Being an outsider from what is considered the norm is, for most people, undesirable.  While most people want to be different from others, they do not want to be an outsider who stands out as someone who does not know or is unaware of cultural norms and values.

In 1995, a friend and I spent two months in South America.  Most of the time I was in Santiago, Chile, teaching English to first through sixth graders at a school.  I remember the first time my friend and I went to visit the school.

My friend Sam and I had purchased nice felt hats at a tourist market and decided to wear them to the school that first day.  We knew that we stuck out as foreigners but the hats did not help at all..  While the hats may have been in keeping with the traditional Chilean culture, we soon realized hats of that sort were not worn by very many people in the city.  We successfully became the object of many stares as we made our way down the street trailing our host.  When we got back from the school that afternoon we stored our hats for the remainder of the trip. 

On this same trip I was staying in the home of a family in the southern town of San Carlos where my friend, a missionary family and I were visiting a school, some churches and helping with painting.  The family I was staying with taught me much about the difference between the respect and honor I usually have for guests compared to that of the Chileans.

Late one evening my host, Sergio, asked me if I would like anything to drink.  He said they have “agua, jugo, y leche” (water, juice and milk).  So I asked for juice.  Little did I know that the juice I would receive about twenty minutes later would come from dried peaches which Sergio had purchased at the corner store, boiled, and cooled; all after I had asked for some juice.  I was very humbled knowing that in my own home we would have looked in the refrigerator and reported back to our guest, “I’m sorry.  We are out of juice.”  The respect and honor they gave to me as a guest in their home was amazing.  I felt so different from them yet welcomed and embraced as part of the family.

Besides the times I have been outside the United States in different social settings, even here in the U.S. I feel out of place in certain places or at certain times.  On the Oral Roberts University campus the Student Association occasionally hosts various musical groups to perform.  I have been to several of these concerts as a photographer or just to see what is going on.  Possibly due to the musical subculture which I’m not used to and a combination of the lighting and music itself, I often find myself taking on a rather melancholy mindset and observing what is going on around me.  I do not feel apart of what is going on but almost like the proverbial fly on the wall just observing what others are doing and wondering why.  The style and subculture which flocks to these events give me much of the feeling of an outsider.

Also on the ORU campus I have realized that I feel almost like an outsider at the beginning of the semester even greeting my friends.  This feeling lingers until I am able to get into the routine of work and classes.  I feel that I need to have a “place” in which I know I fit before I can be comfortable.  Within a couple of weeks of the semester I’m quite at home and comfortable around others.  I would compare this to feelings probably typical of someone at a new workplace.  They want to be accepted by those around them but they want to have their own place so they know how they fit into the puzzle of their new surroundings.

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This book contains 123 activities all organized and categorized to be of maximum use for the teacher.  For convenience, the activities are listed so a teacher can look up an activity which will fit her classroom needs specifically.  There are three major headings for the activities: Questions and answers, Discussions and decisions, and Stories and scenes. Each activity is categorized by topic, language level, type of student organization needed whether from groups to individuals, amount of preparation involved, and time in minutes for the exercise to be completed.

Obviously, Klippel did not merely throw a bunch of activities together but he systematically organized them so teachers could use them most effectively. Although this book was not intended nor should it be used as a complete lesson plan for learning it is an excellent source for a teacher to supplement into a lesson plan to add excitement, encouragement, and action for the students.

One thing I really admire about this book is the author’s emphasis on communication.  Language is communication and learning a language means learning to communicate.  Klippel emphasizes this concept by promoting the need for achieving meaningful sharing of concepts and thoughts in a natural way in the classroom. This includes interaction between the teacher and students and students to other students in meaningful questions, conversations, interviews, games, etc.

In this book Klippel wrote,

“Traditional textbook exercises –however necessary and useful they may be for pre-communicative grammar practice — do not as a rule forge a link between the learners and the foreign language in such a way thatthe learners identify with it.” (p.5)

Just as Klippel points out, I too feel that it is extremely necessary for a speaker to find an identity within there new language.  A teacher can help instill this identity and a better understanding of a language by getting beyond the basic ideas of many texts and teaching the students to express their feelings and personal ideas in the language.  Granted, the basics must be taught but by using activities like many of the ones Klippel describes the students will be able to use the basics for something productive and something they identify with.

