Category: overseas

The Cultural Iceberg: What You Need to Know about Cross-cultural Communication

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Reading Time: 7 minutes

cultural iceberg

We’re excited to welcome back Sheri of Engineering Ministries International. EMI mobilizes architects, engineers, construction managers, and other design professionals–including those through an incredible internship program–to provide design services for those helping the poor. We’re talking water projects, hospitals, schools, orphanages, you name it. Meanwhile, they raise up disciples and trained professionals in-country.

Sheri applies these cross-cultural points poignantly to the elements of designing cross-culturally–but we believe you’ll find inescapable parallels to any cross-cultural work. Hopefully it will help jumpstart real solutions for cross-cultural sensitivities, and help any culture manifest Jesus Christ according to its own cultural icebergs. read more

Meet an Agency: Lahash

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Reading Time: 5 minutes

We heart this new, ongoing series–a virtual trip to the coffee shop with organizations to help you go there, serve Him, and love them even better. (For more thoughts about why you might join an agency–and a handful of reasons you might not–make sure to check out He Said/She Said/You Say? “Should I go overseas with an organization?”, both the pros and the cons.)

Today, we’re grabbing a lavender latte with Lahash.

Lahash 1 read more

Meet an Agency: All Nations

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Reading Time: 6 minutes

i-saw-the-messiah

We heart this new, ongoing series–a virtual trip to the coffee shop with organizations to help you go there, serve Him, and love them even better. (For more thoughts about why you might join an agency–and a handful of reasons you might not–make sure to check out He Said/She Said/You Say? “Should I go overseas with an organization?”, both the pros and the cons.)

Today, we’re grabbing a green tea frappuccino with All Nations--perhaps better known as the sending organization of the late John Chau.  read more

#BESTOFTHEBESTFRIDAYS: Business as Mission; fundraising bootcamp

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

bestofthebestfriday

Business as Mission Infographic

The BAM Review has published a pretty sweet summary of need-to-knows for Business as Mission–all in a tidy infographic. And please, click here for 50+ BAM job openings around the world!

Totally into BAM? From their think tank, BAM Global has produced a series of 19 Issue- and Region-focused reports on business as mission.

New Book, Becoming Whole, from the author of When Helping Hurts

Image result for becoming whole fikkert read more

6 Killer Online Resources for Fundraising

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Reading Time: 3 minutes

Fundraising ain’t for sissies. Not that it should, but some might report it makes you feel like you just walked out of the public bathroom with toilet paper stuck to your shoe.

But what if there are resources to make your presentation just that much easier, and a touch more professional to inspire confidence? Though nothing can substitute starting with the right support-raising mindset (! Don’t miss our post on the fear of rejection in fundraising), we’ve gathered a few goodies to make you feel a little less…awkward.

  1. FOR DESIGN: Canva.com

Canva is an easy-to-use graphic-design website for people who’d love a little help in the form of professional-looking free templates and a drag-and-drop format. It’s frequented by non-designers as well as professionals. We’re talking templates for print as well as web: for social media (for your Facebook page, Insta feed, or blog), invitations (for that fundraising dinner a friend’s throwing), brochures, letters, flyers, slideshow presentations, posters–you name it. read more

Meet an Agency: Africa Inland Mission (AIM)

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Reading Time: 5 minutes

We heart this new, ongoing series–a cup o’ joe with organizations to help you go there, serve Him, and love them even better. (For more thoughts about why you might join an agency–and a handful of reasons you might not–make sure to check out He Said/She Said/You Say? “Should I go overseas with an organization?”, both the pros and the cons.)

Today, we’re grabbing a cold brew coffee with Africa Inland Mission (AIM). Grab a chair. read more

Thoughts on a Friday: The DNA We Share

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Reading Time: < 1 minute

This morning I walked into a hotel lobby.  Two tables were set up on opposite sides of the walkway. The empty chairs at one table huddled beneath CNN’s scrolling feed. The empty chairs at the other clustered around FOX News.

I thought, This is a picture of America.

These are stratifying, polarizing times. And as you consider going overseas, it becomes imperative that you become aware of your own biases and angles. (Your host country, the further you immerse, will help you.) Your host country will have them as well. And perhaps you, too, will absorb a lesson we seem to learn over and over again interacting with other cultures and at times, blatant racism: read more

“What kind of characteristics do I need as a missionary?”

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Reading Time: 6 minutes
It might come to mind as you’re taping another box shut, or when you’re about to pass one of those points-of-no-return: Selling your house. Selling your wheels for pennies on the dollar. You might think, Well. If I go over there and bite it big time, this is going to be pretty embarrassing. Not to mention expensive. Do I have the characteristics it takes?”

(If you haven’t thought that? Just ignore those last two paragraphs.)

And here’s the reality: Some global workers come back earlier than they planned. read more