Culture shock!



Last week we were learning about cross cultural communication and had some fascinating discussions about different views on time keeping!  We have some lovely African and Middle Eastern people in our group who have very different views on time to us anal Europeans!!  We are beginning to understand that we have to become a lot more chilled when we move to Guyana and have started practising now.  We were invited to dinner by a lady from Ghana and when I asked what time we should arrive she just said 'Oh...after sunset'!!   I had to tell her it stressed me out not knowing a time so she relented and gave me 7pm but warned me she would be offended if we arrived on time!!  We managed to hold off until 7.30!!  For those of you who know how anal we both are that was no mean feat!! 

We have also looked at indigenous and folk religions compared to major world religions and realised we engaged in our own folk religion with the Tooth Fairy and Santa!! 

The best session of the week was a morning spent looking at 'culture shock'.  We learned about the stages and symptoms of culture shock and ways to minimize its impact.  I realised that I have been through a mini culture shock moving here and the stress of that is probably what caused my headaches. Thankfully they have eased now so that is a real answer to prayer.  It was so helpful to explore this issue in some detail and we both feel better prepared for the next big change.

I am finding the course extremely helpful but still finding it hard living in close community.  I'm trying not to wish the time away though as it is lovely living near enough to visit with friends and family for this period of time.  We are seeking every opportunity to get away and be normal! 

We went to visit Emily and Chris in Cambridge last Wednesday and went punting on the river on a beautiful afternoon.


Chris and Emily

On Friday night we went to visit Mark's sister and husband for the night and it was lovely to be in a normal home.  Well, sort of normal for those of you who know our family!!  We also got to go to friends for lunch on Sunday which was a real treat. 

Please pray that I won't allow the irritations of community life to get to me and stress me out! 

Start of week 3

We have completed the first two weeks of our course and have just begun week 3.  Time is marching on!  Looking ahead, our flights to Guyana are now booked for Sun 9th December so it is all becoming a reality and our days in the UK are numbered!  It's been quite liberating seeing all the Christmas stuff in the shops and realising I don't have to buy any of it this year! 

My headaches were bad all last week culminating in a dreadful migraine on Thursday which meant I had to go to bed and miss all the lectures that day.  I haven't had such a bad one for many years so was fed up about that.  The actual shooting pains seem to have eased over the weekend which is a real answer to prayer.  I'm still getting an occasional pain but mostly it's fine now.  

The stress of living in close community continues to be a challenge for me and I am trying very hard not to let things get to me and remember this is only for a short time.  I think after being used to making my own choices about every day things it is hard to be directed in all aspects of life and this is causing some stress for me.  Chatting to other students it seems I am not alone in the struggle!

On Saturday we went to Methodist church house in London along with the other Methodist Mission Partners to share in a World Mission Forum.  This was attended by representatives from around the UK and we felt very encouraged and affirmed by them all.  We chatted to many ex-mission partners who shared their stories of life overseas!

We were invited out for Sunday lunch with some old friends who live nearby and it was so lovely to go off campus and eat in a normal home around a table without all the noise and hustle and bustle of the canteen here!   It's amazing the things we miss from living in an actual house!!

Our module for this week and next is called Culture and Religion.  Today we have been thinking about definitions of culture and different world views and how these affect the way we relate to people of other cultures and world views.  It was heavy mind blowing stuff!  Later in the module we will be learning about cross cultural communication, dealing with culture shock and the basics of other major world religions. 

We appreciate all your messages of support and encouragement and your prayers at this time of transition.

A long week!

Well we have completed week one of our course and it seems to have lasted for AGES! 

We are getting more used to the everyday routine now and the pace of college life...chores start at 7.20am and then we are straight into the day!  For those of you who know me well you will be able to imagine me walking about like a zombie at that time of the morning!   Pity the people who have to work with me!!

We have had some interesting lectures this week - most helpful has been one on dealing with change and the phases we go through at times of great transition in our lives.  It has been helpful to realise that everyone here is going through the same process in differing ways.  We have also explored our team roles through the Belbin model and learning styles, as well as our identity in Christ and ways to sustain ourselves emotionally, spiritually and physically when we go overseas.

