SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to Soul Portals, exploring psycho-spiritual horizons with your hosts Cedric Speyer and Deanna Nagel. Cedric is an author and therapist who developed the interview guidance model and is a pathfinder in the psycho-spiritual realm. Deanna created the Essential Soul Care Model, a model suitable for therapists, coaches, and healers. The monthly episodes of Skull Portals feature guests sharing insights on their personal paths and professional practices. Thank you for tuning in for the Soul Talk with all kinds of trailblazing teachers and guides as Cedric, Deanna, and guests explore new evolutionary landscapes.

SPEAKER_04 1:05

So now our usual opening invocation, I call it. May the spirit flow freely through this conversation and gathering, allowing it to be both energizing and edifying. And today we welcome our special guests, Ken and Carolyn Benson, who are global workers serving with World Partners in Canada. And it's an organization that prepares and debriefs global workers involved in cross-cultural missions. That's the key term. Very involved for many years, going into other cultures very respectfully and working with people there, which you'll find all about more about in the uh in this hour. And uh to kick things off, I have the opening quote coming from an unusual source, the power of Kabbalah, which is Jewish mysticism. But I found a paragraph that really describes Ken and Carolyn and their their charism. Um Charism being a beautiful Christian word. But in the in this book about the Kabbalah it says to teach means to be a living example, a model for others, a beacon of light. Light with a capital L. The gentle radiance that you that you generate will automatically inspire others to this wisdom. To teach means to share this wisdom with others out of love and care, not because you want to convert someone or convince someone or sell to someone, because light eradicates darkness merely by its presence in your life or in the volatile regions throughout the world. So that yeah, that really resonates with my experience of getting here and lovely I know that we've had your little formal bio and I know that it's obvious that you're working within the global worker field within a Christian framework.

SPEAKER_02 3:36

But I'm wondering if you could start out by telling us a little bit about what what was the spiritual provocation for you making this your your vocation.

SPEAKER_03 3:49

Thank you. Great question. Thanks for the inviting us to be able to share our story. It's uh it's a privilege to be here with those that are online and with Deanna and uh Cedric here too. Yeah, our our I'll I'll describe my journey uh starting back in my family, and I grew up in a Christian family, and uh during my last years of high school started to bring me into this phase of uh recognizing uh the necessity to become true to what I thought I believed and uh and make a decision uh that I felt prompted by God's Spirit to say, are you going to serve me all the way or not at all? And so I made this uh conscious uh prayer um in my room all by myself. It wasn't under influence of anybody else but myself and and God's presence there. And I said, Okay, God, I'm I'm willing to go all the way. And I don't know what that means, and I trust that you'll show me along the way. And so I was tracking to go to uh to university. I'd been recruited uh back in the 70s to go and play volleyball at a university in Ontario, and so I had done quite well in sports and was really looking forward to that. But the first challenge that came to me was another voice, the Lord speak, God speaking to me and saying, uh, I think seminary would be a better fit for you. And uh one of your best friends is going, why don't you go with him? And so that kind of question uh then provoked me to consider am I willing to give up my dream and uh get and uh embrace what God's dream was ahead for me? And so I headed off to seminary and set my uh my physical education training aside and spent one year there. And uh during that year, again, another challenge came to me. Uh, are you willing to go anywhere for me? And so these these kind of consecutive uh sequential questions that came to me, I slowly said yes each time, but uh they were deep and profound and life-changing in my direction. But as the spirit is very curious at times, uh I uh at often, um, after my one year at seminary, I felt that he gave me permission. I could choose to continue in seminary or go to the university. And so I chose to go on to university, feeling affirmed by uh the spirit that that was uh a true uh true choice that I could make as well. And so I went and finished a phys ed degree at that time. Having made these three progressive decisions in the last part of my high school and early early 20s, and uh during my time there in the phys ed, so I graduated, went to teachers college, and then uh met Carolyn at Teachers College. And um, as we got serious in our dating, we uh both confronted this key uh commitment that I had made and about going anywhere that God might show us that Ontario was not our goal uh to serve God forever. And so Carolyn uh said she had similar convictions, and she will share briefly her story. And then uh so that was kind of the track that had headed us off into uh international engagement, and uh we might, but that uh we married at the age of 24, but eventually uh going to Europe and living in Portugal for 13 years did not happen until we were 38. So it was a long journey to get to that international component, but uh there were steps in between to take us from Ontario to uh Sarnia to Vancouver and then to eventually to Europe uh in that journey to uh becoming fully international in our experience.

