usa: developing cultural fluency

Volunteering at the Harbour House accord edifice in metropolis with another students from InterVarsity (the IFES shitting in the United States) unclothed Wendy Hu-Au to a accord where a lodge of households hit incomes likewise low for base needs. This was such assorted than her experience ontogeny up in Silicon Valley. Eventually Wendy definite to put her studies on hold at the University of California, Berkeley, tie a assist and discipleship information titled Mission Year, and advise to Chicago's majority black and individual dweller Lawndale Neighborhood for a year. 'Living and employed in Lawndale totally changed the artefact I analyse God,' she said. 'My experience there prefabricated me poverty to do something with my chronicle that would help God and help the poor.' When Wendy returned to metropolis to complete her studies, she designed to become a teacher in an cityfied school. But she also considered body impact with InterVarsity. Attending Urbana 03 (the thought was Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done) 'I realized I could do candid assist with the slummy or I could help those with the privileges of higher education give up their privilege and help the slummy for the intoxicant of the kingdom.' She definite to tie InterVarsity staff. With that scenery in mind, it strength not seem so unusual to encounter Wendy employed as the team cheater for InterVarsity's maximal Negroid Campus Ministries (BCM) chapter. She joined the Cal-Berkeley BCM chapter digit eld ago, after employed with the social chapter for three years. Even so, it was not an cushy change. 'I was really nervous. I wondered if grouping would consortium me. Would grouping conceive that I was trying to be black? Would grouping conceive that they can't relate to me because I'm not black? But it was also rattling freeing. I knew that if there was some unification to be made, it would hit to be finished the Holy Spirit. God would hit to be the digit to enter us.' As she worked on building consortium and developing cultural fluency, Wendy realized that patch she was still at the same school, it was a assorted campus. 'Going to Cal as an Asian dweller blackamoor is so assorted than feat to Cal as a Negroid student,' she said. 'I'm getting to undergo a whole assorted side of campus. It's a assorted community, assorted social networks, assorted clubs that I wasn't really a conception of as a student.' Wendy has modified her act call to BCM culture. But she also talks to students about her kinsfolk and her possess Asiatic and Asiatic social heritage. 'I conceive rattling strongly that it's not about performing same whatever ethnicity that I'm trying to reach out to,' she said. 'I requirement to be myself and be who God prefabricated me to be. And as I fuck who God prefabricated me to be, another grouping are drawn to that. And hopefully they module also fuck who God prefabricated them to be.' Article originally publicised on the InterVarsity/USA website
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