What a week it has been.
All 11 of our summer interns arrived safe and sound to the Dominican Republic last Saturday even though they experienced some bumps along the way. Sunday the interns got to visit some of the homes of our ANIJA school kids to get an idea of the community of at-risk children we serve. My group was to see a boy who finished second grade but he was enjoying the afternoon at the river with his grandmother so we ended up visiting another child who just graduated from first grade at ANIJA. Graduating first grade is a big thing because the kids are able to read. All the children write their own "books" that they read during graduation. This year the theme was on fruits. The little girl we visited wrote her "book" about grapes. Later that evening, I shared a small devotion with the interns about how uniquely God has made them (Gen. 1:27; Ps. 139:13-14; Col. 3:12). Our first session was to learn more about ourselves and how unique God has made us by doing some personality tests and the five love language test. We have many Golden Retrievers and Beavers on our intern team.
Monday morning, Vic led our devotional time on Isaiah 58:1-7. Today's sessions focused more about
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| Carolina sharing about the "Ugly American" |
cross-cultural sensitivity. They learned the transition bridge, the stages of culture shock, hot vs. cold climate cultures, the "Ugly American," and an overview of Kids Alive in the Dominican Republic. The interns had a scavenger hunt of different things they needed to find and buy around town and some questions to be answered about the history and unique things specific to the Dominican Republic.
We concluded our cross-cultural session by playing a cross-cultural game in which the three teams role played their culture with its norms while either visiting another culture and sharing the Gospel message or hosting another culture. The focus of this game is to put into play some of the theory that they learned throughout the day as well as seeing different characteristics that popped out during the game. The object was that each culture was to try and follow their norms without adapting to the other culture's norms. As we debriefed the game, they shared how they felt about the other culture and the culture that they portrayed, the interesting conclusion was the culture that was more accommodating to the other cultures no one wanted to be a part of that culture. But this was the culture that best shared the Gospel message because of being accommodating and willing to learn about the other culture as they were sharing the Gospel message.
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| Ja culture hosting the Na culture |
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| Na culture (on left) hosting the Za culture (right) |
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| Za culture (sitting down) hosting Ja culture (standing) |
In the evening, the interns had dinner with six of our young people who are in the university club yet were part of our ANIJA or Palo Blanco schools from a young age. The young people shared their testimonies of how they learned about God during their years at on of our schools and how many of them are now pouring back into our program. Some of them just graduation recently from the university as well. In this group we have a civil engineer, accountant, teacher-administrator of preschool, one studying to be a cardiologist, one studying to be a psychologist, and one studying to be a teacher.
Tuesday Leslie led us in devotions, Psalm 84. Today's session focused on conflict resolution as well as our child protection policy and Kids Alive best standards. Conflict is all around us, "the air that I breathe." I had the interns first do a couple of activities to learn some things regarding communication and conflict.
The first activity was that they were divided into two teams and the last person was able to see a picture and memorized all it's details for two minutes before drawing from memory the picture on the person in front of them's back. Each one did it until the first person in the line drew on paper what they believed the picture was from what was drawn on their back. Then we compared drawing to the original picture. No one was allowed to talk during the activity. Each one just had to draw what they perceived they felt on their back.
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| Two teams |
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| Original picture for team on right side (photo above) |
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| Picture that was drawn |
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| Original picture for team on left (photo above) |
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| Picture drawn |
The second activity was done in pairs. One person was the communicator and the other person was the artist. The pair was back-to-back and only the communicator could talk and describe the picture that they were holding. The artist drew what he/she believed was being communicated. Then they compared what the artist drew to what was the original picture. In both activities, we talked about what they liked, what was frustrating, etc. The most frustrating part was not being able to communicate. Those that were able to communicate or knew the picture did not know if what they were communicating was being received correctly or not.
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| Small picture is original, big picture what the artist drew |
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| Small picture is original, big picture what the artist drew |
In the afternoon we put the theory into practice regarding conflict resolution. First we divided them up into groups of three to share a personal conflict that they had or are dealing with now. In the group, one person was the presenter of the conflict, one person was actively listening using the various things that were taught to listen well, and the third person was the observer. They gave feedback to one another of how each presenter and active listener did then they rotated positions. At the end, we had our interns role play a situation and to come up with how they would resolve that conflict from what they learned. One scenario was a roommate issue. The second scenario was a transportation issue. The third scenario was kids fighting while playing soccer.
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| Roommate Scenario |
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| Transportation Scenario |
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| Kids Fighting Scenario |
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