SPEAKER_04 7:51

Thank you. That was a great summary.

SPEAKER_01 7:54

Yeah, and I grew up in the church going to church on Sundays, but I saw the hypocrisy in the church and I left it in my latter years of high school. Uh, but during university, I began a spiritual search as I witnessed some people really close to me experience a transformative conversion. And so someone challenged me at that time to explore the claims of Jesus. And I came to believe that his claim to be God was not just a delusional mental health breakdown, but actually a posture of humility as he came to live amongst us, uh to love sinners and to care for the lowly. And I accepted his invitation to receive the gift of grace, the forgiveness of sins. And I took a term off school to attend a Bible training school, actually down in Florida. And uh yeah, after uh then I went back and finished my degree, and that's where I became interested because I met people who were going to other countries to share about the love of God. And so when I met Ken at Teachers College and we realized our common interest in going overseas, um, we applied for teaching jobs in the North, thinking that maybe working with the First Nations communities would be our uh cross-cultural work. But God had other plans, and we ended up teaching at a Christian school in Ken's hometown close to Toronto. And after three years, Ken was invited to become a youth pastor, which we knew would be good training ground for eventually um doing overseas work. Then when we applied for cross-cultural work our with our church, some of the countries that they were working in were going through civil wars, and we were encouraged to apply for uh working with a church, um planting a church or beginning a church in Vancouver. And so we jumped on that team, joined that team, and we were in Vancouver for seven years, and after that church got established, we began to again apply for potential cross-cultural work, and that's when we joined a team in Portugal, uh, a multicultural team, people from Ecuador, from uh the states, from Brazil, and with that team we began um yeah, helping the church there, helping nationals that were starting small churches in in Portugal. We moved up to the north of Portugal after we had learned the language and developed a partnership there, and um yeah, and then 13 years later, when Ken's mom was having a health crisis, we realized that we needed to come back. We had raised our daughters, so our daughters were eight and nine when we went to Portugal, and uh they came back before us. We were there for uh three years after that, but when Ken's mom got sick, we realized we needed to come home. And when we were coming home, someone sent us an application to apply for a position of training, training cross-cultural workers or global workers, and we could see how we could use our education and our experience cross-culturally to do that position. And we've been working in this position for 14 years now. So that's our story.

SPEAKER_02 11:04

That's great. So you're not just teaching this from a manual, you've actually lived it. It's lived experience. Yes, yes, yeah, yeah.

SPEAKER_01 11:12

And that's that's what why we're so passionate about what we do, because we've felt it in the skin, the joys and the challenges of cross-cultural work. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 11:22

To tie it into our theme, like what I'm very aware of is how much quote unquote mission work has changed, and people may still have stereotypes of missionaries going and disrupting indigenous cultures, converting the natives, all that, right? That uh took place for a long time historically. So if each or both of you could say a word of how it is different, like how what you do is different or of an evolution in the field.

SPEAKER_03 11:54

Yeah, thank you. Yeah, the colonialism that uh Christians have been uh guilty of in the past, uh, there has been great maturity that's happened in becoming more culturally sensitive. Like Carolyn said, our strategy in Portugal was to work with uh nationals to help them plant churches, not us to determine our agenda. And so it became uh uh much more of a servant role. Uh and uh what cultural humility can look like in those contexts is is jumping into the culture rather than isolating yourselves from the culture. In the past, sometimes uh it was sometimes necessary, or it was chosen strategy where the the Christians that went to various countries stayed in a compound and isolated themselves from the culture. But uh Carol and I dived in the deep end. Uh we uh, as one of the markers were invited uh two Angolan girls to live with us that were high school students that were on an exchange program and they lived with us. Uh they didn't want to learn English, so we uh switched to Portuguese only in our home whenever they were in the room. Uh they they became uh sisters uh to our daughters, they uh became daughters uh to us too, and and they tease us. Uh sometimes I get called their white father because they're uh and uh they still we still stay in touch with them, even though they're in Angola. Uh yeah, we've we've wept with people that have had lost children, like in a Cid's case. We were close enough to this family that saw a tragic uh death in the crib of a very young baby. Uh we had alcoholic friends that we had in our homes. We uh joined and ran uh a youth drop-in center uh that was in the community, and we were directors of an outdoor education camp that by the end we had the youth that we had started with nine or ten years previous, were now leading the camp and uh wrote this amazing script from a passage in the Bible and did an outdoor theater uh without with generated electricity, invited their parents there, and uh they performed it. So the immersion process and how deeply our identity has now uh been marked by the Portuguese culture uh will never will never fall away. It's we are different people than when we left.