I have continued to have bad pains in my head so went to the doctor on Friday - he said I have a virus and my glands are swollen but also that my neck muscles are very tight which could be causing the pressure on my head.  He asked if I was under any stress!!  Haha!  So I'm praying that as I settle into this new and temporary routine that these pains will settle but at the moment they are still keeping me awake at night so I would appreciate your prayer for that.

This week's module is on 'The Bible and Mission' and it looks like the lectures will contain an overview of mission through the Bible as well as looking at mission in today's world and issues of contemporary Western culture. 

We are getting to know the other students better and had some interesting conversations with people from all around the world.  One of the Swiss students is helping us remember our school German and a lovely lady from Ghana has shown us how to make a shawl into a baby carrier!  It's all very varied!  On our landing alone we have people from England, Ethiopia, Germany and Brazil and in our En Route group we have people from Egypt, Denmark, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Zambia and Switzerland.  All of these people are going to another whole host of countries when they leave here so it's fascinating getting the whole world covered and finding out about different cultures and customs.   

I haven't taken any photos this week but here is one of a cheeky squirrel on the outside of our window...we have put conkers everywhere to try to deter the enormous spiders and this squirrel clearly thought we had left them out for him!! 

College life

We moved into our room at All Nations on 1st September and had two weeks to settle in to our new surroundings and see some friends and family before term started this week.  Here are a few pics...



Mark in our college room

All Nations Christian College

Mark went up in a microlight and took this pic of All Nations from the air!

At a local pub with the girls who came to see me on my birthday

Mark is taking it all in his stride but this has not been an easy week for me...I feel that a lot of control over my own life has been relinquished and pray that I'll quickly get used to the routine.  I am the kind of person who loves being with people but loves to withdraw and have my own space and privacy and community life is a new experience for me. There are some lovely people here from all over the world and it's been great to meet them all but I am finding it hard to share a bathroom with 12 people, eat all our meals in the canteen (I miss cooking!) and just be around people all the time.   I have been feeling poorly this week with some bad headaches which has meant I have missed some of the introductory sessions which hasn't helped.  I'm sure the headaches have been brought on by the stress of all the new stuff!

Next Monday the term starts properly and we are starting module 1 looking at ourselves - where we come from, our own cultures, how we feel about ourselves, how we relate to others, how we learn, listening skills, personality types and working in teams as well as developing learning goals for our time here - it all looks very interesting and hopefully will help me come to terms with some of the big changes in our lives at the moment. 

I recently read a book called 'Less is More' and found a really helpful quote in it:

We can learn from any situation whether we have control over it or not and we have the freedom to change through it for the better.  We have freedom to act in grace and to respond in love wherever we find ourselves. 

My prayer is that this will be true for me in the coming weeks at college.

I close this post with a prayer someone gave me by Thomas Merton:

My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going

I do not see the road ahead of me

I cannot know for certain where it will end.

Nor do I really know myself,

and the fact that I think that I am following your will

does not mean that I am actually doing so.  But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you

And I hope that I have that desire in all that I am doing.

I hope that I will never do anything apart from that desire.

And I know that if I do this

You will lead me by the right road

Though I may know nothing about it.

Therefore I will trust you always.

Though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death.

I will not fear, for you are ever with me

and will never leave me to face my perils alone.

On the move!

A quick update from the Isle of Wight which is part of our summer UK tour! 

It was a very strange feeling seeing all our furniture being driven away (we presume to the storage depot!) and then driving away from Lincoln with a car loaded to the roof with the last of our worldly possessions!   Since leaving Lincoln on 30th July we have packed up the car and moved on twice more and are set to move on again tomorrow.  We are enjoying the rest inbetween moving days and are very thankful for the loan of various empty houses over the summer.  It's been great catching up with Emily on the IOW and old friends as well as enjoying some lovely walks and chill time.  

