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Overseas internship

October 28, 2011 in Cross-Cultural Evangelism, Culture Shock, Discipleship, Language Learning, Ministry Philosophy, Ministry Tools, Mobilization, Training Leaders with 1 Comment

The following material that is being quoted is taken from here! At the Our Generation Training Center we have all of our students spend 6 months living and studying overseas. I think that there is much to be gleaned from the following article!

The American bubble that is mentioned is a great danger. The spending so much on time communicating back to the states and home is also a great danger. I am afraid that this modern technology can make it harder to adapt to the new culture and your new home.

Educators are thrilled to see more American college students venturing abroad — perhaps 300,000 this year alone.

Now if they can just get them to venture out of the “American bubbles” that can make the streets of study-abroad hot-spots like London, Barcelona and Florence, Italy almost feel like exclaves of Tuscaloosa or Ann Arbor.

They’re trying.

After decades of laissez-faire and faith that just breathing the air in foreign lands broadens horizons, American colleges and international programs are pressing students harder to get out of their comfort zones.

It’s happening in popular destinations as well as more exotic spots in Asia and Africa, where there are fewer Americans, but language and culture barriers make them even more tempted to stick together.

And it’s happening online, where one study found Americans on study abroad spent more than four hours per night communicating back home via the likes of Skype, Google Chat and Facebook.

Their tools: less free time, mandatory local internships, signed promises students won’t speak English, and even “Amazing Race”-style solo scavenger hunts — like one where wide-eyed Nebraska students were dropped off their first morning in China in a distant corner of their new city with $5 and instructions to find their way back home alone.

“Unless something is set up that really forces them to get involved in that environment, they really don’t,” said William Finlay, a University of Georgia sociologist who became so frustrated with the bubble leading trips to Italy that he set up a new, intensive program that takes Georgia students to work in impoverished South African townships.

“We push them to do things that are uncomfortable,” Finlay said. “Sometimes they get overwhelmed.”

Once reserved for a wealthy and adventuresome elite, it’s now reaching a wider, more diverse population which often has less travel experience.

But also like higher ed, study abroad is getting more expensive, and facing pressure to demonstrate its educational worth.

That’s harder on the short-term and summer trips — less than a semester — that account for most of the growth, and at the “safer” destinations of Western Europe that remain the most popular.

The danger is that it’s become easier to head off on what’s supposed to be a voyage of discovery and fail to immerse oneself in the local culture.

“People want real outcomes, said Mark Lenhart, executive director of CET Academic Programs, which sends about 1,100 students per year from feeder colleges like Vanderbilt and Middlebury to programs in seven countries. “They want to come home with big improvements in their language and a really deep understanding of the place.”

That means giving at least some students a nudge, says Lenhart, whose programs make students live with local roommates.

On his own study abroad experience in China years ago, Lenhart remembers the Americans sticking together, fueling each other’s griping about the amenities. When they’re sharing a room with a local and can only speak in Mandarin, they think twice about going to the trouble to complain.

Historically, most study abroad has taken place in so-called “island” programs, where Americans live, study and often party together. U.S. colleges like keeping a close eye on the education side of the experience, particularly if they’re awarding course credit. Island programs, educators say, remain popular and valuable for many students — particularly those new to study abroad.

Marie Hankinson loved her semester in London, but admits parts of the experience didn’t feel all that different from being back on campus at Syracuse University. She lived with four Syracuse classmates, took classes with fellow Syracuse students in a Syracuse-owned building from Syracuse-affiliated faculty.

“Our social circle was pretty much other people in the program,” says Hankinson, who says she met a few Brits through the local university union but rarely hung out with them elsewhere. Still, she says her time abroad was a great introduction to international travel that will push her to visit more exotic destinations in the coming years.
“I wanted to go abroad, but I’ll be honest, I wanted to speak English as well,” she said.
Many students want something different.

With little knowledge of the country or Arabic, he took a full year away to study in a Moroccan university where he was the only American.

He was grateful his program didn’t mollycoddle him. Moroccans were welcoming and he resisted the temptation to hang out with his compatriots.

“I know Americans pretty well. I didn’t go there to learn about them,” he said.
Hug, who now works for a Chinese freight company, says his last two employers seemed especially interested in him because of the self-reliance he showed studying abroad.
For students who aren’t so driven, a creative push from an educator can help ensure they learn something about both themselves and their host country.