SPEAKER_04 14:30

Oh, yeah, so mission work is really a two-way street.

SPEAKER_03 14:34

Yes, that that's probably a good way to say it. Yeah. We believe Jesus came as a servant. He not that he was being told what to do, but he worked through the disciples in a lot of cases of his ministry, was equipping the disciples to do what they were going to do before after he left. So that was part of our uh our reflection on the scriptures on how Jesus did uh his mission work.

SPEAKER_01 15:04

Yeah, yeah, and I would just add that in our work, we really encourage people to learn the language, the heart language of the people that they're going to work with. And so we have a language learning, language acquisition program where we teach them how to learn a language. And um, it puts us in a place of of humility and weakness and positions us for opportunities for deeper relationships and to really understand the people that we're we're working with.

unknown 15:33

Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 15:34

There's some questions coming up in the chat.

SPEAKER_02 15:39

Um it says, well, they're loving the fact that you've had so many you you've been in so many countries and says how how did you manage to keep your faith through times of disappointments, difficulties, and personal losses?

SPEAKER_03 15:58

Um I I would start and Carolyn uh will will have an opinion too. I I believe um the maturity that's taking has taken place um in in cross-cultural work is to not see disappointment as abnormal, that disappointment is part of the journey, part of the character development program that God has us on. I had this aha moment in Portugal and go, oh, I think I'm here to help these people, but really I'm here that that God might use them to help me become more like Jesus. So those uh happen through deep relationships, they happen through disappointments, they happen through celebrations. And so um being honest and and saying, yeah, this really is awful, and uh it is profoundly hurtful and not being ashamed to say that. Uh Carolyn um has uh a technique that they use to teach kids this, and and we as adults uh use it to when we're teaching her our program right now. I'll let her perhaps share that uh uh later or or now, Carolyn. It's up to you.

SPEAKER_01 17:12

I'll I'll just um I'll just share. One of the things that I like to do is keep a gratitude journal to recognize all the good things, all the answers to prayer, actually. And so when when we go through difficulties, I can look back and say, wow, yeah, God's been with me even through those difficult things. Yeah, so that's one of my go-to.

SPEAKER_03 17:36

Yeah, one third of one third of the Psalms, if I just might add, there's 150 Psalms. That's the song section of the Bible, and and at least uh one third of them are laments. There are, oh, this was really hard. So again, there's uh good patterns for us to follow in uh in our journey if you when we look at reflect on those uh Hebrew scriptures.

SPEAKER_01 18:00

And with our children's program, we we teach them how to process loss and how to grieve. And I don't think I knew how to do that well when I was raising my children overseas. I learned it since I've come back to Canada. Um yeah, and so I'm really thankful that I can walk children through the process of acknowledging and recognizing and admitting their losses and then giving them tools to actually grieve those losses and be able to move forward.

SPEAKER_02 18:34

I I want to make a little bridge to the counselors in the room.

SPEAKER_04 18:37

I was just gonna do the same things.

SPEAKER_02 18:40

Um you said, Ken, that you might at times have had an agenda and then found out you weren't there for them, but they were there for you.

SPEAKER_05 18:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:51

And I I teach from a framework of interior landscape. So I teach therapists when they're with, I do a lot of clinical supervision. So um, I teach therapists that they're when they're in the room with a a client to pay attention to what their what is their wow moment. Like what are they walking away from that because they went into the room with an expectation of helping or fixing or guiding.

SPEAKER_03 19:17

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 19:18

And it may often be the other way around. So that's one bridge between what you do and what we as counselors do and coaches.

SPEAKER_04 19:28

Yeah. My version of the same question was what did you learn culturally that can be applied individually? A lot of our audience are seeing clients one-on-one. So, what lessons have you learned that can be applied one-on-one with someone from a different culture? But same question, Dennis.

SPEAKER_03 19:47

Yeah. I I I I one that comes to mind uh quite quickly is uh most people that have even traveled, you haven't gone to live in other places, but you've been exposed to another culture. And the one that usually shocks us most is the time orientation uh factor, and that um uh events are relationship driven, not time driven. Like we don't start at three o'clock in Portugal, things start at three o'clock. Um, but you show up at three o'clock, half the crowd shows up at 3:30, and but you wait not until a specific time, but you wait if until the right people are there. Sometimes it's the you're expecting the mayor to show up and he doesn't show up, so you don't start till him or somebody else of importance. So things are based on more on relationships. So when um when I was in another culture, I was so, well, hey, we won't get everything accomplished that we need to get accomplished in this meeting if if we don't start on time, my on time. And so just being able to step back and and realize, gee, these people aren't anxious, it's me. And I need to let that go in order to uh to allow uh what God wants to do in his timing.