I have found it to be a strange feeling knowing that we now have no base or home to go back to for a while and living out of cases but we are trying to make the most of the relaxation before the hard work of college begins.   We will move into our room at college on 1st September and that will be our base for three months before flying off to Guyana in December.

Please pray for us in this period of transition, particularly as we settle into college and community life in September.   Also please pray that Emily gets a job and somewhere to live before we leave the country and remember Jo as she prepares for her wedding to Ayo in November.

Goodbyes

So here we are in our final few days in Lincolnshire, busily packing up and sorting things into piles for freight, storage at the depot, storage in lofts, storage for the summer and stuff to take in the car over the summer!  It has been very complicated and my organisational skills have been tested to the limits! 

We had a wonderful leaving service on Sunday with a packed hall of people and came away feeling very loved, supported and encouraged as well as affirmed in our calling to Guyana.

There has been a constant stream of goodbyes and some difficult partings but we have so appreciated the supportive prayer of so many people as we negotiate this period of loss and adjustment.

I have just read a book about the life of Lilias Trotter, a missionary to Algeria from 1888-1928 which has been inspiring.  An excerpt from her journal in 1902 really spoke to me:

''As an eagle...fluttereth over her young, spreadeth abroad her wings, taketh them, beareth them on her wings - so the Lord alone did lead him.'  Fluttereth over - the early stages of faith are reaching upward, like the eaglets for their food when the mother bird is overhead...it is an older faith that learns to swing out into nothingness and drop down full weight on God - the broken up nest of former experiences left behind - nothing between us and the abyss but Himself - a rejoicing in every fresh emergency that is going to prove Him true - The Lord alone - that is trained faith.'

We do indeed feel that we are about to leap out of the nest into nothingness but we know that all the while God's hand is underneath us and his love surrounds us and we put our trust completely in him.  We know there are potentially difficult times ahead but are learning to take each day as it comes and not look too far ahead! 

So we say goodbye to our old comfy nest in Lincoln hello to the big blue yonder!

Keys

I wonder how many keys you have on your key ring?  I heard a talk once in which the speaker said that the more keys you have, the more it represents control of your own life.  A child has no keys, neither does a prisoner.  But as an adult we usually carry many keys…to the house, office, car; maybe even to other people’s houses!   As we draw closer to our departure from Nettleham we have begun to realise that we are slowly but surely losing all our keys!  This weekend I handed my little car over to our daughter, Emily along with the keys.  Soon Mark will hand over his chapel key and the keys to the Godpod.  And then, on 30^th July, we will hand over our house keys to the Methodist property steward.  All we’ll be left with then will be the key to Mark’s car and yet in December when we fly out of the UK we will hand even that key over to someone and leave the country with no keys!   We will have relinquished all control over our own lives for a time!

This thought has been profound for us this weekend as we contemplate and prepare for the many losses we will face in the coming weeks and months.  We both feel very unsettled and it is hard at times to focus on things that are happening day to day.  Our house is becoming less and less like a home and more like a shell of a home and we know that from 30^th July we will have no base until we reach our new home in Guyana. 

As we sort out all our earthly belongings and decide whether it is going into storage, being sent out to Guyana, travelling in the car with us for the summer or being given away; as we cancel all our standing orders and terminate all our contracts and commitments we are acutely aware that our lives are about to change in so many ways.  In some ways it is quite liberating to lay it all down and start again without all the trappings we usually hold so dear but in other ways it is quite difficult to come to terms with.

We value the prayers, support and patience of all of our friends and family at this time of transition and apologise if we don’t seem quite with it at the moment!!   A comment in my Bible notes today really struck me.  It said, ‘If you have a home don’t get too settled because actually you are not home yet.’  We know that we have many moves ahead of us in the coming months and years and yet we are always just travelling through.  It doesn’t pay for any of us to get too settled because one day we will leave everything behind and Jesus has promised those who love him will have a room in his Father’s house – then we will be truly home and settled.  And we won’t need any keys!