Hmmm … are you sure you want to move overseas?

Human nature tells us to defend our position, fight for honor and be the man who comes out on top. Yet Mentanna Campbell reminds us in her TheMissionBook.com article how people relocating to another context need need to throw out the, “I’ve got this,” mentality and cloak themselves in humility if they expect to make any progress in engaging their new culture.

“Anyone can learn to conjugate verbs and dress like the natives, but only those who adopt the posture of recipient will learn to communicate and integrate,” she writes. “This is the posture of the humble, of the open-handed, of the seeker, of the one who knows that he is a guest in someone else’s home. And this humility, my friends, is key to effectiveness overseas….”

Develop a learner’s mentality. Welcome disorientation. Joyfully accept assistance from nationals. Embrace humility.

Note: Mentanna Campbell and her family currently live in the United States after years of working with students in France. She blogs and has been featured in RELEVANT magazine.

These words can inspire hope and determination. Do you remember the movie? This quote from “Field of Dreams” with Kevin Costner and James Earl Jones may immediately flash across your mental movie screen visions of baseball, corn fields and a row of car headlights zig-zagging into the dark as far as the eye can see.

People living in international contexts may not be constructing baseball fields in the middle of nowhere, but some have adopted a similar mantra, “If you play it, they will come.” They’ve found sports can catalyze relationships that lead to the Gospel among a variety of age groups.

Alvin Reid recently helped lead a team that played basketball in Kiev, Ukraine, Yura Deli has hosted volunteer teams to teach American football in Moldova, and others have seen how a pick-up game of futbol/soccer can transform once-stand-off-ish nationals into Bible study participants.

What does sports + evangelism look like for you?

Mosaic Nashville is challenging people with 30 experiments to join God at work in their city and share about the results. A few of the 30:

•  Join people in their social activities: Go cheer for a student at a sporting event, go hear someone in concert, go to someone’s art show, check out the local art crawl; get out of your norm and encourage someone with your presence.

• Pray God might exalt His name in the city. Meditate on this passage: Psalm 46:10.

• Find and join a local group through meetup.com that will connect you with people of a common interest.

• Become a regular. Show up at a local coffee shop, breakfast spot, family diner, etc., on a consistent basis.

• Have an international student over for dinner.

• Co-plan a street garage sale with your neighbors. Give the money to a local charity. End the day with a BBQ on your front lawn/apt building.

Tried one of the 30? Tell us about it, below.

We want to know. What are your top 3 most influential books for cross-cultural missions? This certainly includes books written specifically with the missional church in the West in view, but lest we leave missions out of missional, what books are you reading or have read that have informed your cross-cultural missiology?

What non-Western authors have influenced you?

Leave your top 3 in the comments. We will be compiling this list and adding it to our Resources page.

How you describe a missionary may look like the profile of Lottie Moon or Hudson Taylor. Yet Larry McCrary challenges us to see how TCK teachers and teachers in national schools can be what are needed in different parts of the world, giving the missionary unique access to sharing life and the Gospel with those around him/her.

If you’re a teacher, consider how God may be calling you to serve him with your gifts and talents in another culture.

If you have taught in the context of another country, where did you serve? In what teaching role?

For many people who relocate (multiple times) to an international context for the sake of the Gospel, the question, “Where are you from?” can be a bit more complicated to answer than anyone ever intended. A former roommate of mine who spent many of her growing years overseas would base her answer in part on where she currently was or how long of a conversation she wanted to get into. She could say, “Oklahoma,” and be done with it, or, “the United States, Hong Kong and Cyprus.” See? Not so easy.

One missionary who was preparing to move overseas wrote about where home is to him, and how he and his wife have learned to define “home,” while observing how others in transition do so.

How do you define “home?” How can we help those in transition and their families understand this term?

Because The Upstream Collective exists to help the church help and think like missionaries, all of this awareness and blowback has caused us to ask: Who has boots on the ground? What is working? And how can the church be involved? To answer questions like these, we often point to creative platforms for global missions. One such platform is The Voice Project.

