How to teach Christianity to an ESL junior high school student who knows nothing about Christianity?

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How to teach Christianity to an ESL junior high school student who knows nothing about Christianity?

Try meeting him or her half way. Let the Lord do his part.

It is not my place to say what Christian denomination, you would like as a resource request, but as I am Catholic I would recommend the book The Bells of Nagasaki (長崎の鐘), in both in English and Japanese.

Although this book was originally to tell the story of the atomic bomb of Nagasaki it explains the origins of Christianity in Japan, albeit with a Catholic influence.

The author Takashi Nagai, originally a pagan, explains how he deliberately bordered with a Catholic family in Nagasaki, only to find himself learning about the history of Christianity in Japan, but he also becomes a convert to Catholicism. The historical part is absolutely amazing. The book is not preachy, but explains a story not well understood by many in Japan and the West.

I could not put the book down when I read it.

If you read it, I am sure it would give you an excellent idea of how the Japanese understand Christianity. It would help both of you in this cultural exchange in many ways.

In 1930 his mother died from a brain haemorrhage, which lead him to ponder the works of philosopher and scientist Blaise Pascal. He began to read the Pensées which influenced his later conversion to Christianity and boarded with the Moriyama family, who for seven generations had been the hereditary leaders of a group of Kakure Kirishitans in Urakami. Takashi learned that the construction of the nearby cathedral was financed by poor Christian farmers and fishermen.

On 24 December [1933], Sadakichi Moriyama invited Nagai to participate in a midnight Mass. In the cathedral, Takashi was impressed by the people in prayer, their singing, their faith and the sermon. He would later say: "I felt somebody close to me whom I did not still know."

On 23 November 1945, a mass was celebrated, in front of the ruins of the cathedral, for the victims of the bomb. Takashi gave a speech filled with faith, comparing the victims to a sacred offering to obtain peace.

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