I would suggest, however, that these works best in a second language situation where the learner is submerged within the language most of the time. But these concepts can also be used in foreign language classrooms if the teacher uses them to the advantage of the students along with other meaningful classroom practices.

In my own experiences in learning a second language, I have found that most of the exercises are not very practical in communication.  Yes, I have learned some skills in communicating in the L2 but I see the value in Klippel’s ideas because they teach how to express feelings, ideas, and more abstract thoughts than the basic information I have learned.  I want my students to get beyond the learning of a language into the learning of communication via a different medium — the medium of a second language.

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Level: Any

Materials Needed: Students need a notebook set aside for this ongoing exercise.

Time: 15 min. exercise

Purpose: To allow students to build vocabulary in a useful manner by putting it to use in writing skills.  Students should learn to express themselves and ideas about their surroundings. Also this exercise makes writing a consistent but fun part of their learning. This could be a good starter to open each class session.

Technique:

1) Each day the teacher gives the student one or two words.  Students write them down in their notebook creating a dictionary which will grow throughout the year.

(These words should be ones which are somehow used in the lesson so they are not merely abstract ideas for the students.)

I suggest words which teach the student to express feeling, who they are, and their environment.

Here are a few examples.

feel   sad   cold

taste   happy   hot

ate   joy   tasty

try   impatient  long

want   angry/mad  boring

(different verb tenses can be used accommodate various student levels)

2) At the end of the week students are allotted a time to write a sentence (as they advance it may be increased to a paragraph) incorporating the words learned that week.  The teacher may need to prime them with a question at first.  “What do you think of this classroom?  Write about how you feel when you are with your family.” The main idea is to get them writing.

Note: The teacher may decide to grade this or not but I think this exercise would be a good means to evaluate how well the students are learning, hear comments on the classroom and get to know the students on a more personal level.  However, teachers must be sure to not betray the trust a student may place in them when they write about  personal matters

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A nice set of photos showing what kids around the world have when it comes to playtime. Reminds me of Peter Menzel’s “Material World: A Global Family Portrait” project but on a smaller scale!

Photographer Captures What Play-Time Means Around The World | FullyM.com by Snapsort.

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Mr. Holland needed a vision or idea where he wanted to lead his students.  His first day began with the usual nervousness and somewhat bewilderment that assaults anyone on a new job. However, he lacked a  long-term vision which would have given him an immediate focus and desire to dedicate himself to leading his students.

Mr. Holland  had to learn how his teaching methods affected the student’s responses.  If he had begun his class with something light and fun instead of diving into technical language that the pupils knew nothing about, he would have established himself as a friend and not just someone trying to shove knowledge down their throats.

When he grew from his experiences, he discovered that  teaching isn’t just a nine to five job, but one that requires a person who puts themselves into the students, much as he did into his own music.  When Mr. Holland learned to place himself and his love for music into the students, they learned to love him and music.  As Principal  Jacobs put it, “You must fill young minds with knowledge as well as being a compass to show them where to take that knowledge.”

As he continued teaching, Mr. Holland learned not to treat the students as “impossible” but as an audience with whom he needed to communicate.  When frustration surfaced, he became irate about their tests and began mocking  the students.  This caused the students to be discouraged and unwilling to learn. He found that when he changed his approach  of teaching to their  level, using some of their style  preferences, he was able to get a response that gave him personal satisfaction that his students were learning.  The students began to actually enjoy his class and eagerly took part.   An example of this is Gertrude Lang, who struggled with playing the clarinet but who, with Mr. Holland’s encouragement, began to play with a new joy and success.

While teaching students one-on-one is very important, Mr. Holland learned that one must be careful how his tutoring comes across to the pupil.  In the situation with Rowena, he developed too much of a relationship with her which had potential of ruining his life, that of his family and Rowena’s as well.  Teachers must be wary of how they councel their students and the conclusions they may make.

During a lot of his career,  Mr. Holland had all but forgotten about his own family because they were not what he had hoped for them to be.  He was learning about the balance which is needed in everyone’s life between work and family, but especially when your job requires as much dedication as teaching does.

When the students saw that Mr. Holland was giving of himself they gave of themselves.  As it says in Luke 6:40, the students will do what their teacher does.  When students saw his example of how he loved music and that he had learned to love them,  they responded by trying to please him..

From this movie I learned how I respond to the students is very important and will reflect in the way that they respond to me.  In Luke 2:46 the teachers took time to interact with the boy Jesus, asking and trying to answer His questions.  I need to follow that example and be sure to take the time to listen to what the students have to say.

