Repatriation: We Don’t Have a Clue until We Have a Clue

2265417682_ba2b629871I recently received an email from a friend, Sherrie Russell. She and her husband, Glen, have been missionaries in Panama since 1997, working with an indigenous tribe there. They have also served in Puerto Rico (10 years) and have ministered to international students at the University of Missouri-Columbia (6 years).

Sherrie was responding to an email from me, updating her on our transition back to the States. Looking for full-time work over the last two years has been a disappointing process for us, and she and Glen understand, as they were in a similar place when they came back from Puerto Rico. I can’t say the same for myself back then. I was one of those she is talking about when she says, “No one had a clue about what we were going through.”

Sherrie’s openness and honesty is an encouragement to my wife and me. I am grateful to her for letting me post some of her letter here:

I remember so well coming back from Puerto Rico and moving to Columbia and working with Latins at the campus ministry, how I had to take a job at McDonald’s and Glen had to drive a school bus while trying to reacclimate and keep it all together, and trying to understand “why” God didn’t supply what we needed to stay in Puerto Rico, in a work we loved (although it was hard and slow), with a people we wanted to see come to Christ, and in a place that was home.

I’ll never forget feeling so alone among so many kind people after we moved and began to know all of you. . . . It was like no one had any clue about what we were going through (not your fault and we knew that at the time)!

And eventually, when we did decide to go to the Dominican Republic and started trying to raise support . . . I’ll never forget a conversation I had with a friend at DQ.  We were there talking, and I was expressing my doubt about raising support (I mean, we couldn’t even raise a little more to stay in Puerto Rico) to her and she said something like, “You know the Lord will provide if it’s His will.” Of course she was just trying to encourage me . . . but out of my mouth and heart came this response, “He didn’t!”  And as soon as I said it, I realized how wrong I was!  I was so shocked that I felt that way and knew I had to remember that He does provide . . . but it was a very difficult time for us!

Even thought the Russells had made plans to move to the Dominican Republic, Sherrie says, “God took us to Panama instead.” About their six years in the States, she adds, “We began to learn how to wait on the Lord in Columbia, but it’s one of the hardest lessons in my opinion!”

And living abroad, too, hasn’t been easy for Sherrie. In 2007 she contracted mononucleosis and has suffered from bouts of severe exhaustion since then.

I haven’t been able to go to church or Bible studies this week because of my health situation. It’s been six years now, but I know God is faithful, and He is teaching me so much that I couldn’t have learned any other way.  One thing is that I’ve become so much more content!  Being able to cook sometimes in the morning to help Glen prepare some of the dinner for that day makes me so happy and thankful!!

One morning I posted on my wall on Facebook that I was listening to Andrea Boccelli and making spaghetti sauce with fresh basil and loving it!  A friend from Columbia whose child I taught at the preschool where I worked wrote that I was easy to please!  I thought about that, and I have become easy to please, and that’s good!

My wife and I enjoy Bocelli’s music, and while we were in Taiwan we bought our first Bocelli CD. Sherrie’s letter got me to look him up on YouTube, and I came across a video for his “Canto Della Terra” (“Song of the Earth”). If Steve McCurry made music videos, they might look like this.

[photo: “Loneliness,” by Flavio Spugna, used under a Creative Commons license]

If I Had a Hammer, I’d Still Need to Listen

Thanks to my daughter for showing me “It’s Not about the Nail.”

Point taken (all puns intended). It can be frustrating when someone—like a wife—won’t listen to common sense, ignoring a problem that’s as obvious as the nose on her face. She just wants someone to listen. No advice allowed.

Funny stuff. I feel this guy’s pain.

But wait a minute. Don’t I like to talk about the need for people to be heard, without having someone trying to fix everything? What about her pain? What gives?

Here’s what I’ve decided: Sometimes it is about the nail, but that doesn’t mean we should stop listening. Yes, some people, like this woman, won’t listen to reason. They don’t want to hear the truth or take responsibility, and they need to hear the truth clearly.

