Day 3: Pray for field personnel who invite to the table those who are experiencing Global
Migration. Pray that God will bring those displaced to a place of safety and security.
Comment: A video to help guide your time of prayer for Global Migration
For Children’s Network: Invite children to pray for those who do not have a home or who are
searching for a new home that is safe and secure. https://cbf.net/childrens-weekofprayer
Day 2: Today we intercede on behalf of Global Poverty. Pray for the resources needed for
every table to be replenished with plenty for all to partake.
Comment: A video to help guide your time of prayer for Global Poverty
For Children’s Network: Invite children to pray for people who do no have to enough eat. Pray
for field personnel as they invite people to hear more about Jesus, the Light of the World.
Day 1: Thank you for joining us in the Week of Prayer for the Offering for Global Missions.
Today we lift up the Global Church. Pray for field personnel around the world as they join with churches
and organizations around the world to bear witness to Jesus Christ, cultivate beloved community, and
seek transformational development.
Comment: A video to help guide your time of prayer for the Global Church
For Children’s Network: Invite children to pray for the field personnel featured in the video who
are serving Jesus around the world. https://cbf.net/childrens-weekofprayer
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Lente, spring, was an easy Dutch word for us to learn because Lent, the English word for the 40 days before Easter, comes from the same Germanic roots. We now find ourselves in both Lent and lente.
This year’s Carnaval prins and prinses (two more easy Dutch cognates) have put away their fancy costumes. Crocuses are blooming in the front yard, violets in the backyard, and we Christians are being called to “repent and live the Gospel.”
Mary van Rheenen
The answer is, they don't. That is not part of American culture.*
Don't we all do just what this Dutch friend did--don't we all take our culture for granted? It's hard not to. We assume all the time that people will act in certain ways and will communicate in certain ways because that's the way we do. I recently read a module that highlighted this: Cultural and Linguistic Differences: What Teachers Should Know.
For example, most teachers in America come from white, middleclass backgrounds like me. We expect kids to tell stories in a linear way--beginning, middle, end. Frankly, I have trouble following other styles of organizing information. A Latino friend, for instance, uses a circular way of telling stories or explaining ideas. This has fancy academic names--which I also didn't know called--topic association or topic chaining.
This realization makes me wonder whether she has as much trouble following my storytelling style as I have had in following hers. It also makes me wonder how, if I had students like her in a writing class, I would teach them to write in the linear way which is expected in most American academic settings while also honoring and appreciating the cultural style those students know and use so well.
Insights into this and related issues of the classroom as a foreign culture will be welcomed!
Mary VanRheenen
*Dutch parents send out a geboortekaart or birth announcement card which includes times when people can come to visit. Guests who come op visite will be given beschuit met muisjes (Dutch rusk spread with butter and topped with either pink or blue anis-flavored sprinkles). Guests will also have brought a gift for the child (and perhaps also the parents).
The first whole week or at least for the first few days the new parent(s) will also have a kraamverzorgster for whole or half days. This trained health professional will help them care for the baby, gradually having the parent(s) take on more and more responsibility. The kraamverzorgster will also prepare the beschuit met muisjes for the visitors.
And instead of handing out cigars at work, a new parent might bring biscuit met muisjes to announce the birth and share the joy.
This group of young people gather once a week at Bethlehem Baptist Church in Moldova.
They themselves more or less determine what the Bible discussion will be.
Their leaders prepare Bible teaching based on questions the young people have raised.
Please continue to pray for wisdom for the leaders (mainly pastor Petru Ciochina) . . .
. . . and for understanding on the part of the young people-- understanding on a number of levels, linguistic as well as intellectual and spiritual.
Most speak Ursari Romani at home and spend hours on Russian-language social media.
Bible lessons and school are mainly taught in Romanian.
It is a delight--and a challenge--to see these young people in church. May the Spirit move among them!
I recently helped record the Gospel of Mark in a minority language. The speakers live in a place where it is dangerous to evangelize, so everyone--including me--traveled to a neutral country to do the recording.
There's also a translation team working in a related minority language who are all women. The Wycliffe translator who is working with them (online, not face-to-face) would like to do a similar recording with them in a neutral place in the near future. However, in this culture, married women cannot sit around a table like this with other men unless their husbands (or other women) are also present. Since these women's husbands would not be accompanying them, ideally the recording team would also include women.
The Wycliffe translator (present but not seen in this photo) was pleased, during the last recording that we did, to find that there is, in fact, a woman who is a media specialist and does the same thing I do. I was able to introduce him to this person who--to make it even better--actually lives in the neutral country where we did our last recording. The Wycliffe translator was able to meet her personally and discuss the possible recording project. Though she won't be able to do the project herself, she put the Wycliffe translator in touch with another woman who might be.
Praising the One who connects,
Keith Holmes