SPEAKER_04 21:06

It's that's interesting because in a typical therapy framework, being on time is important from the Western point of view, and yeah and not being on time is a form of resistance.

SPEAKER_05 21:20

Yes.

SPEAKER_04 21:21

So I guess that could be perceived as imposing an agenda, but it certainly brings up the issue of a another client from another culture not having the same value.

SPEAKER_03 21:34

That's right.

SPEAKER_04 21:35

You know, if we have 40 minutes, 45 minutes left, 30 minutes left, that's okay. It may be more moving.

SPEAKER_02 21:42

One of the challenges is getting therapists to be comfortable with sometimes it's just silence. While the our inner dialogue is there's an agenda here, we need to move along. We've only got you know 30 more minutes, and we haven't well, but that's not allowing the client to lead. And that that time meaning of time may be cultural in that case.

SPEAKER_03 22:07

Yes.

SPEAKER_02 22:08

Very definitely.

SPEAKER_03 22:10

I think the the strong tie into the Western culture, though, is our orientation towards money. Because we have this phrase, you know, time is money. So really underneath our time value, I think is this financial driven um component to our how how much we can squeeze into a day. So that's I think that's part of the deeper reflection that I've uh perhaps looked at. I don't know if if counselors could adjust, say, gee, how do I put food on the table if I don't have people showing up at 11 and leaving at 12 for whatever period has been set aside. So it there are some difficult, um there's not always equal, or you can you transfer it completely from one culture to another.

SPEAKER_04 23:02

But that reminds me when I did my first counseling degree, we were supposed to see 10 clients a week for practice, and I said I was a bit of a troublemaker, so I said that's crazy. Like we need to see five, like quality, not quantity. And that became a a dispute.

SPEAKER_03 23:22

Yes, right.

SPEAKER_04 23:24

But I really believed it like do five clients well rather than show that you can do all these back to back and get through ten in a week. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 23:34

We we recently read the book The Ruthless Elimination of Hurry. And it talks about Jesus' posture of you know, slowing and silence and solitude, and actually practicing Sabbath rest. And it was a very enlightening book for our North American culture. But uh, you know, entering a culture with an open posture, wanting to learn their culture is so important, you know, the direct versus indirect posture that you you sometimes don't understand. Um yeah, it's so important to open to enter with an open posture so that you learn their culture and adapt.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

And that is also extremely applicable to the helping professions because we need to be open to their experience, not the other way around.

SPEAKER_03 24:27

Yes, yes, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 24:29

So speak speaking of relationships, it's like aside from your primary one with Jesus. Uh did you have either of you or both of you have mentors and people who influenced you like on the path? Um, you know, inspirations and influences, you even people you weren't directly related to, like which includes like books, movies, and public figures.

SPEAKER_05 24:57

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 24:59

Well, I I might mention one that's just coming to my mind, but I try to listen to those prompts, uh, because this is a relationship. I hadn't really seen it that way, but I uh I'm gonna mention her name, or I'll describe her, pardon me. Um, when Carolyn and I were trying to learn Portuguese, we were living in Lisbon at the time, and uh Carolyn's time in the classroom was limited um for various reasons. And so we invited uh a widow to come and live with us. Um, and she attended the church that the Portuguese church we were just attending at that time, and uh she was so delighted to be invited to come and live in our home. So she said, I'll come live with you guys from Monday to Friday, and we'll just speak Portuguese in the family at home. It was uh a wonderful mentorship. It was uh when she wasn't involved with us, her spiritual discipline was to go to a room and we uh we could hear her praying uh for Carolyn and I and our family and many other things too. It wasn't just exclusively us, but it gave us a beautiful glimpse, like your quote, um Cedric, you know, a light a life lived is uh a way that can make so much impact on people's life. She didn't directly say, and this is how you'd be successful at this. She she just lived it, and she was a wonderful uh person that uh gifted us um and helped birth us, uh, our parse our Portuguese personality, because your personality changes when you start to learn a second language. In our my experience, uh, that you I become a new Ken. I became a different Ken than I am in English.

SPEAKER_04 26:46

Okay, I just sorry, go ahead.