8559722063_d78cba51bc_tBut much of the time, our friends on the couch know the problem well and already have the solutions. Maybe they’re in the middle of fixing it but it’s taking time . . . or the fixes aren’t as quick as they should be . . . or the most obvious solutions would do more harm than good (anybody got a claw hammer?) . . . or there are other issues that make things more complicated. And in those cases, the person with the nail doesn’t need to be pummeled with advice, they need someone to hear about their hurts and fears.

There are a lot of people in the world who don’t want to listen to the truths that will solve their problems, but there are also a lot of people who don’t want to listen to the problems of others, so they use easy answers to try to make their own discomfort go away.

I know, I know. It’s just a comedy skit, and I shouldn’t try to make too much out of it. But I wanted to post the video, and I just couldn’t do that without tacking on my thoughts.

Oh, and one more thing. The writer and director for “It’s Not about the Nail” (he’s the male actor, too) is Jason Headley. Here’s another one of his videos. It’s called “A Little French.” (This will be the last of my comments about learning French for a while.) It doesn’t have millions of views like the one above, but it’s just as funny.

How can you not appreciate the thought process of a guy who can say, “I don’t want to learn French, I want to speak French”? If only. . . .

[photo: “Hammer,” by homespot hq, used under a Creative Commons license]

Language Study: Live (There) and Learn

3797213895_8586cd8e5e_nMan, I really should have studied French harder in college.

That’s how I ended my last post. Actually, I did study hard, got good grades in my three French classes, and was only three hours short of getting a French minor.

The reason I didn’t get the minor was that when I showed up for the first class of The History of the French Language, a 3-hour class taught in English, I realized I was in over my head. It was in the fall, after a summer full of not speaking French, and the girl in front of me asked Professor Honeycutt if he would teach the class in French. She asked this in French, and the girl next to her nodded in agreement. The teacher said he couldn’t do that, but I dropped the class the next day anyway.

It was one of the best decisions of my college career. I’m so glad that today I don’t have to tell people that I have a French minor but about the only thing I can still say is “I speak a little French.”

The problem wasn’t that I didn’t study hard enough. The problem was I didn’t need to use it outside of class. And inside of class, what I said didn’t matter as much as how I said it. You know what I mean: If your teacher asks you to tell about your pet, and you have a dog, but you’ve forgotten the word for dog, but you remember the word for cat, suddenly you have a cat. The professor isn’t asking you because he’s concerned about the animals in your life, he simply wants to see if you can put sentences together.

It’s not a silver bullet, but putting yourself in a place where you need to use a language in a meaningful way is key to learning a language. That’s one of the foundations of Education First, named the official supplier of language programs for the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. EF was founded in 1965 by Bertil Hult in Sweden, “on the principle that cultural immersion was a superior way to study a language.”

Below are five EF commercials about people learning a language where it’s spoken. Granted, they glamorize the whole expat experience, but they are commercials, not documentaries.

I just wish that I could become fluent by watching cool videos about cool people living in cool places—and not have to worry about conjugating verbs.

The commercials are called “Live the Language.”

(By the way, who knew that speaking Australian and Canadian was so easy? Almost as easy as what they speak over in England).

(“About Us” and “EF in Brief,” Education First)

[photo: “cafe,” by  pim van boesschoten, used under a Creative Commons license]

Les Images de France 5

I can’t speak French, but I like the way it sounds.

And I don’t know much about the French public TV channel France 5, but I like their video logos.

Last year, the branding agency Les Télécréateurs, helped rebrand the channel and came up with a series of 25 “idents” to show between programs. Les Télécréateurs, on their Vimeo site, writes,

The concept is as simple as it is strong; a multitude of things that move in the same direction, one following the other, like a chain reaction between completely different worlds. Its underlying meaning is stated loud and clear: knowledge derives from making new links.

The idents become a voyage in which the viewer experiences the ever changing world. Each shot is just long enough for you to grasp what you’re watching, but not too long that it bores you. It also instills in you the feeling of wanting more. Everything travels from left to right but sometimes a thing can reach the apex of its trajectory and start moving in the opposite direction.