The culmination of one’s life work is not merely how much you have accomplished but how many lives you have touched.

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Now photographers can use their tablet or smart phones to get the releases signed and even translated on the go! Then you can have the Getty Images-ready release e-mailed to you in jpeg or PDF form ready for archiving. The releases even include a ID image so you can visually match the shoot to your images later on!

What a great idea! I’d love to try this one out

Easy Release by ApplicationGap replaces inconvenient paper release forms with a slick, streamlined model release app designed by professional photographers for professional photographers.

via Model Release App : Easy Release by ApplicationGap : HOME.

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Just Salad’s Pink Bowl Promotion

Just Salad gave a great example of how to create buzz with people who already love their product: Faithful Customers.

They sent out 100 skip-the-line pink bowls to faithful customers and then promoted the concept and the buzz took things from there.

A happy Customer who blogged about his pink bowl experience!

Personally I’d never heard of Just Salad, but that may have something to do with me living in a third-world-country. However, I felt myself wishing I had a pink bowl from this restaurant and I could skip lines for a fresh salad! In fact, I think the TSA should  provide this sort of thing for lines at the airport! I can see it now…” Hey! You can’t cut in the line…Oh, sorry, I didn’t see your pink carry on bag. Come right on in!”

Ok, so that’s dreaming a bit. However, I think Just Salad did a great job of getting their name out there AND rewarding those who have been faithful to their business.

“For the cost of a bowl, shipping, and a free topping, $20? the small business reached thousands of customers and prospects.”

via How to Create Word of Mouth Magic | LinkedIn.

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Our national debt began like a necessary, comfortable fire but has grown into a blazing inferno that is devouring our resources. Some have said that debt is the price of freedom or a “necessary evil” because that money was needed to kindle the financing of our fledgling nation and our war for independence.
According to Robert Burn’s article, “Born in Hock” in The Kansas City Star on March 1, 1993, our debt began with the Revolutionary War (1775-1783) and by 1789 was at $77 million. That was 38 times larger than our governments yearly revenue! Because of government concern about the debt, they were able to reduce the debt to a mere $38,000 by 1893, even after the costly Civil War.
Since 1893 our nation has increasingly lost consciousness about our financial status. Our debt has increased with each war and even reached the $1 trillion mark in 1981. Looking back we can see that our nation went through two World Wars, Korea, and Vietnam, but the shocking fact is that since 1981 our debt has more than quadrupled and now stands at the enormous amount of $5.2 trillion. The Linn County News of August 28, 1996 quotes our debt at $5,213,488,943,748.22, a nearly incomprehensible number. On a scale where five inches equals $1 billion, $5.2 trillion is more than 2,085 feet away. That is longer than six football fields end to end or $19,629.55 for every man, woman and child in America (based on a population of 263.5 million people)!

Politicians and citizens alike have given up the fight against this fire that is burning up our future. The 1980’s were a prosperous time that should have reduced our debt, but it only increased. What then created such a dramatic increase in our spending? The government needs to open their books and their eyes and stop spending money on every congressman’s whim. Our problem is that everyone has his pet project that he wants to spend money on, whether foreign aid, new office furniture, voter-pleasing projects, or enormous benefits for himself. Every year, our government spends billions of dollars on unnecessary projects and products. They need to rethink these and stop all unnecessary expenditures.
They must realize that they are spending money that we do not have. What will our children do when we give them the responsibility of paying off government debt which we irresponsibly created? Unless we start now, what hope have they of stamping this inferno out? Our congressmen need to be on the lookout for these expenditures which are like dry tinder just waiting to burst into flame. Then they could call attention to the waste and have it stopped.
As citizens, we have the right to vote and should vote for those who will work toward decreasing the debt and balancing the budget. A balanced budget would require the government to spend no more than it has and to stop printing money that is backed by nothing. As you go to the polling booths this November, remember to know your candidates and make sure that they are “firefighters,” ready and willing to put a stop to our national debt.

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I have enjoyed my experience as a staff photographer for Oral Roberts University’s The Oracle.  This semester provided an opportunity for me to gain experience in diverse photojournalism techniques and situations from close-up shots at dinner to impersonal parking lots.  My time spent as a staff photographer has been well spent.  When I joined the staff, my purpose was to gain a reason to be continually involved in photography and learn any new photojournalism techniques that would present themselves over the semester.