SPEAKER_01 26:50

God gifted me with two women in Portugal when when I was there, uh cultural friends that helped me get to know the the culture and who I could pray with and be encouraged by and encourage each other. And so that was a real help to me on my journey there.

SPEAKER_04 27:08

Okay, now I want to spring a challenging question on you. So um how do you tell in your positions and your role, how do you tell the difference and what do you do about it? The difference between someone who needs psychological help and someone who needs spiritual help. You know, because you're mainly there is spiritual support. But you must recognize when some somebody has mental health issues, and what's the whole protocol for that or your experience of that?

SPEAKER_03 27:41

Um yeah, we we have a document that we've developed called um um Strategy of Care. Uh that uh all the people that come to our courses uh are areware. We read it over and we say, yeah, we we do not say that what what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. We say um we're we're we're listening, we're not experts. There happen to be people on our team that are psychotherapists, but uh they're not allowed to start a function in that. So it's mostly a debriefing experience, although it it does look like some styles of therapy that I've understood people use, but I'm not familiar or trained in that area. But when we have something that is called a yellow light and we we talk amongst our team, are there any concerns here uh without describing um specifics? And people say, Yeah, I have some concerns. So most um, so most of the people, like at 95% of the people that come to our courses are connected with organizations that they come to. We're a third-party debriefing program or preparation program. So we don't have to be the experts. We just say, um, we think this person has some um some challenges that need to be connected, uh, and we're we're gonna leave that burden of of uh exposure or telling their agency to them as uh as being trained. We would have talked something over. This is what I've noticed that uh I'm I'm a bit concerned about that. Do you think you can share that with your mission agency? Or can I help you share that with your mission agency? So we we act as coming alongside and helping people move towards uh getting help and then their mission agency, they have contracted psychotherapists, therapy uh counselors uh on their team that can deal with that.

SPEAKER_04 29:39

Yeah, so you have a good system of referrals basically.

SPEAKER_03 29:42

Yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_01 29:43

Yeah, we use uh counselors that have been vetted and have cross-cultural experience, yeah.

SPEAKER_04 29:49

Yeah, I was thinking more of the front lines, like when you're there with the people you used to work with directly.

SPEAKER_03 29:57

Oh, okay, all right. Uh yeah. So yeah, when we're trying to help people, yeah. In in that environment, I see the I see the integration of spiritual and mental and all those things just so interwoven. Uh, I'm guessing was less departmentalized in that uh role. I could just see how one was part of the other. So I could play a small part in the person's dysfunction. Uh in the cases of some of our friends that had alcoholism as a battle. Um, there was uh, you know, one way that I could help them. Obviously, they had backgrounds behind that uh struggle and uh needed uh needed other people to help. And one gentleman gladly came to me and says, Oh, would you uh because I'd been encouraging him to go to a program. And he says, Oh, would you drive me to this program? And he was so glad that he had reached the point because I'd been gently encouraging him to do that. And he sadly passed away just a couple days later. Um, it was uh at one of those low points in my life. It was it was the paradox of life, the the best of times, the worst of times, like uh the introduction to the tale of two cities.

SPEAKER_02 31:18

Well, and I imagine it just it would depend on the culture. So I went through a fairly extensive training here in the United States, I it may be in Canada too, as a Stephen minister. And you know, we there was a whole section on okay, here's what you do if you're think you're ministering to somebody who has a mental a mental issue instead of a spiritual issue.

SPEAKER_03 31:46

Right.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

And as a therapist, you know, also as therapists, when we're in those different roles, it's really hard for us to take our therapist hat off. Um, but we were encouraged to do just that. Um, but what we were advised to do is the typical, you know, here's the local um list of charities, here there's 911, here's the mental health clinic. But if I imagined myself in an indigenous culture or even in my family in Greece in the village, there's there's none of that. Like I would imagine it would just be a totally different way of ex experiencing.

SPEAKER_03 32:26

Yeah, that's yeah, that's one of the shocking things as you move into other cultures outside of the West is just the lack of resources that are available to you. So you do the best you can and help people. Uh and sometimes they are miraculous ways to help that God does things that you didn't expect would happen to help people move through difficult circumstances.

SPEAKER_02 32:54

So there's a question in the chat. How do you know it is a spiritual issue and not a mental health issue? Similar question, yeah. I I can give my five-second answer to that. Yeah, please do. A mental health issue is likely going to be contracting and it's going to be going down a rabbit hole where, in some way, fashion, or form, a spiritual issue is expansion. And it's getting through the rough patches and the detours in the road to get fully expanded. So to have that complete spiritual awakening. Um, whereas mental illness, mental health issues tend not to go that direction.

