Postscript

Then Samuel took a stone and set it between Mizpah and Shen, and named it Ebenezer, saying, “Thus far the LORD has helped us.” I Samuel 7:12, NIV

We finished. We completed ICC, and we’ll be going home. This morning we took time to remember our experiences, remember what God had taught us, and look towards what God will be doing in our lives. We each brought a rock with us as a symbol of our experience, and presented it during our last meeting together. We also received a certificate for passing the course and a booked called Cross-Cultural Servanthood.

We’ve learned so much, but our journey is really only just beginning. We’ll miss everyone we’ve met, and we’ll miss North Carolina.

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One of our assignments while we’ve been here was to complete a 3-hour personal retreat. Jeff already completed his retreat. I still had to do mine. Aileen invited me to do it today with her out at Crowder’s Mountain State Park about 45 minutes away from Waxhaw.

We climbed about half-way and stopped for a long break with our Bibles, retreat plans and notebooks. It was peaceful and relaxing at that point on the trail. After a couple of hours, we packed up to climb to the top of the mountain. It seemed like it would be easy; we were already about half-way there. But, there was more to go than we thought. We took so many breaks along the way, being passed by men, women and even children! Rather than being humiliated, I just laughed. It was getting quite comical to see how many people were passing by us on our frequent breaks. We kept going up little by little, and we finally made it to the top!

Read Aileen’s entry on our day.

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Woo-whoo! This was probably one of the funnest activities we’ve done while we’ve been at ICC. After a lecture last week on how cars work and driving in off-road environments, this week we got to go out on an off-road driving course to put our knowledge to work. We put the car in 4-wheel drive and drove through sand, through ruts and over and down a steep obstacle. At the end of each of our drives, we practiced giving driving instructions to each other. The drivers had the windshield covered, and they were supposed to drive based on the oral instructions they were receiving. Challenging!

Check out Aileen’s post on this class.

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…now has a whole new meaning because it has a face. As much as I’ve heard about people suffering for God, today’s experience had a bigger impact on me. We met a couple that has faced some very difficult things. You can read April and Reid’s story on-line. It’s an incredible story.

It had us both thinking about what could lay ahead of us. I’ve really been struck thinking about how God doesn’t always protect us from bad things. He allows them to happen, and he doesn’t promise that life is easier for a Christian. To the contrary, the Bible says to expect suffering. That hasn’t been in my experience, yet. For us, we know that in the place where we plan to live we’ll likely experience theft. We could get mugged, robbed or car jacked. I don’t like thinking about it, but I’m trying to prepare myself as well as I can. Violent crime I’m less worried about because they are not as frequent in the city where we’re planning to live. It’s a majority Christian place, so I’m not worried about violence related to my faith. But, we will both be traveling to other places. What will we be faced with? How will we handle it?

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You might be wondering what is being covered during our course. It’s a full course. Here are some of the highlights of what we are and will be learning:

• Language & Culture Acquisition: techniques for learning language, adapting to a new culture, non-verbal communication
• Interpersonal Skills: conflict resolution, personalities, marriage, attitudes, authority
• Working in multi-cultural environments
• Spiritual Vitality: identity in Christ, moral purity, spiritual warfare
• Worldview: Cultural frame of reference, Biblical absolutes, values/assumptions/allegiances

Our days include lectures, small group discussions, activities and homework. Did I say homework??

We have a fun elective coming up, too. We’ll be taking an off-road driving course. I can’t wait!

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They set us up today…
A little trickery to prove a point…

We played a role-playing game of a market in another country. Half of us were vendors and half played buyers. We were all given cultural rules. What we didn’t find out until later was that the rules given to each group were so opposite that it made interaction impossible if you strictly adhered to them. I was a vendor. Jeff played a buyer. One of my rules was to ignore and not sell to people who were not of my same gender. So, I was ignoring all of these guys that came by my mat and wanted to buy something. I even threw out hints to them like, “I can’t talk to you because you are a man; why don’t you buy from that male vendor over there.” OK, the buyers cultural rules said that if someone ignores you, you have to insist that they recognize you. HA! The more I didn’t look at them, and ignored them, the more they got in my face. Yeah, it was making for some entertaining scenarios. At the end of the game only two transactions took place. Those transactions only happened because people fudged on their cultural rules a little.

The point of all this? No, it wasn’t to make us frustrated. It was to talk about how when we’re living in another culture we have to overcome some of our own cultural rules. We talked about suspending judgment, tolerating ambiguity, and thinking grey. How much of my own American culture do I assume is just correct? They got me thinking.

Check out what Aileen had to say about today.

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Part of our training experience is to worship at a church of a different culture. Another couple and us were assigned to the White Oak AME Zion church in Van Wyck, South Carolina. We’ll be attending here every Sunday morning for a month.

We enjoyed the service. The pastor is very passionate, and the music is good. At the beginning, a small group of students opened up the service with a song done acappella.
Here are the lyrics:

We were singing it after we got home. The service had more liturgy than we are used to, so we struggled a little figuring out what we were supposed to read and sing, and whether or not we should sit or stand. Our overall impression with the whole service was how sincere everyone was. They were warm and friendly to us, and everyone seemed attentive to everything going on in the service.

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Our ICC classes began. We have lecture for about half a day, but a significant amount of homework each evening. We were told before we arrived not to plan anything, but seeing the schedule, makes me think we might have a little extra time to do some fun things.

There’s about 35 people in the course with us. We recognize a few people from our orientation training in November last year. More familiar faces. We’re all split into smaller table groups of about six. Each group has an ICC staff member. Ah, and husbands and wives are purposefully put into separate table groups.

The JAARS center is beautiful. It’s out in the country surrounded by fields and woods. The campus is spread out. We’re meeting in the IT building. There are several work buildings and a number of apartment buildings and houses available as temporary housing for missionaries. There’s even a hanger in the back of the campus that they use in-part for training and testing missionary pilots.

Check out Aileen’s posts for the last couple of days:
ICC Day One
ICC Day Two

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We left our nearly empty house yesterday and packed up for North Carolina. We’re going to be living at the JAARS center in Waxhaw, NC for a month and taking the Intercultural Communications Course (ICC). We don’t really know what to expect, but we’ve heard that it’s a good course. Our friend, Aileen, who we worked with us in Orlando, is also joining us. It’s nice that we’ll be sharing this experience with someone we know . See what she had to say about arriving here today.

We got in this morning and checked in to our rather small apartment. I had arranged for an efficiency for us, but this is really small–much smaller than I thought. We brought our bikes with us, and if the weather’s good, maybe we’ll get to take a few bike rides.

As I look at our calendar, I know that this is just the beginning of a lot of unsettle-ness that we will be experiencing–one month here, one month there, one week over there…

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