Cross-Cultural Living

Making Friends with Short Term Workers {A Life Overseas}

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Today Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas, reminiscing about relationships with shorter term missionaries.

This is the time of year when summer interns head back “home.” The time when short term teams taper off, and kids go back to school. The time when life on the field supposedly returns to ”normal.” So as summer winds down, I want to take some time to honor the short term workers who have touched my life over the past few years.

I didn’t know my life would intersect with so many short term workers when I first moved overseas. It all started when we’d lived in Cambodia for six months, and we met a girl volunteering at the orphanage next door to us. She’d been surprised most of the volunteers weren’t believers and was desperate for some Christian fellowship. So we took her to church with us.

Read the rest here.

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Part 3: What Does Children in Families Do?

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by Elizabeth

So far in this series, I’ve written about what it was like to live next to a typical Cambodian orphanage for two years. I’ve also outlined some reasons why children might be sent to an orphanage, even if they are not orphans. The current system, as I’ve described it, is incredibly broken.

This project has required a lot of mental and emotional energy, certainly more than I had initially expected to give. The deeper I delved into the orphan and orphanage issue, the more poverty I discovered, and the more complicated the problem became. The social problems stemming from poverty can be very disheartening at times. That’s why the work of Children in Families is so very hopeful and encouraging to me.CIF-Logo

So today, instead of just discussing the problems, as I’ve done in the first two posts of this series, I’m going to offer some solutions. How does the organization Children in Families help at-risk children and their families? That’s the question I’m hoping this blog post will answer, along with some of the common concerns people have about family-based care, because they are valid concerns, and because Children in Families has answers to those concerns.

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Please Stop Running {A Life Overseas}

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by Jonathan

I’m writing today over at A Life Overseas.

 

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In my former life (and I mean that in a totally non-Buddhist way), I worked as a trauma nurse at an inner-city emergency department in the States. One of the first rules new hires had to learn in the ER was that No.One.Runs. Even if someone just got shot or stabbed or is actively dying, no one runs. Even if you have to go to the bathroom really bad, no one runs.

Even in the middle of taking care of a trauma victim, it was better to be calm and methodical than stressed out and in a hurry. So many times I heard a senior physician or nurse tell the newbie, “Slow down. Breath. Think.” The “slowness” of the attending physician didn’t mean she cared less about the patient. It didn’t mean she was lazy. It didn’t mean she was worn out. It meant she was experienced.

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Could we just push pause for a second and invite the Prince of Peace to teach us what it might look like to live in peace, even in the ER? Even on the field?

For the full article, click here.

How Do You Write Your Name in the Land? {A Life Overseas}

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Here’s an excerpt from Elizabeth’s recent post on A Life Overseas:

Sarah, Plain and Tall tells the story of a woman from Maine who moves to Kansas as a mail-order bride for Jacob, a widower with two children. Jacob and Sarah fall in love, and by the beginning of the movie Skylark, they’ve been married for a couple years.

The people of Kansas are now facing a drought. The prairie dries up a little more each day, and it has truly become a “dry and thirsty land.” But Sarah comes from a place by the sea — a cool, wet place, where drought is unknown — and she’s never experienced a season like this before.

When the wells run dry, the people of the community travel to the river, hoping to find water there, but the river is nearly dry. In desperation, Sarah’s closest friend Maggie, and her husband Matthew, tell Jacob and Sarah that they are considering leaving the prairie and settling somewhere else. Sarah is so frustrated by this possibility that she blurts out:

“I hate this land. No, I mean it. I don’t have to love it like Jacob, like Matthew. They give it everything, everything, and it betrays them. It gives them nothing back. You know, Jacob once told me his name is written in this land. Well, mine isn’t. It isn’t.”

Maggie replies in a thick Scandinavian accent:

“You don’t have to love this land. But if you don’t, you won’t survive. Jacob is right. You have to write your name in it to live here.”

 

To read more, visit A Life Overseas here.

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MORE Reasons You Should Be a Missionary

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Your coffee shop will sell fresh meat AND fresh coconut milk. And coffee.

Your coffee shop will sell fresh meat AND fresh coconut milk. And coffee.

by Jonathan

At the end of my post on A Life Overseas called 10 Reasons You Should Be a Missionary, I asked the readers this question: If a “Top 10 List” could have 15, what would you add? Folks replied with some great stuff, which I’ve compiled and edited below.

So, just in case my Top 10 List didn’t convince you, here are some more reasons being an overseas missionary is awesome. To see all of the responses, view the original post.

– You’ll get to go off-roading in a 4×4 just to get to your village.

– All the chicken is “free range.” However, “free range” is interpreted loosely, and may in fact mean “they live and eat in the gutters and trash piles, freely.”

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