Toward the end of this semester, I was asked to go to The Oracle offices on Monday mornings and read over the headlines.  This may be a small job, but I am now able to take a part in making The Oracle just a little better.  Besides, I am gaining experience that will assist me later if I turn in a job application to my hometown newspaper over the summer.  I had previously written and taken pictures freelance for The Fort Scott Tribune, but now I have a semester of experience which I can put in my resume`.

Just as suspected, I was placed in some situations that I have rarely seen as a photographer.  Sports is a subject which I have shied away from due to my lack of experience in the photographing thereof.  This semester I had the opportunity to attend and photograph several games.  Through these experiences I developed a joy for being down on the floor of a stadium and getting ready for the perfect moment to release the shutter.  This also helped me learn how press pass requirements work and how to deal with members of the sports information staff.

I enjoy the freedom which Chris Miyata, my editor, provides by letting me shoot with my own style and flair.  An example is my photograph for the October 28, 1996 issue, this photograph was of the PGA tournament parking on campus.  There is not a whole lot one can find to be interesting about several hundred cars parked across campus.  I tried to think of a point of view that would look interesting to someone who had just picked up a newspaper.  I thought that having the Praying Hands in the background would be a good way to show perspective and relationship between ORU and the vehicles.  This photograph made front page.  Another picture that I was able to show my own style was of the bagworms in the September 23, 1996 issue.  The trees showed how the pests had overtaken our campus, but I wanted to show a closer view.  Since the worms had clusters in piles near the EMR dormitory, I took a close-up shot of the worms that became a prime illustration for news writer Iain Little’s article.

I was assigned several photo shoots for the Rave section that involved going to different restaurants.  When I arrived at one particular restaurant, I was surprised at the difficult lighting situation and poor subject selection.  I shot several frames on the interior of the restaurant and then received permission to take pictures in the kitchen where the cooks were in the process of preparing pizza for their customers.  My editor used one of the interior shots, but through this and other experiences, I have learned how working for a newspaper can open otherwise closed doors.

I enjoyed my experience on The Oracle staff, although I was disappointed to see how much a part “politics” plays in what is actually published in the newspaper.  I heard comments during our weekly meeting saying that we should make sure to get an article about such and such just because [a certain offical] was there.  I understand that there will be checks and balances that will keep things out which even I think should not be allowed in the paper, but writing slanted articles just to keep someone happy seems wrong to me.

This semester as a whole has been a great beginning for me, I have had some difficulties but the joys have far outweighed the struggles.  One of my joys was making photographs for The Oracle.  Because of the versatile nature of this workshop/class I was able to incorporate it into my class schedule both this semester and next.  This workshop has given me a brief overview of how a newspaper is run and I have seen a tiny part of the enormous amounts of time that the editors spend to make a great paper.  I plan to use my experience with The Oracle staff this semester to help provide a basis for a possible future in journalism.

Fall 1996

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Overview

Our itinerary sent us all across the area of northern India and Nepal and briefly into Bhutan.  The entire internship can be separated into three segments:  Conferences, Trekking/Medical assistance, and Discipleship.

Conferences

Our conference itinerary sent us to the Nepal-India border town of Karkavitta, Nepal, for our first conference.  Then we took an overnight bus to Kathmandu, Nepal, where we painted at a youth center and lead another conference.  After nine days in Kathmandu, we rode in a bus and jeeps to the Bhutanese border of India where we attended a secret pastor’s conference in Bhutan, an extremely anti-Gospel nation.  During that week we also led a youth conference in Jaigon, India. During the conferences, I spoke (through a translator) on the topics of: “Growing in the Lord”, “Destiny”, and “The Armor of God”.

+Spiritual needs

The Karkavitta conference there was attended by people who had traveled more than three days specifically for the conference.  Beginning on a Sunday night, the conference sessions continued until noon on Wednesday, May 20.  It was a joy to see a visiting Hindu teacher accept Christ while others rededicated their lives to the Lord.

The Kathmandu conference was aimed more for youth of Kathmandu so we spent time of fellowship in small groups and playing sports with them.  This time of fellowship was a good time to get to know the people and showed them that we are real people who enjoy life just like they do.

The final conference we preached was in Jaigon located on the border of Bhutan and India.  Bhutan is one of the most closed nations to the Gospel.  Persecution of believers is continual in this tiny nation nestled in the tropical foothills between India and Tibet.

