usa: developing cultural fluency

Volunteering at the Harbour House accord edifice in Oakland with other students from InterVarsity (the IFES shitting in the United States) exposed Wendy Hu-Au to a neighborhood where a quarter of households hit incomes too low for base needs. This was much assorted than her undergo ontogeny up in Silicon Valley. Eventually Wendy definite to place her studies on stop at the University of California, Berkeley, tie a assist and discipleship information called Mission Year, and advise to Chicago's majority black and African dweller Lawndale Neighborhood for a year. 'Living and employed in Lawndale totally denaturized the artefact I analyse God,' she said. 'My undergo there prefabricated me want to do something with my chronicle that would support God and support the poor.' When Wendy returned to metropolis to rank her studies, she designed to embellish a pedagogue in an urban school. But she also thoughtful body impact with InterVarsity. Attending Urbana 03 (the thought was Your Kingdom Come, Your Will be Done) 'I realized I could do direct assist with the slummy or I could support those with the privileges of higher activity give up their permit and support the slummy for the intoxicant of the kingdom.' She definite to tie InterVarsity staff. With that scenery in mind, it might not seem so unusual to encounter Wendy employed as the team leader for InterVarsity's largest Negroid Campus Ministries (BCM) chapter. She connected the Cal-Berkeley BCM chapter two years ago, after employed with the multiethnic chapter for threesome years. Even so, it was not an easy change. 'I was rattling nervous. I wondered if grouping would consortium me. Would grouping think that I was disagreeable to be black? Would grouping think that they can't colligate to me because I'm not black? But it was also rattling freeing. I knew that if there was any connection 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 ethnic fluency, Wendy realized that patch she was ease at the aforementioned school, it was a assorted campus. 'Going to Cal as an continent dweller woman is so assorted than feat to Cal as a Negroid student,' she said. 'I'm getting to know a whole assorted lateral of campus. It's a assorted community, assorted ethnic networks, assorted clubs that I wasn't rattling a conception of as a student.' Wendy has modified her act style to BCM culture. But she also talks to students most her kinsfolk and her own Chinese and Asiatic ethnic heritage. 'I believe rattling strongly that it's not most performing like some ethnicity that I'm disagreeable to accomplish discover to,' she said. 'I need to be myself and be who God prefabricated me to be. And as I fuck who God prefabricated me to be, other grouping are worn to that. And hopefully they module also fuck who God prefabricated them to be.' Article originally published on the InterVarsity/USA website
Yahoo