Multicultural

Our daughter & short-termer on our island's best beach

Our team has just become more multicultural.  Two weeks ago we received a short term team member from Madagascar!  What a gift!  As many of you know every week we gather together as a team for what we call “team day.”  This is a day to pray, talk, and study together. This Friday found us discussing the book Foreign to Familiar by Sarah Lanier.  If you haven’t read it, you should.  It’s a quick read, a lot of fun, and can lead to a lot of “aha” moments about crossing cultures.  This book is always fun to discuss, but how much better when you have a mix of cultures among your reading group!

The problem with crossing cultures can almost always be distilled down to one very nasty little problem—assumptions.  We assume everyone else will think the way we do, act the way we do, talk the way we do, etc.  And that leads to both funny and tragic misunderstandings.  The more you can reveal the assumptions, the better chance there is for understanding and a way forward.  This, of course, is of vital importance when we apply it to our understanding of island culture.  But wait, what about within the culture of our team?  We can’t assume our cultures are all the same—and with our new Malagasy teammate—we would be fools to think so!

It is a beautiful place

So what did this book reveal to our team?  In broad strokes, Americans like to communicate in a pretty straight forward manner, but Africans do not.  Is this something that our team will have to deal with?  You bet!  Do we handle time differently?  Yup!  On the other hand, some of the things we assumed to be different may not be so different after all.  Go figure, people from big cities in Madagascar can value their privacy and can be rather task oriented!  But hey, that teammate from the South may be adjusting so quickly to island culture because there are some similarities between Southern culture and island culture that we would never think were there.

Multicultural teams are both a blessing and a challenge.  These teams will have to work through their cultural differences, but the reward is incredible richness of experience and perspective. On our very first team in Chad, we had African teammates and we remember how much we learned from being teammates with them.  Some of it the hard way—like after three months when they told us that we had been speaking too fast and not enunciating clearly enough for them (for whom English was a third language) to understand. We also had to learn to filter what we said, realizing that we were constantly throwing idioms and cultural references into our conversations.  We got to see how their struggles were just as real as ours though different.  For example, adjusting to the weather was not as challenging for them and a visit back home was only a few hours away by car.  But we remember what a challenge it was to our African sister to wear the traditional clothing of the women there since that immediately associated her (according to her society) with a different tribe and a different religion.  Though the distance from home was geographically shorter, our African teammates were still crossing cultural and language divides that were in some ways much more difficult and hard for people back home to understand. It took a lot of explaining on their part to help people understand.

Yeah, the rains are back!

So what challenges lie ahead for our team?  We’ll just have to wait and see—but hopefully, with the a lot of grace and determinedly low assumptions, we will gain understanding that will bless us all and allow us to bless islanders better too.

PRAYERS ANSWERED
We are thankful that though the situation of the robbery has not resulted in any sort of restoration of moneys, the daily trips to the gendarmerie or courts have come to an end and our teammates have handled themselves very well balancing standing for justice and showing hearts of love and forgiveness.  We continue to be thankful for our short-termer, we are so blessed to have her with us for this month.  Translation work has started up again and seems to be going smoothly. After many hot and humid weeks, the rains are back this week bringing with them cooler weather— we are very thankful.

PRAYERS REQUESTED
The robbery, our brother’s medical emergency and other difficulties makes us suspect that we are in need of more prayer at this time.  Pray for the unity and harmony of our team—that we will be blessed by our multiculturalness and will listen well to one another.  Pray for our short termer, that her time with us will be fruitful in her life and in the lives of others.  There will be a big meeting about language work this coming weekend.  Pray that it would go well.  We ask for prayer for our neighboring islands where each has a young brother facing hardship and pressure to turn away from the freedom he has found.  May each stand strong and not fall back into slavery.  One has already given in to the pressure, but he has expressed regret and we hope he will turn back. Pray for Tom’s group of friends who continue to meet and ask questions.  May their questions lead them to understanding.  Pray for unity and growth.  We are asking especially for these two things this month.