Iringa Lutheran Centre

Last year, I stayed at the Iringa Lutheran Centre with students on the LCCT program. The Center is hidden away in a corner of Iringa, off the road from the Regional Library to Kihesa. A quiet, well kept establishment, the Centre has guest rooms and a restaurant.

Here I am with Tom Nielsen, the director of the Center. He and I had first met in Grantsburg, Wisconsin, where we both conducted a retreat for Lutherans. In his apartment across the street, I saw a copy of my Africans and Americans: Embracing Cultural Differences among his books. It is a small world.

Thanks to Don Fultz, a pastor who tirelessly promotes relations between Tanzanian and American Lutherans, my students and I traveled from Dar es Salaam to Iringa with guests from the Roseville Lutheran Church. They were going to Iringa on the Bega kwa Bega program. I discovered, as soon as we met, that these people knew about me. Dave and Karen Dudley, their trip leaders,  had urged them to read my Africans and Americans book. For much of the journey from Dar es Salaam to Iringa, I answered their questions about the nuances of African culture.

Our two groups stayed at the Iringa Lutheran Centre for several days, even though each had its own daytime schedule. We met during breakfast and dinner. One evening, I did a book signing, which I wrote about here.

Tom and his staff made our stay at the Centre a pleasant experience.

My Nebraska Readers

On June 9, 2010 I was in Amsterdam for several hours, on my way from Minneapolis to Dar es Salaam. As we were standing in the long, packed queue, proceeding to the boarding gate, a lady approached me confidently and asked me to sign a copy of my Africans and Americans book.

I did not know the lady, but she had the book in her hand. As she was handing me the pen and the book, I humbly asked for her name, and she told me to write Charlotte and Aimee. I asked where she was from and she said Nebraska, adding that she and several other people were on their way to Arusha, Tanzania, on a mission trip. Such mission trips are now very common among U.S. Lutherans and other Christians.

As Charlotte and I talked, we discovered that we have a mutual friend, Pastor Martin Russell, who is a seasoned leader of mission trips to Tanzania. I have never met him, but we are connected on Facebook. As we were getting connected on Facebook, Pastor Russell told me that he constantly recommends my book to mission trip participants. That is how Charlotte got to know about it.

During the flight, a young lady came to my seat and declared that she was Charlotte’s daughter and excitedly started praising my book, saying it “really nailed it.” Other people sitting nearby heard her. I was humbled. She asked if I would pose for a photo with her group later, and I gladly agreed.

When the plane landed at the Kilimanjaro International Airport in Arusha, I joined the group in the back of the plane and Charlotte took the photo shown here.













Such encounters with my readers have become quite common during flights between the USA and Tanzania. I am easy to recognize because of the photo on the back of my book, and I know that wherever I go, I cannot hide.

Culture and Companionship Retreat, 2009

I just received an invitation to participate as a presenter in a Retreat scheduled for March 26, 2009. This is a gathering of Lutherans involved in building relationships with fellow Lutherans in Africa and elsewhere. We had a similar retreat at the same place last year, which I mentioned here.
Apparently, that retreat went so well that the organizers wanted to have it again. While the topic last year was Mission and Accompaniment, this year it will be Culture and Companionship. I am pleased to be invited as a presenter again, delighted that the retreat is going to focus on culture, a topic most dear to me.

I look back on the experience of last year, and the discussions we had, of the theory and practice of Accompaniment as articulated by the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America, the discussions of the challenges and opportunities of establishing partnerships between American congregations and congregations in Africa and other parts of the world. I recall, as well, the warm fellowship that pervaded our gathering.














Here I am with a fellow presenter on that day, sharing ideas.














Sharing ideas with a fellow presenter.














Talks in small groups are a great way to consolidate and expand on what transpires in the larger gathering.














I had been asked to bring my books, and here I am signing copies.














We took a group photo, to record this memorable day.

With all these memories alive in my mind, I look forward to the forthcoming Retreat. I look forward to intense and valuable conversations on the place of culture in human interactions. I believe strongly that, perhaps more than anything else, cultural differences are the most serious challenge we have to address when we seek to work with people of a different culture. Unless we understand them and find ways to leverage them, perhaps turning them into opportunities, the cultural differences will be a perpetual stumbling block or a nightmare.