Photo credit: IMB.org
Editor’s note: We’re pulling this post from the archives to answer a key recurring question: Does Christianity destroy culture? Are you importing Western culture when you bring the Gospel? We weigh in.
If you’ve ever stood in the middle of African worship, it’s…well, it’s pretty hard to stand still.
Perhaps you’ve read the recent headlines of a young woman who moved to Uganda at 19–but is now under investigation regarding a number of children who lost their lives in her clinic, considering she was not a medical professional.
A Live Overseas wrestles with a handful of the questions we’re all wondering in their excellent post, How Equipped is Equipped Enough?
We heart this new, ongoing series–a virtual trip to the coffee shop with organizations to help you go there, serve Him, and love them even better. (For more thoughts about why you might join an agency–and a handful of reasons you might not–make sure to check out He Said/She Said/You Say? “Should I go overseas with an organization?”, both the pros and the cons.)
Today, we’re grabbing a chai with Engineering Ministries International (EMI). You’ve seen them in posts like these:
We’re excited to welcome back Sheri of Engineering Ministries International. EMI mobilizes architects, engineers, construction managers, and other design professionals–including those through an incredible internship program–to provide design services for those helping the poor. We’re talking water projects, hospitals, schools, orphanages, you name it. Meanwhile, they raise up disciples and trained professionals in-country.
Sheri applies these cross-cultural points poignantly to the elements of designing cross-culturally–but we believe you’ll find inescapable parallels to any cross-cultural work. Hopefully it will help jumpstart real solutions for cross-cultural sensitivities, and help any culture manifest Jesus Christ according to its own cultural icebergs.
We heart this new, ongoing series–a cup o’ joe with organizations to help you go there, serve Him, and love them even better. (For more thoughts about why you might join an agency–and a handful of reasons you might not–make sure to check out He Said/She Said/You Say? “Should I go overseas with an organization?”, both the pros and the cons.)
Today, we’re grabbing a cold brew coffee with Africa Inland Mission (AIM). Grab a chair.
Wondering what to pack to go overseas long-term? It can get tricky. Every country has different items available…or not. (If you know someone available to write a list for another area of the globe, please contact us here at Go. Serve. Love to equip more global workers to go overseas!)
This is shaping up to be a long post, so let’s get to it.
On your first trip over, prioritize items you absolutely cannot get in your host country, or that will be of considerably less quality. I should add “or are really expensive.” Don’t panic if you can’t get them all. Rebuilding a home is a process of slowly accruing and adjusting what you need. (See our post on Worked for Me Wednesdays #WFMW: The Luggage Edition.)
Your first year overseas has a way of rearranging your life, your brain, your family, your body. So it makes sense your holidays would follow.
You may be wondering what Christmas looks like away from the lines to meet Santa, the obnoxious Black Friday ads–but also far from the welcoming hugs from mom, the family clustered around the tree or piano belting out carols.
My experience? Like most of overseas life, there were notable griefs and clarifying, memorable triumphs. Here, thoughts from my first Christmas season in Africa (edited from the original post on MomLifeToday.com).
We get it that sometimes it’s hard to know how your career and education could manifest itself over there. So today, we’re welcoming back a construction manager in East Africa with Engineering Ministries International (EMI) to give you a “day in the life” glimpse of how his career has transplanted.
