Preparing for the Global Exchange

By: Anna McIlwain

To participate in the 2008 Presbyterian Women Global Exchange is, for me, a wonderful opportunity to meet women from three countries and to share with them the hope and joy that God gives us. 

I am reading from the list of books given to us by the Global Exchange Committee. I have already read Anna Reid’s comprehensive book on Ukraine entitled Borderland: A Journey Through the History of Ukraine. Ukraine has certainly lived through many, many rulers and “Until the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, it had never been an independent state.”

I read, too, the gripping biography of Heda Margolius Kovaly entitled Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague 1941 – 1968; it was hard to put down. If you’d like to read a short review of it, go to our PW Synod’s website – www.pwslivingwaters.org.

Now I’m reading Ministering Cross-Culturally: An Incarnational Model for Personal Relationships by Sherwood G. Lingenfelter and Marvin K. Mayers. Two facts about the Incarnation are significant. First, “Jesus came as a helpless infant.” Second, “Jesus was a learner.”

The authors state that “We must love the people to whom we minister so much that we are willing to enter their culture as children, to learn how to speak as they speak, play as they play, eat what they eat, sleep where they sleep, study what they study, and thus earn their respect and admiration.”

The above is not easy, but the love of Christ “will sustain us so that we may identify with Paul who said, ‘I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings’ (I Cor. 9:22 – 23).”

I am also browsing three travel guides about the three countries we’ll visit and going to several websites, one about the Roma people whom we will be meeting and getting to know.

There are several more books to read. I will be very busy becoming prepared. Please pray with me that God will help me prepare intellectually, physically, and spiritually for our Global Exchange.

I will try to keep a journal each day so that I may better remember everything on my return and share my remembrances with you. Thank you for this opportunity; I hope and pray to be worthy of it.