cross-cultural

If I had to summarize my day with one phrase, that would be it. Cross-cultural, as in, American-Mexican, but also cross-cultural as in, 18-month-old and 24-year-old. Seriously, I sometimes feel like we live in different cultures - her's with a philosophy of "destroy" and mine with a philosophy of "clean up". Bringing those two cultures together sometimes results in a little conflict.

Anyway. So as I've already mentioned, I spent the entire day picking up the house with not a lot to show for it at the end. I guess I made lunch too. With Ivory's assistance. So you can imagine how that went. We had a lot of things a lot of places. Suffice to say that by the time we were done, the kitchen matched the rest of the house.

About halfway through the afternoon, Grant left to go pick kids up and be at Jovenes in the evening. We have made the decision that Jovenes isn't the best place for Ivory, Titus, and I on Saturday nights at this point, so Grant went alone. An hour or so later, having just informed God that He wasn't exactly giving me the grace I felt like I needed to make it through the evening, I realized that two neighbor girls were peeking in the front door.

This is a hard situation for me... a really hard one. It's somewhat common for kids to just kind of hang around and stare. It feels so rude to me, and it makes me mad at their parents for not teaching them otherwise and for not keeping an eye on them when they're out playing. Usually its just in the front gate, but in this case, all of a sudden there were two little heads peeking in the screen door at Ivory eating her evening snack.

Ivory's friendliness is sometimes convicting to me, and this was one of those times. She was saying "hi!" and smiling and laughing and I, on the inside, was groaning. It was so incredibly ironic to me that I prayed for grace and God sent these particular girls. One is a cute little 4 or 5 year old who lives across the street. The other, however, is the sister of a little boy that has only been to school long enough to get suspended and who literally just wanders the streets all day, every day. I don't mean to say that because he's that way, she must be the same, but there's just a lot of family issues. Really, it's so sad.

So I had to decide whether or not to invite them in the house. As a side note, I had actually spent the entire day wondering why on earth we have so much stuff and just in general gaining a better understanding of how stuff can consume you and pull you away from more important things. But I realized in that moment that I had an opportunity right before me to use our stuff to bless others - letting them in to play toys with Ivory would not hurt anything, and besides, it might distract her long enough that I could get something done.

And it did. They weren't exactly babysitting, but they were definitely all playing together in our living room, which freed me up significantly to actually put things away in other rooms. And the older girl even organized and put away some of Ivory's blocks! I felt God teaching me a lot of things, and I was very humbled.

I was further humbled when Elsa, Lupita, and Issa stopped in after Jovenes to visit a little while. I was frazzled, hadn't showered all day, expecting additional guests in a half hour, having forty things to do in that half hour... but we had one of the best conversations I think we've ever had. Sometimes being gone for a while is a good thing. I came back here with a renewed excitement to see people, renewed interest in their lives... just generally renewed. It has been so good for my relationships here.

Our evening was perhaps the most cross-cultural of it all. We had brothers from the U.S., Mexico, and Japan sitting around our kitchen table for tacos. Right now, there are several brothers here for a meeting for a committee that Matt is a part of. Mike Leman, Kevin Ryan, Seth Gerber, Kirk Plattner, and Akihiro Ito all came for that. So this evening they, along with Carlos, came over for supper after Jovenes. It was a blessing; I was grateful in the end that Grant really encouraged that we host (and that he helped with the last-minute clean-up). Akihiro told stories of his grandfather, a Japanese pilot, and Seth translated for Carlos. It was so fascinating to get a glimpse into a culture outside of Mexico, outside the U.S. - a culture that I am really unfamiliar with.

Our day, ultimately, was wonderful, albeit very stretching and filled to the brim with grace. It was so neat to be able to fellowship with brothers from different countries and cultures and to still be able to feel that we all have Christ in common. And the communication challenges reminded me to be thankful... that in spite of Ivory and my "cultural differences", we do, at least sort of, speak the same language.