Lake Neuron

While I am in Costa Rica, I have prepared some posts which should, if I have set things up correctly, appear automatically in my absence. I will be back to live posting on July 16.

When you travel to (or welcome guests from) another culture, there are many cultural differences that can lead to misunderstandings and hard feelings.

Another book LEAMIS uses in training mission trips is “Foreign To Familiar,” by Sarah A. Lanier. Lanier’s thesis is helping missioners understand cultural differences between hot-climate and cold-climate cultures. It’s a broad over-generalization, but one which can still be useful in understanding cultural differences.

Many of the differences between cold-climate and hot-climate cultures have to do with individualism and community. Cold-climate cultures place a higher value on individualism, while hot-climate cultures (with some exceptions) tend to emphasize the community. Someone from one culture who crosses into the other may run into problems because of differences in custom and practice regarding everything from private property to spontaneous celebrations.

Anyway, here’s a quote:

As a cold-climate person my greatest sacrifice was giving up my privacy, my time to myself. I never knew when I would be interrupted. It seemed exhausting until I got used to it. Then it became second nature to me.

Soon after returning to Amsterdam from Chile, one Sunday afternoon I cooked up some food, which I often do for recreation. I then proceeded to call around to friends to invite them over that evening to eat. Call after call met with disappointment. No one could come …. That’s when I realized a reason for loneliness in our well-organized city. What we needed was some hot-climate spontaneous relationship and a little less cold-climate structured privacy.

Today’s prayer focus will be the relationship between the team and our Costa Rican hosts. Pray that cultural barriers on either side will be broken down, and we will be able to recognize our differences and set aside unwarranted value judgements.