If you live in or have even just visited a big city, chances are you'll have come across someone encouraging you to join a new religion.
Some advocates even go door-to-door trying to recruit people into their religion, so it's not really an uncommon sight. That is, unless you're part of a completely isolated community.
This was the exact situation that unfolded in 2018, when John Allen Chau visited an island in the Indian Ocean and attempted to convert the people who lived there to Christianity.
Chau grew up in a Christian home in Vancouver, Washington and had a passion for hiking, camping and travelling.
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He regularly documented his experiences online, and after returning from a trip to Mexico in high school gave a homily in which he said Christians 'need to know how to defend our faith'.
“When we go out in our world, there are people that’ll just come and oppose us, and they’ll have questions, and they’ll have arguments … We can’t just, like, go out there unprepared. We need to know what we believe and why we believe it," he said.
In high school, Chau learned about the isolated Sentinelese people; hunter-gatherers who live on North Sentinel Island and are considered one of the Earth’s last uncontacted peoples, their home off-limits to visitors without permission.
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Chau set out to the island in November 2018, though he seemed to know his mission was dangerous as he wrote to his parents, saying he wanted to 'declare Jesus' to its inhabitants and that they should 'not be angry at them or at God if [he got] killed'.
Chau had tried to make contact with the residents and was able to reach the island, writing in his diary that he tried to offer gifts of fish and a football.
“I hollered: ‘My name is John, I love you and Jesus loves you'," he wrote. "I regret I began to panic slightly as I saw them string arrows in their bows. I picked up the fish and threw it towards them. They kept coming.
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“I paddled like I never have in my life back to the boat."
Chau had paid a boat of fishermen 25,000 rupees ($302) to smuggle him close to the island, but shortly after making land he is believed to have been hit and killed by arrows.
A police statement explained: “The fishermen saw a dead person being buried at the shore which from the silhouette of the body, clothing and circumstances appeared to be the body of John Allen Chau."
Following Chau's death, his family shared a post on Instagram saying they forgave his killers, describing Chau as a 'beloved son, brother and uncle' as well as a Christian missionary.
Topics: World News, US News
Emily Brown