Jim Stuff

India 13 - Cultural Expectations

Cultural Expectations! God’s Perspective! God’s Heart.

Cultural expectation! I’m realizing more and more my unrecognized trip expectations. I now realize I really expected to come, be repulsed by the country in general, expectantly wait to get out (due to I can’t stand the country), come to end, leave good-riddance.

Hmmm! Not a very flattering revelation I’d have to say. Sometimes God opens-up a portion of your heart and all you can say is ‘YUCK’!! My India experience, I’d have to say is exactly the opposite of what I expected. I expected to be repulsed but my response has been one of compassion rather than repulsion. I can now identify that I definitely didn’t understand when Renee came back from Indonesia and clearly desiring to follow that up with another visit. I definitely expected to come away thinking –, been there done that, bought the T-shirt! But this place really does grow on you! There is no repulsion.

Part of that is I fully expected to not feel safe especially in poorer areas (which is all areas as far as I can tell)! Yet I have not felt challenged or endangered at any time! I always assumed that poor areas just always fostered crime and danger! Interestingly, I have not observed that in the areas I’ve visited. Nor has that been the report of other team members making visits.

Venture Notes

I worked with my real client again today and we really had a good day with a solid connection and communication. It’s so exciting to see his passion to educate and evangelize his employees and the community within which he works. I will include a picture of me, Anandan, and Jenna who is helping as a co-consultant.

We had a very fun time doing a little skit today. We routinely talk about parables after a specific 10-P topic. So the parable today was the parable of the unforgiving servant (who was forgiven a debt then goes and throws another into jail who owes a lot less). So I got to be “Dungeon Jim”. And Yes, sometimes there are jobs that invoke “This is a job for Dungeon Jim”! We put all the players into a pic, but it was my job to cart the various characters off to the Dungeon! Bruhahahahah!
Diwali

Today is Diwali so there are lots of Firecrackers popping off all day. There are sudden loud booms, and strings of crackers going off, it’s just like the 4th of July when I was a kid. You know, back when we could actually light off firecrackers without a permit? Yeah, I can hardly remember it anymore either, but the memories are still down there.

Cultural Observations

- Cell phones are uniformly called “mobiles (mo-bI-l-s)”
- School years are called ‘standard’. The 12th grade is ‘the 12th standard! 9th grade is ‘the 9th standard’.
- Buildings start on level 0. To go to the ground floor you push 0 not 1.

Thanks for your prayers - Love all you guys.

jw

posted by Winya @ 7:43 AM