If you didn’t already know this, North Aurora has made some dramatic changes since we first moved onto the block five years ago. The cultural breakdown is now roughly: a third predominately white transient poor (living in the motels or worse); a third, immigrants from Mexico; and the last third are the refugees from war torn countries around the world. Predominately from Burma, Nepal and Somalia, though there are others as well.
We are a rainbow of cultures helping each other become more at home in this beautiful country of ours. Our programs are filled with faces beaming from under “hijab” (muslim head coverings) or above bodies swathed in “sari” dresses, even in winter, so excited to experience free education (even for women) and the lovingly supportive community we share with them.
Learning about a new culture can be fraught with landmines and misunderstanding. Cultures that don’t run their lives by what time it is are often late to appointments and hold more value in relationships then punctuality. Especially those that have spent years living in internment/detention camps spending most of their energy to obtain the basics of survival.
Our food bank was the first to be stretched, a few years back, in being Christ to these families. Many of our foods are baffling and hard to trust for a vegetarian who finds themselves in a very meat centric culture, (with foreign looking produce even.) Invitations to come explore our food was met with polite resistance. Until we dropped our need to control and began visiting, accepting the invitations of families. As a guest, we were treated like a blessing on their house, whatever they have being freely offered, though it might cause them hardship later. As we showed love, trust and respect of them and their food, so they began to trust us.
Along the way we’ve discovered many things. The women are familiar with cooking on stove tops, but fear the oven. Many women calling it a “dragon” (which took a bit of translation to learn) =) The mystery of broil, bake, let alone self-cleaning selections, make them suspicious and fearful of it.
Which brings us to this holiday. Ever thought about how much baking goes into a traditional American Thanksgiving? I hadn’t. Even if you leave the turkey out of it, there’s a lot! The first year was a fiasco of explaining a frozen turkey is meat. Which taught us to offer a King Sooper gift card for a turkey or anything else they might like instead. We did talk to our families about getting more culturally specific foods, but no, they wanted to celebrate the freedom they found in America with a traditional American meal. Maybe next year we can plan for a few volunteers to do cooking classes for the oven? lol
Now, you find every ROP program blended with our multi cultural community; from youth ministry & after school tutoring, to GED, ESL and Food Bank. God’s Kingdom work in foreign countries, is right here in North Aurora.