And Alphabetical Order®, who directed the spots, says,

[T]his is of course about moving forward, striving, exploring, fighting, longing, pushing the limits and developing. It symbolizes what makes humanity prosper, what fascinates us in life.

Here’s a “Branding Montage” of idents paired with announcements for some of their programming. I can understand some of the words and can make out several of the locations (the pictures help). But, man, I really should have studied French harder in college.

(Les Télécréateurs, France 5 Rebrand | Idents, Vimeo)

Four Ways to Leverage Multi-Cultural Experiences to Raise Successful Kids

7778827430_2098f27ba3_nIn an increasingly globalized world, there are several ways to use multi-cultural experiences to help your children get a leg up as they move toward adulthood and future careers. Here are four of them.

None are easy, but the first may be the most difficult.

1. Be an Immigrant to the US

Sociologists at Johns Hopkins University, Lingxin Hao and Han S. Woo, found that children of immigrants in America achieve more academically and have better transitions into adulthood than their peers with native-born parents. The advantage is highest for foreign-born children whose parents move to the States, followed closely by American-born children of immigrants. Hao and Woo’s findings appear in the September/October 2012 issue of Child Development (“Distinct Trajectories in the Transition to Adulthood: Are Children of Immigrants Advantaged?“)

Explaining the difference,

Hao suggests that there is a greater sense of community among immigrants out of necessity—newcomers often need a lot of assistance when they first arrive in the United States. But Hao, who is from China, thinks there is also a great deal of inspiration to be found among the immigrant community: Parents might be working multiple low-level jobs and encourage their children to seek a better life for themselves. The success stories of immigrants who have “made it” are also held up as role models for immigrant children, something other native-born groups might be lacking, Hao said.

(“Children of Immigrants Are Coming Out Ahead of Their Peers, U.S. Study Finds,” ScienceDaily, September 13, 2012)

2. Don’t be a tiger parent

This one might go under the category of cultural lessons on what not to do.

Regardless of what Amy Chua writes in her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, “Chinese-style” tiger parenting is not the best model for raising children. This is according to researchers Su Yeong Kim, Yijie Wang, Diana Orozco-Lapray, Yishan Shen, and Mohammed Murtuza. They compared the developmental outcomes of children from 444 Chinese-American families in northern California, using eight parenting dimensions—”parental warmth,” “democratic parenting,” “parental monitoring,” “inductive reasoning,” “parental hostility,” “psychological control,” “punitive parenting,” and “shaming”—to categorize four parenting styles. In order, from the style that produces the best developmental outcomes to the least, they are “supporting,” “easygoing,” “tiger,” and “harsh.”

From the abstract of “Does ‘Tiger parenting’ Exist? Parenting Profiles of Chinese Americans and Adolescent Developmental Outcomes” (published in Asian American Journal of Psychology, March 2013):

Compared with the supportive parenting profile, a tiger parenting profile was associated with lower GPA and educational attainment, as well as less of a sense of family obligation; it was also associated with more academic pressure, more depressive symptoms, and a greater sense of alienation. The current study suggests that, contrary to the common perception, tiger parenting is not the most typical parenting profile in Chinese American families, nor does it lead to optimal adjustment among Chinese American adolescents.

(Nate Kornell “Does Tiger Parenting Work?” Psychology Today, December 14, 2012)

3. Make sure your children learn a foreign language

Bronwyn Fryer, a senior editor at the Harvard Business Review, trumpets the need for “soft skills,” things like “emotional intelligence,” “listening,” and “authenticity,” for global leaders. But, he writes, the top soft skill for executives in global organizations is “sensitivity to culture,” also known as “cultural empathy.” According to Frye,

True cultural empathy springs from personality, early nurturing, curiosity, and appreciation of diversity. But, very importantly, it also springs from deep exposure to more than one language. And this is where American executives fall short.