In Jaigon the Holy Spirit spoke through me.  He gave me examples and  gave me freedom in speaking like I have seldom felt.  This sermon is a constant reminder of how God works in love.  Although I didn’t realize it at the time, God was working through the love which He had given me for the people.

In Jaigon I felt closer to the people.   Some of them had been at the Karkavitta conference so it was like meeting friends again.  God had given me a love for these people.  Since almost all of them spoke English, our communication was much more successful than the other places we had been.  As we left they all gathered around our jeeps and bid us farewell.  This was one of the hardest good-byes on the trip.

 Note on Hinduism:

The Hindu and Bhuddist people of India and Nepal and all of Asia are steeped in bondage.  In Hindu worship there are over 30 million gods from which the people select a few to worship faithfully.

About a month before we arrived in India, this situation occurred:  A certain family in southern India (also the most evangelized part of that nation) had dedicated themselves to worship the Hindu goddess Shiva.  The image of Shiva is made from a black stone carved with hideous blood-dripping fangs.  She has four arms.  In one hand is a knife and in another a skull. Shiva is the goddess of destruction.  In ancient times, Shiva was worshipped with human sacrifices but in recent times usually animals are sacrificed.

One day, Shiva appeared to this family and told them that she was tired of the animal sacrifices.  She said she wanted a human sacrifice — one of them.  In their devotion to this demon-goddess, they spent several days in fasting so as not to anger their demon-god by sacrificing the wrong one.

After fasting and prayer, the father called his family together and told them he had had a full life and he wanted to become the sacrifice.  That night in a hellish ritual, the entire family stripped naked, severed the father’s head from his body, mutilated his body in ritualistic fashion, and went dancing through the temple of Shiva with their father’s head.

I tell this story not to be sensational.  I relate this story to that there are thousands of people living in hopelessness today.  This family had no hope of freedom from the demon they call Shiva.  All they know is that they must obey this thing or be destroyed.  As a Christian, filled with the love of Christ, I want to tell these people that they do not have to obey these demons.  The One greater than the demons is the One who paid for their salvation and freedom from obeying wickedness.

 Physical Needs

Karkavitta is located in the southeast end of Nepal directly across the border from India. It is a very humid, almost jungle region.  Crops include a variety of vegetables, tea, rice, corn, and wheat.  The water is often unpotable due to unsanitary practices with sewage being dumped just up the river.  In much of Asia it is not uncommon to see someone washing or even brushing their teeth while merely yards upstream sewage is being poured into the river.   Even the famous Ganges river in northeastern India  know for the ritualistic bathing of millions, is also polluted.

Throughout the entire internship, I was aware of the need for sanitation.  As a visitor to this area, I had to be more cautious about what I ate or drank.  It seems the nationals have grown up developing immunity to the diseases which are ever-present in unfiltered or boiled water and fresh vegetables. Even so, many of the sicknesses or irritations they suffer from are related to their lack of sanitation.  In many of their own vegetable gardens, they use human waste as fertilizer.  This leads to a spread of diseases.

During the conference in Kathmandu, I became even more aware of the need for sanitation and disposal of sewage.  Each day we walked past open sewage ditches filled with rubbish and human waste.

It was interesting to see the difference between the nations of India and Bhutan when comparing the border city of Jaigon, India, and its sister city in Bhutan.  The city of Jaigon is in dire need of new roads.  The current roads have been nearly washed away by the torrential rains which strike during the monsoon season. Yet, in Bhutan the streets were paved and kept clean.

In Jaigon we visited an orphanage where they raise all their own crops to supply food for the 35 children.  Using cattle, Gracie Matthews and her husband prepare the fields with a steel-tipped wooden plow so they can plant their crop of maize (corn).  Taking advantage of the humid climate and good soil, the Matthews also raise papaya, beetle nut, tapioca, beans, melons, pumpkins, yams, and bananas.  I was intrigued to find out that the banana trees grow to their 15 some feet in height, bloom, produce fruit and are chopped down all within a matter of eight months.

Ben Matthews, a son of Gracie, pointed out some neighboring property with a stand of trees.  He said that they were teak wood, a valuable wood.  This could possibly make a good cash crop for people in villages like Jaigon if they are able to set aside some land from their normal farming.  Over time they could develop a cycle of planting and harvesting the trees to provide a consistent cash crop.