In China, students from Beloit College in Wisconsin are assigned to become a regular at some local spot, — a park, a restaurant, a corner shop — returning there repeatedly to get to know the neighborhood and people there.

University of Nebraska professor Patrice McMahon won’t go so far as her colleague who dropped students off on the far side of a city in China. But she does give ice-breaker assignments — getting their picture taken with a monk, or taking a note card with an unknown Chinese word around town until they can figure out from locals what it means.

“Our students are from small towns in Nebraska,” McMahon said. “They’re really nice kids. But they haven’t had a lot of opportunities to just figure things out.”

The people who run study-abroad programs say not every student responds. But most welcome the push. “I always ask them, ‘Did you make some friends (in the host country)?’” said Kelsi Cavazos, study abroad adviser at the University of Texas at Arlington.

Most have, “but they always say it was hard to break free of the Americans.” The technology bubble can both help and hurt. Fifteen years ago, study abroad programs misjudged cell phones as a danger, assuming students would use them to stay tethered home, says Mary Dwyer, CEO of IES, a nonprofit consortium that sends students abroad for 200 colleges.

In fact, cell phones have transformed study abroad by helping students meet and mix with locals. Technology’s also handy in emergencies, and using it to report back to friends and families can facilitate reflection— the modern-day travel diary. But technology can also be a crutch, and suck up valuable time.

A University of California-Santa Barbara researcher found one group of students averaging 4.5 hours per day online, and 83 percent of their contacts were with other Americans, either at home or in the country they were visiting. Other studies paint a somewhat less alarming picture.

Still, some educators are taking needles to the technology bubbles. One Australian program makes students leave their iPods and sometimes all electronic devices back home on field trips, to help them focus on their experiences.

Others — dumbfounded to see students busy posting pictures when they should be taking them — purposefully choose day-trip destinations where they know students won’t find Internet cafes.

“You could say there’s a spiritual shift,” said Sonja Bontrager, who leads her students from Carson University in Kansas on a semi-formal “technology fast” during the early stages of their travels in Guatemala.

She says the ritual bonds the group together and makes them pay more attention to their surroundings. She remembers the group huddled under shelter during a rainstorm at forestation project. Normally, students with time to kill would turn habitually to their smart phones.

Without that option, one noticed a column of unusual ants, and soon the whole group was on hands and knees examining the ground. “It just makes people more aware,” Bontrager said.
When the connection home is set aside, “it’s not that they’re just left with emptiness. It’s that other things can come in.”
In many cases, it isn’t the students who are to blame for the tether — it’s parents.
“I wish parents would say, ‘You’re going abroad for the semester, let’s not talk every day, let’s talk once a week,’” Lenhart said. “If they could cut those ties a bit, it would serve them well.”

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/travel/2011/09/25/overseas-studies-gets-students-out-their-american-bubbles/?test=faces#ixzz1Z4STTSdh

We are constantly looking to improve what we do in our overseas study at the Our Generation Training Center. We have been guilty of allowing too much “island or bubble” study. We also know that they have used technology as a way to hide out. But it has been helpful and many have returned to the field as missionaries over the years.

Check out bcwe.org

Culture Shock

August 11, 2011 in Cross-Cultural Evangelism, Cultural Adaptation, Culture, Culture Shock, Family and Culture with 0 Comments

There are lots of questions that we deal with as we consider being missionaries to another country.

All of these questions aren’t wrong or aren’t dirty. Duane Elmer in his book, Cross-Cultural Servanthood,

The man in India says, “You eat with a fork that’s been in everybody’ mouth, and I eat with my hand. I’ve washed my hand, and it’s not been in anybody else’s mouth.”

As an American you automatically think that eating with your hand is dirty but many who do would have a completely different view!

Just remember when you go as a missionary, you do not go to set up anything American. The church started in Jerusalem. It has more Jewish roots than it does American roots. And when we get to the country we’re going to, we want it to take root in the way they’re doing it. They may have a church service where the ladies sit on one side, and the men will sit on the other side. They may have a church service where people sit on the floor cause that’s how they’re accustomed to doing it when they go to meetings. So little by little, you need to learn to adapt to the culture and help them to accept it. Your best bet is, at all times, to brag on their culture and to diminish your culture. You will become third culture. You will not be the culture you came from, not the culture you went to, but kind of a hybrid. But you always want to lean towards their culture and accept them.