Learning another language, he says, not only helps in communication, but opens up one’s thinking:

As anyone who has ever learned to speak a foreign language fluently notices how each language shifts one’s consciousness. One day, you wake up and you realize you have been dreaming in the new language. Eventually you realize you are thinking in that language. And when you shift back and forth between, say, your native tongue and the acquired language, you feel like you are driving a car with a stick-shift; you are more involved and engaged in the experience. You take in more; you hear more. And you literally feel different; you are “more than yourself.”

(Bronwyn Fryer, “Why America Lacks Global Leaders,” Harvard Business Review, August 23, 2012)

4. Encourage your children to add overseas work experience to their educations

This one comes a little later in their lives, but they’re always your kids, right?

In 2010, Susan Adams, of Forbes, gathered the views of several hiring experts on the value of work experience overseas. She writes that foreign postings, including the Peace Corps, internships, and other types of jobs, give an advantage to people looking for work. One of the reasons is that living and working overseas exposes people to differing leadership styles.

And some who move overseas find opportunities for long-term employment there. Adams talked with Mary Anne Walsh, a global-leaders coach based in New York, and learned that Walsh’s clients “who moved overseas shortly after college and graduate school . . . advanced much more quickly than if they had tried to climb the career ladder in the U.S.”

Others had this to say:

Dan Black, Americas director of recruiting for Ernst & Young—

We definitely see overseas experience as an advantage. Our clients are demanding more of us these days. They want diversity of thought and diversity of values, and many of our clients are multinationals.

Gary Baker, U.S. global mobility leader for PricewaterhouseCoopers—

[Being part of a minority group in another country]  gives you a greater respect for other cultures, and you learn to be better at managing teams that are diverse.

Not only does working overseas build character, writes Adams, but being successful in a foreign country also increases one’s confidence. “If you can make your way in Mexico City, Abuja or Sao Paulo, then traditional U.S. organizational issues will be a snap for you.”

(Susan Adams, “How a Job Abroad Can Give Your Career a Big Boost,” Forbes, November 4, 2010)

[photo: “Awaiting Riders,” by dolanh, used under a Creative Commons license]

A Biscoff Cookie, an Inflight Magazine, and Some White Noise. . . Welcome Aboard

5720172830_9a58e44e33

It’s been more than a year since I put together my list of online, English-language, international (read, with other than just US destinations) in-flight magazines.

Not long ago, I found 27 more and have added their links to the post. That brings the total to 91.

So . . .

[photo: “Pink Jet Wing,” by Cyndy Sims Parr, used under a Creative Commons license]

Al Jazeera America Launches Today—Are You Watching?

321612084_f897d0c516_nAsk Americans what Al Jazeera is, and my guess is that more than a few will assume that it must be an organization of terrorist fighters. Even among those who know that it’s a news outlet, many remember it for the videos it aired from Osama bin Laden following the 9/11 attacks and view it with suspicion.

Those are viewpoints that Al Jazeera hopes to change as it launches its cable channel, Al Jazeera America, today. Al Jazeera gained its foothold in the US market in January when it purchased Al Gore’s Current TV for around half a billion dollars.

Overcoming perceived prejudices and misconceptions, as well as accusations of bias—the organization is owned by the government of Qatar—might be an uphill battle in the US, but Al Jazeera America CEO Ehab Al Shihabi believes its winnable. He told NPR’s Sarah Abdurrahman that Al Jazeera was already rated as the “number five strongest brand in the world” in 2010. (I couldn’t find a reference to a 2010 ranking, though in 2004, Al Jazeera did place number five in Brandchannel’s Readers’ Choice Awards for brands with the most global impact, one spot behind IKEA and Starbucks and in front of Mini cars and Coca-Cola. Al Jazeera didn’t appear in the top ten in 2005 or 2006, the last years for results on Brandchannel’s website.)

The company has no plans to change the name, and Abdurrahman is confident that if viewers simply try it out, Al Jazeera America will win them over.

Ali Velshi, formerly of CNN, will host the new network’s show “Real Money.” He told NPR that he likens the appearance of Al Jazeera America to the arrival of Japanese cars to the US in the 60s and 70s. Even though Japan had recently been America’s enemy, in time, Toyota and Honda became top brands.

