer I’ve lived here though, the more I’ve learned about how to be authentic with my South Asian friends who are believers. I bring them into what I’m doing, share my heart about my work, and encourage them to share with their lost friends. I’ve learned that my authenticity is less about what I’m doing and more about who I am in Jesus Christ.

One of the first differences you learn about when you’re living in a different culture is how people value time.

In the United States, we love schedules and strictly adhere to them. We spend money on agendas and apps that will help us manage our time. We make sure we’re on time for meetings and lunch dates with friends, because being late says we don’t value other people’s time.

South Asia, on the other hand, is completely different. Being late is OK, whether just a few minutes or a few hours. Things don’t always start at the time they’re scheduled. Getting from one place to another on time is a daily challenge due to traffic in some places.

South Asians don’t value their relationships any less because they’re late or because they see time differently. In fact, they might value them more than Americans. For them, spending time with people, no matter the hour or what they have going on later in the day, is important.

As followers of Jesus, spending time with people should be just as important to us. No matter our culture, people whom we’re close with but who are far from a relationship with Jesus should be those we are investing in regularly.

I wasn’t exactly sure what I’d gotten us into, but we paid for the special entry pass and entered the temple.

I was showing some friends around my city and made it a point for us to visit some of the larger temples in the area.

We walked around, observing the worshippers praying and walking in front of a gold altar displaying ornate, manmade gods. Our special entry pass gave us an opportunity to talk to a priest. He wanted to pray to his gods for us, but I quickly explained to him that we were followers of Jesus and prayed only to Him.

The priest said he knew of Jesus and began to explain that Jesus was a messenger, the Son of God but not God incarnate. I replied, doing my best to find the right words to explain the gospel in a way he would understand. The priest continued to argue his point, but seeing that we wouldn’t come to agreement, he prayed to Jesus for us and we finished our temple tour.

No matter if I find myself in a temple, a coffee shop, or the back of a taxi, when I’m in a conversation with someone, I do my best to look for ways to bring the gospel into it.