Ice Cream

This photo is of an ice cream vendor on a university campus in Padang, Sumatra. Ice cream is very popular on Sumatra. But you have to be careful when eating ice cream in Asia. Many an unwary American has bit into what they thought was a strawberry ice cream to find out it was yam or red bean flavored.

A group of volunteers bought what they thought was vanilla ice cream for refreshments during training for field workers. As the workers started eating they knew something was wrong. Upon checking the container they discovered it was coconut ice cream, not vanilla. It’s not bad, just not what was expected. Another common food shock is to eat what you think is sour cream to find out that mayonnaise has been substituted. It looks about the same, but it’s not.

These are small examples of what workers experience as they enter into different cultures. Sometimes the biggest jolts come from things that look familiar, but in fact are very different. It is when strawberry expectations collide with yam flavored reality!

Pray for workers who are experiencing culture shock.

Pray for them to be able to find pockets of comforting, familiar things when the sea of strangeness around them becomes overwhelming.

Pray for them to round the corner and find that the culture they are entering has some things that they enjoy.

Pray for cultural guides to help workers understand and enter more fully into the new culture.