SPEAKER_03 33:42

Yeah, that's that's good. Yeah, I I don't I don't have a criteria very well formed in my experience to know uh the depths. Like I said, I see the world much more intertwined, and it's it's hard to pull pull one away from the other.

SPEAKER_04 34:04

Yeah. That's what our podcast is all about, would be the four worlds, integrated, physical, emotional, mental, spiritual. That's part of our our mission and mandate here.

SPEAKER_05 34:18

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:20

But that question gets asked in especially in the mental health field. I'm seeing that question more and more from people. Um, and there I I think it's because we're all grappling with maybe our eyes are finally open as straight counselors. We're our eyes are finally opening that there's a spiritual component because for many decades we weren't we were not encouraged to go down that road. So that may be why that question is coming up.

SPEAKER_05 34:50

Yeah.

SPEAKER_03 34:53

I would I would I would agree with you. Yeah. I I believe that there's there's one thing that has helped that is that the mixture of nations that's taking place. And so now spirituality, um whether it's Islam or Buddhism, uh, are becoming closer together in the in the West anyway, so that you're getting exposed to a more uh more different spiritual views. So you realize, oh, it's not just a Christian orientation that I was given, but it's uh part of all humanity that there's this spirit part that needs to be addressed. And so uh I think that's one of the aha moments that maybe our culture is starting to recognize. I can remember back in the 80s, I took a course one time and I had to present my my model of health. And I put um I put spiritual as part of uh what what does to good total health look like because of my background, and and then we had to sit on the hot seat and defend our our health model, and I was just grilled like 90% of the time about the spiritual part, the other three parts we all agreed on, but that was the lightning rod that yeah.

SPEAKER_04 36:09

But I that had the same experience. I took a course in crisis intervention, and each of us had to do a presentation, and I chose spiritual crisis, and the professor uh said there's no such thing, like was at the point of not allowing me to even do that topic. Yeah, and that's so a lot has evolved in a few decades. So Elena Alina, I hope I'm saying that right. Um, she's saying so spiritual issue is temporary and mental health issue is more permanent, or is the other way around?

SPEAKER_02 36:44

It could be, I mean, it could be either or, it just depends on the issue. For instance, somebody who has a loss, has lost a job, has lost a person, has lost a pet, that may lead them down a spiritual awakening as quickly as it could lead them down uh into depression that is situational, right? Or could end up being more permanent. So you know it can go it can go any either way.

SPEAKER_04 37:14

Now speaking of other faiths and other religions and paths, what is the modern missionary approach to people when you're going into a culture in a country if they have a well-established faith and they're open to you because you're good people, but they're they're established, they have their foundation. You know, it's Buddhist, it's Hindu, it's Islam. They're there. So there might again, there must be a difference between what you do now as opposed to what Christian missionaries used to do.

SPEAKER_03 37:50

Yeah, thanks for the question. Um so I believe one of the words that's been hijacked um in this kind of arena is the word tolerance. Um tolerance has somehow morphed into a word that I have to believe that all paths are correct um in my spiritual walk. But I would say that tolerance is, I really would defend and allow somebody to hold their own faith and belief. But I that doesn't mean I have to agree that that truth uh that they believe is what is true according to my my value system. So I'm still gonna love that person because Jesus said we need to love God with all our heart, mind, and soul, and love um love our neighbor as ourselves. And then he even pushes the dial even further. He says that you need to love your enemies. So there's no room for me to throw a throw a bomb, uh, whether it's verbally or physically, against someone that doesn't hold the same value or belief system as as me. And so I don't have a problem explaining my faith to somebody else, um, but I don't demand uh conversion. I don't, I I look for the Spirit of God to do that, convicting or changing in that person's life.

SPEAKER_04 39:18

Yeah, so that sounds like another good word, which is honoring. So yeah, that's right.

SPEAKER_03 39:24

Yeah. Carolyn, would you add anything to that?

SPEAKER_01 39:27

Yeah, no, that Jesus was all about extending grace and mercy and inviting us. It wasn't a forced, you know, it wasn't a it's an invitation to be received if if you choose.

SPEAKER_04 39:42

Yeah, and it's a spiritual phenomenon that people across religions at you know, mystical levels have more in common than people in the same religion, you know, between the popular version and the more refined or the wise version of the same religion. It's like the frequency and the level that you're on of your faith.

