Merry Christmas!

Hello everyone, Josiah here. Merry Christmas! Thank you everyone for your continued prayers and support. God is amazing isn't he? This week we had a class focused on preparing for the trip. We wrote testimonies, bible studies and drimes ( plus I wrote a sermon = Crazy eh?!).

We also read a book titled From Foreign to Familiar by Sarah A. Lanier. It was very insightful. Lanier explained that one can basically generalize people of the world into two categories: Hot- climate culture (HCC) and Cold- climate culture (CCC). 

HCC refers to cultures who are very friendly (they would rather tell you that your hair looks great even if it doesn't so as to keep the "feel good" atmosphere), event oriented (ex. if you say the event starts at 2 they start getting ready at 2, whereas in our culture we would be there by two. For them the event starts when everyone gets there), and they have a group mentality where the group must come to a consensus on a matter before an opinion is stated. Countries with a HCC include: Afganistan, South America, Africa.


CCC refers to cultures that want clear accurate information (ie your hair isn't nice you should change it), time-oriented and idividualistic. Countries that have cold climate cultures include Austrailia, North America, Europe.


There are many theories, but it seems that a countries climate does affect how people relate to one another. It would seem that the agrarian cultures are usually HCC while industrialized cultures are CCC. Interesting stuff!


Well we are all very excited to be off soon. We hope to keep you posted whilst in Suriname if we can find interent God willing (im sure it will be easy...?)


God bless you and thanks again for your prayers!


Josiah k and Team