Just because men kiss on the cheek in Argentina doesn’t mean that they are homosexual, even though you don’t do that back in the States. Just because men in America shake hands and keep their distance doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t give a good hug or maybe you would be bowing and putting your hands together, whatever it is that they do, adapt. Do not take America. Do not criticize their politics. Do not brag on your politics. Do not go there to set up a democratic government. Do not go there to be Democrat or Republican. Go there to teach them about Jesus. That’s the goal you have. That’s the ministry you have that God’s called you to.

Check out bcwe.org

Rejecting the culture

August 7, 2011 in Cross-Cultural Evangelism, Cultural Adaptation, Culture, Culture Shock, Family and Culture with 0 Comments

Another major problem that missionaries have is trying to take the United States to the foreign country. It causes them to have severe issues on the foreign field. The national gets very tired of being compared to “back home”. His country doesn’t measure up. His food is not as good.  His house is not as well. That’s not how we do it back in America. It causes an inferiority complex. It causes hurt feelings among the nationals. The nationals never feel like they can measure up.

Many times, they would already have an insecurity caused by the fact that the missionary is from a foreign country. His country is advanced and is seen on TV and in movies. They have an idea that he lives far better than he actually would live in his country. And so there’s a built-in tendency to feel like maybe we don’t quite measure up.

But if God has called us to leave our country and go to their country, He did not call us to make little Americans out of them. He did not call us to Americanize them. He called us to take the gospel and develop it in such a way that it lives in their culture. That doesn’t mean changing anything about what the Gospel says or what the Gospel is or what the Gospel does.

It simply means that their church houses probably won’t look like our church houses. We don’t need to build the fanciest building in town. We need to build a building that they can build, a building they would be comfortable in, and a building they can maintain when we leave. We don’t need to take our way of driving, our way of doing everything that we do, and make that part of their situation.
 

If you go overseas, you’ll find that even down to the table manners you were taught as a child are American table manners, and they’re not international table manners. It would not be uncommon at all for a person in a Latin American country to use his knife to guide the food on to his fork, and it wouldn’t be uncommon for him to use his knife to put the food on. Or as I’ve seen in other countries, you might use your fork to put the food in the spoon that you’re gonna eat with. You may burp at your meal. You may should leave food on your plate when you get through, otherwise, it seems that you’re hungry and wanting more. You may should clean your entire plate or it looks like you didn’t like their food. Maybe you will not drink anything until the meal is over and everyone will share the same glass. You may eat with your fingers and not with utensils.

Check out bcwe.org

Learning Cultural Lessons

August 4, 2011 in Cross-Cultural Evangelism, Cultural Adaptation, Culture, Culture Shock, Family and Culture, Reading Notes with 0 Comments

Below is a lesson in culture that we would do well to heed. Go to the source and read the entire article. Good stuff.

Source

For Americans, personal space is no joking matter. Raised on strict instructions to keep our hands to ourselves and slogans like “no means no,” the 1.5 foot perimeter surrounding each person’s body is nothing short of sacred.

Obviously there are exceptions: border patrol is usually waived during the pinch of rush hour traffic, the shoulder-rubbing pandemonium of concerts and night clubs and for friends, family or others with whom we figuratively (and in this case literally) “let our guard down.” All the same, any an invasion of this protective aura is contingent on our explicit say-so – an unbending rule that pervades our culture’s definition of acceptable social interactions.

Though a bit tamer outside of the Big Apple, the importance of personal space is still heavily ingrained in the American psyche – so much so that it has earned its niche in academia under the name “proxemics.” In conversation with an American sociology professor specializing in this field, a New York Times article reveals the following:

“If you videotape people at a library table, it’s very clear what seat somebody will take,” Dr. Archer said, adding that one of the corner seats will go first, followed by the chair diagonally opposite because that is farthest away. “If you break those rules, it’s fascinating,” he said. “People will pile up books as if to make a wall — glare.”

Through travel, television and other wonders of globalization, we know that this fetish with our personal invisi-bubble varies according to culture. It’s common knowledge that Latin Americans exchange cheek pecks in lieu of handshakes or head bobs and that some nationalities across the waters stand dangerously close to each other when they parley.

Thoroughly prepped with this prior expertise, one Peruvianism in particular still managed to slip right by me: in the fender-benders of pedestrianism, you can rarely expect an apology. Stateside, a shoulder, elbow or booty bump marks an unequivocal act of trespassing and if we can’t prevent it with a prior “excuse me” we follow up with a firm apology.