One way that Al Jazeera America is Americanizing its image is by hiring reporters, anchors, and other staff known for their work on familiar networks. Besides Velshi, these include Soledad O’Brien and Sheila MacVicar, from CNN; John Seigenthaler, from NBC and MSNBC;  David Shuster from Fox and MSNBC;  and Joie Chen, formerly with CNN and CBS. Kate O’Brian, former vice president of ABC News, has taken the role of president of Al Jazeera America, as well.

The new channel is also taking steps to prepare more American staffers to join its ranks, with Al Jazeera America planning to partner with Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism to offer internships to Medill students. Northwestern has had a campus in Qatar, awarding degrees in communications and journalism, since 2008.

So, what happens after today? Ten years from now, will Al Jazeera America have passed into history? Will it struggle to gain viewers, propped up by grants from the emir of Qatar? Or will it have taken its place as a major competitor on the cable landscape, becoming as American as baseball, hot dogs, apple pie, and . . . Toyota?

(Sarah Abdurrahman, “Al-Jazeera America Will Have to Work Hard to Win Viewers,” NPR, August 16, 2013; “Readers’ Choice: Global Top Votes,” Brandchannel; Roger Yu, “Al Jazeera America: Will US Viewers Buy It?” USA Today, August 11, 2013; Don Kaplan, “Al Jazeera America Prepares to Make Big News with Hires Including Soledad O’Brien and Joie Chen,” New York Daily News, August 15, 2013; Matt Paolelli, “Al Jazeera America Announces Plans,” Northwestern University News, April 30, 2013

[photo: “The Nerve Centre,” by Laika slips the lead, used under a Creative Commons license]

Related Post:
Fake News: You Can Fool All of the World Some of the Time

Neighbors Being Neighbors after Joplin Mosque Destroyed by Fire, a Look Back

2711889859_effc34339e_mA year ago, on August 7, a mosque in Joplin, MO, was burned to the ground in an early-morning fire. The cause of the fire has not been determined but was deemed “suspicious,” especially since an arsonist had started a fire on the roof barely over a month earlier, and a sign at the mosque had been set on fire in 2008.

The destruction of the mosque, which made international news, was followed a few weeks later by a “Neighbors” rally, organized by Ashley Carter, a student at Joplin’s Ozark Christian College. As she wrote on the event’s Facebook page, the purpose of the rally was to

show that love is stronger than fear or hatred. In an effort to support our neighbors, we’ve created this event. . . . All in all, this is about paying it forward: giving love before hate crimes can be committed.

On August 6 of this year, the Islamic Society of Joplin posted a documentary on YouTube, focusing on the fire and the rally. It was very interesting to me to watch the video for several reasons: I live in Joplin and attended the event, I know several of the OCC students who helped with the rally, and I know Kimberly Kester, spokeswoman for the Islamic Society, who appears in the documentary. The film also shows local Muslims responding to the tornado that struck Joplin the year before the fire. As a Christian, I have heard many people talk about that tragedy from a Christian point of view, but this was the first time I’d heard someone speak about it from a Muslim worldview.

Rick Love, a Christian and president of Peace Catalysts International, was one of the speakers at the rally. He told the hundreds who attended,

This gathering does not mean we believe in some kind of imaginary One World Religion. We are not expecting or affirming theological compromise. We are expecting each religious community to be authentically faithful to their historic beliefs and find within those beliefs the resources to reach out to one another in love and respect. . . . We believe that our communities of faith should be a force for peace, justice, and reconciliation instead of discord and strife.

Many of the participants in the rally wore t-shirts that read on the front “LOVE—Making things beautiful from things that aren’t.” On the back, they said, “I will . . . ,” with space for each person to complete the phrase with a black marker. I can’t help but be reminded of the topic of my previous post, with its own fill-in-the-blank: “I like ____________.®”

I like good neighbors.

(Rick Love, “Hate Crime Meets Love Rally: The Joplin Mosque Burning,” Peace Catalyst International, August 27, 20012)

[photo: “Row House,” by David Sawyer, used under a Creative Commons license]