SPEAKER_03 40:07

Right.

SPEAKER_04 40:08

Right? So you could have more in common with some Buddhists you meet than you would with a right-wing Trumpian Christian.

SPEAKER_03 40:17

Right.

SPEAKER_04 40:19

Right. Because I know that I uh I don't want to put you on the spot, but the the the word evangelical, like the we talked briefly about what's happened, like identifying or disidentifying with that word.

SPEAKER_03 40:35

Right, yeah. I I throughout history that's been a problem of those of us that have gone um historically with Martin Luther's reformation that he desired for the Catholic Church, implored and employed, you know, begged the Catholic Church to change, and then was eventually expulsed by the Catholic Church as a Catholic monk. And so Carolyn and I come from that branch, which you've got known as Protestants, but Protestants don't like using that word. Uh it's not a great uh identity to carry around. And and then similarly, evangelical is another word that's got hijacked and is not something that we typically want to use anymore because of the uh yeah, all the baggage that comes with it. So Carolyn and I just use the phrase, yeah, we're followers of Jesus. We don't we so even use don't use the word of Christian sometimes. Because I've run across Catholics uh that in Portugal say, Oh, I'm not a Christian, I'm a Catholic. And I go, Well, how weird is that? Like uh aren't you aren't you Christian too? Um uh any anyway, just to say that the confusion of language is has necessitated us to use different ways to describe what who we are.

SPEAKER_04 41:52

Yeah, there's so much baggage, right? Yeah, there is that's what's going on these days with Islam because uh you now you have to differentiate between radical Islam and the moderate, another version of Islam, you know, that doesn't want to kill or convert.

SPEAKER_02 42:13

So there's a question. Yeah is your approach religiously neutral when working with people who do not believe in Jesus?

SPEAKER_03 42:27

Yeah, religiously neutral? Yeah, uh if I've Yeah, it depends on the context. Um if I'm in the community and I'm known as Ken the track coach when I was in Portugal, um yeah, I I would work with all people in the same way and no discrimination or differentiate differentiating people because of who they were or where they came from, faith or without faith. So yeah, that would be religiously neutral, but I would um you find this as you move out cross-culturally, too, is that other cultures are a whole lot more comfortable talking about spiritual things than than we in the West are. Um, our political convictions and uh in Canada are typically more hidden. And our religious belief, we say, Oh, that's my I have a private belief, is some of times a phrase that I would have with them. But uh Muslims, they they love to talk about religious things um quite quite easily, both things. So it's not considered an attack or uh it's uh oh, let's talk about what's important in life.

SPEAKER_01 43:37

And again, we and they know us as Jesus followers. We have people from friends from Muslims from Afghan that we we can pray with in Jesus' name, and and they're okay with that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_04 43:51

Yeah, because it's basic basically who you are. So it comes in you know the psychology even before. one on one, which is be who you are.

SPEAKER_03 44:03

Right.

SPEAKER_04 44:04

In in spite of every other social pressure or factor or whatever whatever the context is. You know, it's important to be who you are and then people can either learn from that or or not. You know? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 44:17

There's a question for asking if you have a website and I know it's in the in the bio that you all supplied but um I don't have it handy to plug into the chat room.

SPEAKER_03 44:31

If I can do the chat I'll I'll type it into the chat.

SPEAKER_02 44:34

Okay.

SPEAKER_04 44:35

Yeah because you mainly do debriefing work now with people coming back from global work.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

We do we prepare people who are going to their countries and then we debrief them when they come back.

SPEAKER_04 44:49

Okay yeah you work on both ends. Maybe now's a good time like we have 15 10 minutes 15 minutes left to run through the kids and the teens and some of the exercises do with them Carolyn. Yeah okay you can put up we can try we have a few slides so it's just really interesting you know you can call them therapeutic exercises you know yeah I so I think I'll teaching tools. Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 45:20

