I don’t know how it is now, but not long ago there was a big rush among BYU students to go teach English in China. BYU’s English Language Center is excellent, and the BYU TESOL department has produced many excellent teachers, but even among non-TESOL students there seems to be great interest in language. Part of it has to do with the numerous returned missionaries who served outside of the U.S., but even among those who didn’t there seems to be an interest in languages, foreign nations, and cultures.
A lot of students, I think, see teaching English in China, or Russia, as an opportunity to live for a time among people of another culture and learn and grow.
I am also aware that missionaries in some nations offer English classes as a way of serving the people they have been called to serve and increase their exposure to the church.
I ran across this unfortunate blog entry by a university student in Beijing, China. Here is an excerpt:
Something very wrong and dangerous is going on in the foreign languages department at Tsinghua University.
What is going on at Tsinghua University? Almost all the other foreign teachers at Tsinghua University are members of a cult….
A cult tricks you into joining it and then it slowly takes you away from your family, your friends, your career, your country, and your life. Almost all the other American teachers in the foreign languages department at Tsinghua are members of a cult called 揗ormonism.? They are not at Tsinghua to teach you. They have come to Tsinghua as secret missionaries and want to try and make you become Mormons too.
Why does Tsinghua allow them to be here? Tsinghua University doesn抰 know that they are Mormons. They have found a corrupt person in the foreign languages department and have paid her a lot of money, and given her many gifts, so that she will lie to the department and tell them to hire Mormons to teach English at Tsinghua….
As you know, Tsinghua is the most famous university in China. President Hu Jintao, as well as many famous political leaders all went to Tsinghua. The Mormons know that the future leaders of China will likely come from Tsinghua. They believe that if they can make the students at Tsinghua into Mormons, then their church will control over China.
When I read these kinds of things from what I assume are honest, intelligent, well meaning people, it just breaks my heart. I wonder if the English teaching efforts of the missionaries and BYU students will become a liability?
I remember Doctrine and Covenants 123:4-5,12-15
And perhaps a committee can be appointed to find out these things, and to take statements and affidavits; and also to gather up the libelous publications that are afloat;
And all that are in the magazines, and in the encyclopedias, and all the libelous histories that are published, and are writing, and by whom, and present the whole concatenation of diabolical rascality and nefarious and murderous impositions that have been practiced upon this people–
For there are many yet on the earth among all sects, parties, and denominations, who are blinded by the subtle craftiness of men, whereby they lie in wait to deceive, and who are only kept from the truth because they know not where to find it–
Therefore, that we should waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness, wherein we know them; and they are truly manifest from heaven–
These should then be attended to with great earnestness.
Let no man count them as small things; for there is much which lieth in futurity, pertaining to the saints, which depends upon these things.
In the scriptures, “Hidden things of Darkness” seems to be a key phrase referring to the operations and organization of secret combinations. It is interesting that this individuals blog entry accuses the church of possessing the goals, and operating by means of the methods of secret combinations. Perhaps this injunction to waste and wear out our lives in bringing to light all the hidden things of darkness is a command to actively work against secret combinations, not simply because their works are evil, but in order to make clear that the church is not one of them.