Boen Wang
speaker
122 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard May 2025
last heard May 2025
Boen Wang’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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Appearances
I visit the campus library and find physical copies of my parents' PhD dissertations. My mom's is titled Formation and Characterization of Anchored Polymer Coatings on Alumina. There's a Cheetos bag sandwiched between the front cover and first page. No idea why. I ask my mom about this later. Did you leave a Cheetos bag in your dissertation? Maybe as some sort of message to future readers?
She's like, what? No. In the Acknowledgements, which is the only section I can understand, she writes, I shall give all glory and honor to God, all caps. He, all caps, is my strength. I throw away the Cheetos bag on my way out. The first person I talked to in Oklahoma is Dave, the nice gentleman with the warm smile who took my dad in and brought him to Christ.
Dave knew me as an infant and visited us in Philly, which I have no memory of. My parents always referred to him as my ye-ye, my grandfather, perhaps in place of the ye-ye in China I never met. This would probably be my first and only chance to talk to him, at least since I gained consciousness and the power of speech. I wanted to know, who is this man?
How did he end up in charge of this Chinese ministry that changed the fate of my parents' lives and my life? Hello?
Hi, nice to finally talk with you. How are you?
Oh, wow. You're okay with me recording this?
Yeah, is that okay?
The way I understand what Dave is saying here is that since I'm publicizing my parents' story, I need to make sure not to dishonor or slander them, because the devil is lying in wait. Dave worked as a campus minister in colleges across the U.S. and the world, in Nebraska and Maryland and Nairobi, Kenya.
But he spent the bulk of his career ministering to Chinese international students at OU, as the University of Oklahoma is confusingly nicknamed, starting in 1987, two years before my parents arrived. Did you have any sort of prior knowledge of China or Chinese culture or the language or anything like that?
It sounded like he almost stumbled into this role. He saw a new population at OU, many of whom were already curious about Western culture and Christianity, and he was happy to oblige. It was clarifying for me to learn that Dave had been a missionary in Kenya. I've come to think of him as a sort of domestic missionary, serving people from outside the U.S., within the U.S.
Among these acts of love were practical things, like picking my dad up from the airport. My mom came four months later. Dave picked her up as well. At that point, my dad was ready to convert. Dave and his wife came to my parents' apartment. My dad got on his knees, prayed to accept Jesus into his heart.
You felt like there was a line, like a dividing line between you and dad at that moment?
How long after my dad came to Christ until my mom came to Christ as well?
Over the phone, I didn't have the courage to tell this kindly old man who led my parents to the path of Christianity, who then raised me on that path, that I rejected all of that, and that I'm still recovering. But then, when I go to him in person, I resolve to tell him the full truth. Dave is in an assisted living facility now.
In the lobby, I meet his son and daughter-in-law, who had asked that I not record the conversation. David fallen recently and broken a vertebrae. He sits in an armchair in his room and wears a neck brace. If he sneezes or laughs too hard, he can hurt himself. After a softball question, I force myself to come clean. I'm no longer Christian.
How does he feel about people he tried to lead to Christ, who either didn't believe or later left? Dave smiles. He asks if I'd heard the story of the prodigal son. It's a classic, one of Jesus' most famous parables, where a failed son disobeys his dad and later returns to him, penitent and willing to accept any punishment. But instead, his dad forgives him and welcomes him home.
Dave then explains that he has a daughter who left the church. In high school, she angrily confronted Dave with tears in her eyes and told him, Dad, please apologize to me for being a Christian. I think I understand what she meant by that. It's a way of saying, apologize for making this decision for me, for raising me with this belief I didn't choose and that I don't agree with.
In a sense, I'm asking him the same thing. Yeah, yeah. Why did you convert my parents? His daughter left the faith. Dave didn't try to convince her of anything, just kept loving her and praying for her. And after 20 years, she, like the prodigal son, returned to the faith and to her father. These days, she visits him every week in the assisted living facility.
Dave emphasizes again that he never forced anyone to believe anything, that if someone chooses to reject Christianity, they need to be loved whatever their decision is. But he also tells me, there'll be nobody going to hell who didn't have an opportunity to accept Christ. He says it in a way that isn't angry or spiteful, just sad, almost kind. It's getting late. Dave needs to take his medication.
We stand up. I love you, he tells me. Give my love to your parents. We hug. And I get it. I get why my parents converted. This man is filled with so much love and gives it so freely. To my parents, to me, to all the people he picked up from the airport and fed and sheltered and helped get on their feet. Where does his love come from?
Showing 41–60 of 122 · page 3 of 7
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