 Trekking/Medical Assistance

In the northernmost point of India, there is the highest desert plateau in the world.  This is the sparsely populated rugged area of Ladakh found in the disputed state of Jammu and Kashmir.  Pakistan and India have continual skirmishes over the border areas of this state.  This was the region we spent 14 days going to one city and three villages to share the Gospel and helping provide medicine to those suffering ailments.  Our schedule in Ladakh gave us three days to adjust to the 13,000-foot altitude in the city of Leh.  Then we began trekking to the villages.  We stayed in the villages of Ney, Taru, and Nyemo.

For eight days we trekked through the mountains to provide medical clinics for the Ladakhi’s, telling them about Jesus Christ.  Many of them had never heard of who Jesus is.

In these villages a Christian Indian “amchee” (doctor) set up his clinic and one or two of us would assist him.  As he examined patients, the others on the team trekked throughout the village playing the Gospel in Ladakhi on hand crank tape players and passing out tracts.  Often we would sit out in the fields playing the cassettes to the men and women who tended the flocks and watched over the crops.  Occasionally, they even invited us into their homes where they listened to the cassettes and served us tea.

Prayer was a continual necessity as we walked through the Buddhist villages and cranked the tapes.  It was a joy to see the faces of those to whom the Holy Spirit was speaking.  Even on their face, I could see the intensity of someone who was not merely hearing a new thought but hearing about something they wanted very deeply.

The Medical Assistance drew people who became an audience willing to listen.  Especially while dealing with such a silencing barrier as language differences, the methods of medical assistance along with use of cassettes in their native tongue and tracts in their trade language seemed an effective outreach when seasoned with prayer.

Discipleship/Friendship Evangelism

Throughout the trip we did personal friendship and discipleship whenever possible.  In Kathmandu I met a Hindu named, Dipendra, who lived behind the church where we were doing our youth conference.  Dipendra spoke enough English that we were able to understand each other.  He invited me into his home and showed me how he makes his living.  He sits on the floor of his one-room apartment and hammers sheet metal into funnels and dust pans.

Unfortunately many Hindus, like Dipendra, believe Christ is just one more god they can add to their other 30 million gods.  I told him about Christ being the one God.  Then I got one of our translators, a former Hindu himself, and let him share with Dipendra.  Matrika, our translator, was able to speak in a way that Dipendra could understand and give a testimony of release from Hinduism.  Being able to take part in letting him know about who Christ truly is was a joy to me.

Personal Education Experience

This internship was definitely a time of education for me — both spiritually and mentally.  I became aware of the extreme influence both Hinduism and Buddhism has over the lives of most Asians.  This influence, more appropriately called control, is not limited to mere rituals on a sabbath day.  Their religion permeates everything they do.  This internship let me see first hand the affect their religious culture has on the daily lives of people in India and Nepal.

Definitely the main thing I noticed about their culture was their intense religion.  For example: One morning in Karkavitta, Nepal, I watched out my hotel window as a man across the dirt street symbolically offered water to the gods by tossing handfuls into the air. Though that was my first exposure to the amount of influence Hinduism plays with the Indian and Nepali people’s daily lives; it certainly was not my last.

Cattle are considered sacred reincarnations of  family members.  All through the cities, Brahma cattle can be seen wandering the streets and nibbling the sparse grass on the median of the highways.  It is illegal to kill a cow in Nepal or India.  In fact, with India as the second largest nation in population and steadily increasing, human life has little value while a cow is worth more than a human.

In northern India region of Ladakh, I saw stupas (holy mounds) and prayer flags on the high places.  They place these symbols of prayer in hopes that they will receive blessings from the demons they worship.  Once in the midmorning light, a young boy came through our camp carrying an incense pot which he swung as he walked clockwise around some stupas.  Clockwise is considered the cycle of life.  Often the older men and always the monks carry prayer beads which they continually are fingering as they walk around the villages.  Thus they are continually offering up prayer to their demon-gods.

This brought up the question in our minds: As Christians, how often do we lift up praise and prayer for the will of the true God to be done?  Even from their devotion to rituals, we can learn to be more devoted to Christ.

This trip made me aware of the spiritual need in India and Nepal and all of Asia.  To be told about people who have never heard of Jesus Christ is one thing; it is a whole different story to look into the eyes of someone who is hearing about Him for the first time.