Brian Pappalardo works with The Voice Project and is a core member of the church plant that Upstream’s Michael Carpenter is planting in Little Rock, AR. He shares his story and his work with The Voice Project below.

____________________
I first became aware of the LRA in 2009, while I was living in Chicago. Almost immediately after I heard the words “child” and “soldiers” used in the same sentence, I began working full-time to see that this rebel group was stopped. In the last few years, I’ve had the honor of working alongside some amazing activists, lobbying for the unanimous passage of anti-LRA legislation, and traveling from coast to coast several times sharing our dream with schools and churches – a dream of a world without rebel warlords and mass atrocities, where children are allowed to grow and learn and dream in peace. It’s been a wild ride.

Last year, I met a man named Hunter while he was working at a displacement camp. Hunter began telling me the story of a group of women – widows, rape victims, survivors of war. He was struck by how resilient they were, and they sang a song to him – a song called “Dwog Paco” (translated: “Come Home”). They explained to Hunter that after their children had been abducted from their villages, they would sing these songs and pray that they reached the ears of their children. Songs like “Dwog Paco” let the children know that they were forgiven and that they would be welcomed home. And it worked; they came home by the thousands.

The Voice Project was born out of this idea, and it is a tribute to these women. We’ve been blessed with the support of popular musicians including Peter Gabriel, Billy Bragg, Mike Mills and Broken Social Scene. They have all recorded one another’s music to raise awareness and funding for locally-led economic development programs, vocational training, education, and small loans.

However, the beauty of what we’re doing lies here:

What one must realize, is that children abducted by the LRA are often forced to kill members of their family or community, and then they are told by their commanders that they will be killed by local peacekeepers if they try to escape. In this way, they keep the child soldiers fighting. By working with local musicians and recording peace songs and messages, The Voice Project is able to encourage defections at a rate that could end this conflict through non-violent means.

My role specifically is to work with college, high school, and church groups who believe, as we do, that love will win over hate, forgiveness will win over war, and hope will win over despair. We are raising $200,000 to build new FM towers so that members of the LRA operating in remote areas can have access to these songs, and know that they also are forgiven. If you would like more information on how your church can get directly involved in The Voice Project, please email me at brian@voiceproject.org.

If you would like to pray for this conflict, here are a few major requests. Pray…

• that the abducted children will know that they are forgiven and come home safely
• that we will receive the funding needed to build the new FM towers
• that these remote communities remain safe from LRA attacks and that this conflict ends soon.

Between 2000 and 2010 the Asian population in the United States grew by 43.3 percent–the largest percentage increase of any ethnic or racial group. As The Upstream Collective prepares to head to Tokyo on a JetSet trip, consider that reaching Asians and learning about their culture may begin in your own backyard. Partner with a local Asian American Christian group (hint: college campuses are great places to start) and develop relationships that can broaden your knowledge base of Asian culture with the goal of being able to better communicate the Gospel to this demographic.

Stories like that of Sahim, an immigrant to one of these cities, sheds hope on what God is already doing in these locations. As they dream big, GEM wants to see what will happen if individuals and churches across the globe commit to praying for specific European cities.

Those interested can access prayer guides on GEM’s website and send emails with suggestions or God-inspired insight.

For what people groups or locations is God telling you to pray? How are you seeing God respond to these prayers as you allow Him to expand your vision?

{Upstream’s Larry McCrary writes about his own re-entry experiences here and here regarding his extended visit to the United States (Tennessee) after living in multiple European countries.}

People are likely to experience a good deal of re-entry culture shock when they return to the United States to visit or move back after spending an extended amount of time in another country. Learning what is now in fashion or standard procedure for doctors visits, or how to purchase groceries can leave individuals feeling unexpectedly out of place.

Individuals may expect to be able to quickly assimilate back into their native culture, making this experience even harder to adjust to than moving to a foreign country. However, as this article discusses, even returning U.S. expats need help re-acclimating.

Have a re-entry shock story? Do tell.