For years I was scandalized by Peruvians’ deafening silence after flagrantly chafing one of my body parts. Hopelessly miffed by each offense, I was initially convinced this was a black hole in Peruvian etiquette.

In one of life’s ironic twists, it was a cheeky prepubescent boy who set me straight. Over a year ago at a buffet restaurant, I kindly told the minor “con permiso” (excuse me) in order to avoid grazing his growing-boy muffin top. As if giving him a lesson in the Golden Rule, I felt teacherly, if not a twinge motherly. Then, on a subsequent trip to the salad bar, when the same tubby kid trudged by me en route to the desserts, he spouted a snide “con permiso,” ridden with preteen sarcasm.

For my Peruvian husband, this simply meant the kid was a brat, but for me it was an epiphany. Brushing against a person’s love handles or gently nudging them aside in order to get by was not a huge crime, but making a big deal of it was – as if the other person had to drop what they’re doing and roll out the red carpet just so you could safely pass.

Though I’ve noticed an increase in apologies for casual collisions, Peruvians don’t usually obsess over minor encroachments to the extent that Americans do. Lesson number one on personal space? No harm, no foul.

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Missionary Shock 2

June 17, 2011 in Cultural Adaptation, Culture, Culture Shock, Ministry Tools, Training Leaders with 1 Comment

All of the material that you have been seeing on this blog is written in preparation for a book to help train missionaries. It intentionally has the dirty side of what is going on and I hope will present the other side as well. All names and stories have been altered to not be applicable to anyone you might know personally! I love missionaries and nationals. I just want to help us be able to learn and be prepared to do a good work on the field.

I was riding down the road one day in that same city with a man who was in charge of a Bible college. The Americans have built a very nice Bible college, and they have pulled out without giving him any lasting support. Since he had no lasting support, the ministry was suffering.

I was staying in his home which was on the Bible college property, and he was complaining about the Americans, he was complaining about the place he had to live and work. And I said, “Brother, you know, you just need to trust God.” We were on a bus standing up in the middle aisle; there’s probably 40 people on the bus.

And he began to yell at me at the top of his lungs. I had no right to talk to him about trusting God. He said, “You have a steady income from America. If you didn’t have it, you’d leave and go back to the States, yet I have to live here and work in a work that you guys didn’t prepare well. You didn’t leave me in a good position, and you then criticize me for not having faith, you criticize me for not doing the work of God, yet you dumped all this work on me.”

I saw that happen in more than one city, two major Bible schools in South America, that very same thing happened. I want to challenge you to help not be a part of missionary shock, causing so much heartache among the people and causing so much bitterness.

I know of a young man from my ministry, I sent to train a missionary in the language. He asked him to come, and he put him in his home, and he asked him to help in his church. When he got over there to help him in his church, he got over there to work in the ministry with this man. The missionary decided he had to go back to America for a while.

When the missionaries went back to America, he left food in the freezer for his dog, which was a piece of meat everyday for his dog, and he left rice and beans for the national to eat each day. The national pastor was to take out the meat, cook the meat, give it to the dog, while he ate rice and beans. He was complaining about how could a missionary have that attitude towards him.

I asked him, “Well, let’s just be honest, you and I both know you didn’t feed the meat to the dog.”

He said, “No I didn’t, I ate the meat and gave the dog the rice and beans.”

But the point being, that often times missionaries have been known not to be the most generous and to do some of the most insensitive, foolish things.

A pastor told me from another city that “I can call and say that my child is sick and needs to go to the hospital and ask for help. But the missionary says I should trust God, and he doesn’t have any money. Yet, his dog eats better than my children eat.”

There is something bad wrong that we want to avoid. Not the least bit mad, not the least bit hurt, not the least bit aggravated. Don’t hate missionaries, love missionaries, believe in missionaries. I believe everyone one of those men have good hearts and good spirits, maybe culture shock did some of it.

Or maybe as Isobel Kuhn says in her book, “The scum rises to the top the of mission field, maybe the carnal side and the ugly side of that missionary rose to the top.” But we want to avoid that; I write this to help you think through what you are going to do in the field.

It will be shocking, it will hurt you, it will aggravate you, but it may be just what you need to turn and be the kind of missionary God wants you to be.

Check out bcwe.org

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