The variety of locations and ministry which I was in, gave me a spectrum of several ways to minister after I graduate.  By preaching and doing discipleship and medical work, I have a better idea of what areas I work well in.  I especially enjoyed discipleship and friendship evangelism.  Both of these are ministries which I’m sure I’ll be using in the future.

I also was able to take note of the agricultural methods of the villagers.  Most of these observations came after we adjusted to the 13,000-14,000 feet above sea level and began trekking to the first village.

For hundreds of years the Ladakhi people have developed extensive irrigation systems to provide water to the crops which they tend on terraced slopes.  After trekking four hours through rugged barren mountains, I couldn’t help being impressed.  They have taken sandy, rock-strewn land and made it into fertile cropland.  The Ladakhi people have learned extensive grafting skills to grow trees in their valleys.  Wood is a valued commodity in Ladakh.  They even use the streams to grind their wheat through a stone mill and provide electricity via hydroelectric generator.  The generator uses a diverted stream to produce electricity for a village of 500 or more.

I met a man in Kathmandu who has begun a development program to reach the villages around that city.  Ramesh Sapkota, the executive director of Health Environment Literacy Programme, Nepal (HELP, Nepal), was very informational.  We traded addresses so I can continue to be informed about the development needs and efforts being done to fill those needs.  Mr. Sapkota told me that the main problems in this area are sanitation and infant and birthing mother fatalities.  Often newborn babies umbilical cords are cut with whatever is at hand, often leading to tetanus and other deadly diseases.

In the June 23 edition of the Hindustan Times of New Delhi, India, there was an article about the need for sanitation in Nepal. The article titled, “Sanitation still a dream for most Indians,” quoted Nepali women requesting water.  In most of the rural areas, the women have to walk for hours to provide water for their families.   The Times reported that Prof. Achyut P. Sharma said, “Only five percent of the rural population have piped water supply… The remaining population drinks water from springs, rivers, and streams which are polluted.”  Sharma attributed 80 percent of diseases to unclear water and said water related diseases account for 32 percent of deaths from birth to the age four.

This internship has made me aware of physical and spiritual needs while giving me the opportunity to help fulfill some of those needs.  I have developed a continuing desire to get to know people like those I met in India and Nepal and ask God how I can share His love with them.

Analysis of academic portion of ICD program

The International Community Development program provides training in a variety of courses which I see as very helpful.  In my experience the topics covered in classes such as Introduction to Christian Missions, Cultural Anthropology, and general education sciences helped to undergird my understanding of what I was observing both while occupied with ministry and  out in the villages or walking the streets of the cities.  After having observed certain aspects of life in India and Nepal, I hope to find topics in future classes which can be applied to the people I have seen in needy situations.  I will particularly be looking in courses like Health and Nutrition for topics concerning sanitation education for native peoples.

I found during the internship that the information I learned during research for the background paper was extremely useful.  It made me aware of the political, economic, religious and social situations in the country where I was going.  Of course I learned much more than research could have taught me when I actually was seeing it for myself.  However, the background work gave me a better understanding of what to expect.  Because of the background paper, I had a working knowledge of local history and religious practices which greatly affect both Nepali and Indian lives.

Keeping a journal as required for this internship is commendable.  It is my opinion that everyone should keep a journal on a regular basis.  Journals allow one to record their experiences on a daily basis and rereading a journal can help with research and planning future work.  Accomplishments and failures can be recorded in a journal without loss of the perspective one has while on the field.  Paperwork completed after an event often misses details which can easily be forgotten within a few days while notes in a journal can bring even more memories back when reread.

I feel that the variety of courses as required in the core circular classes for ICD majors will do well to prepare students for their work on the field.  Diversity in studies will help students to adapt well to whatever situation they find themselves.  By not only having one area of specialization, students in the ICD program receive specific training in their areas of emphasis and diverse subjects in the general education and core classes.  On the field you will probably never do only one type of ministry or work.  Most people who do missionary and/or community development work will be required to do a variety of work from manual labor, to computers, first aid,  and public speaking.

During this two month internship, I experienced many different forms of ministry and helping people.  I have become much more aware of the needs of people around the world and of my need to be prepared in season and out of season to help people — to help people spiritually and physically — in my local community and abroad.

All in all, this internship has been a step for me to learn more and move in the direction  Christ has called me — touching lives with His love around the world.

Michael Shead

July 31, 1998

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