Yeah so these are I just like to share a story about uh a friend named Tamara I've changed the name um who received these letters when she was 12 from her classmates after her and her family had to return to Canada suddenly from a country that they had been living in. She had very little time to say goodbye and her school friends wrote letters to let her know how much they missed her. And she shares her story of how she read them, filed them away and never responded to them or looked at them again until 12 years later after she had finally had the opportunity to debrief and process the difficulties and loss she had experienced. And since then she's been able to make some connections with some of those friends. And in the last years agencies have recognized the need and the importance of debriefing families they work with. And several books have been written to bring awareness and to help families. And that's why I'm I'm passionate because when we came back and our daughters came back they didn't have any debriefing and so I do what I do because I think it's so important. And we we call them two third culture kids that we work with. Third culture they're a mix of their parents culture the passport culture that they may have never lived in because they may have been taken to a different country when they were babies or they might have been born in another country than their parents' passport country and then their host culture and so they become a blend of the two cultures and so we refer to them as third culture kids and that can involve immigrant people expats from immigrant families military families business families and we use our little ducks I have my little ducks right here. I keep them to we help the kids learn about what the word paradox means because they go through paradox paradoxical times when they're um transitioning through countries and and often they go back and forth when they're on home assignments. And um we talk we we help them to think about the yes of their experience and the yaks they scribble on the yak duck. So the yay duck and the yak duck the paradox paradox so that's that's our little um help for them to learn that it's okay to talk in terms of the yucks of life and I knew when I grew grew up and even raised my daughters young you know we we always wanted to talk about the good things and we yeah we didn't talk a lot about the the negative things but I've learned that no it's important to get to be able to have permission to share the good and the bad and we we encourage families to use those ducks kids take them home and we encourage families to to to make a habit as a family to process and to talk about those um daily if they can so that when the big things come then they're they're used to talking about about these things. We use we talk we take them through what the phases of transition are and um yeah and that's an important piece where we teach yeah so that they can adjust to their expectations and be prepared for some of the emotions of paradox that they experience along their transitional journey. So we talk about the yes and yaks in each of the stages the settled phase the unsettled phase the exercise balls joined together is called the chaos phase and then the resettling phase those you see the blocks at the bottom of the the chairs those chairs move and so it's the unsettled stages and then they finally get to the settled phase again and in the middle of the chaos phase when they're what they're trying to figure out what are the yes of the chaos phase when you're in the middle of transitioning to a new country you don't know the language your your dress is all wrong you don't like the food and it's just chaos uh we we talk about the yay being that you can't do this on your own you need other people and that becomes a yay because you you become bonded with people that can help you and that's part of entering a culture and asking for help taking a position of weakness and finding people that can really come alongside you and help you and then the grief tower recently a book was written called The Grief Tower and since a sequel has been written called Unstacking the Grie Tower and that's what we use um yeah that's what we use with Jenga blocks to help kids think about and identify their losses you know like their loss of family friends identity reputation lifestyle safety um so just being a coming aware and admitting and uh processing those journeys um I don't see my picture for that one we have the kids share their stories oh here it is uh they from the littlest to the biggest they bring pictures of their story overseas when when they're coming back and they have a wonderful time um talking with people who really have been there done that and understand what they're talking about have that they they're able to talk about the yes and the luck yaks of their journey we also look at identity and um yeah and they they look at the the challenges for identity TCKs often have challenges um sometimes TCKs will embrace a new culture and adopt in wonderful ways other times they they learn to fit like a chameleon becoming whatever's expected of them but never really figuring out who they are and some get exhausted trying to fit in and then giving up and and they avoid joining in and others who are fearful of making mistakes will hide and have difficulty in vest in integrating into the culture. So we use this identity tree and at the bottom the roots of the tree are they record what Jesus says about who they are how they're loved and created by him and chosen by him and those roots are what's provide the stability when the foundation beneath you falls out and the challenges and storms of life come our way. So we develop a toolbox of different ways to to process grief journaling art lots of different ways we we keep them processing cards and they come up with some great ideas too we use Psalms like we mentioned before the Psalm 13 is a just a model for um expressing your emotions through a difficult time and then with the teens we we help them create a grief timeline and yeah and then they they put on top of the grief timeline they put the the cloud of God how they've seen God at work in the process and uh I remember working with a a group of teens and one 12 year old boy in the middle of doing this part of it looking at God at work he had an aha moment where he realized oh God was really with me he really helped me through that time and it was a a healing time for him and it was a a wonderful yeah learning time for all of us in the room is just a wonderful thing. And so yeah we just the good news as we we we like to celebrate um the privilege it is to have had the opportunity to to live cross-culturally to learn a new language and to learn a new people group and to see how big God is in the way he has created so many different cultures it's such a wonderful thing. And the good news is that as TCKs learn to process their grief and loss they grow a greater capacity for empathy connection and compassion for others and that's what motivates us to do what we do.

SPEAKER_04 52:52

Great there's a question which do you have two minutes to answer before we start wrapping up where is it did Diana do you see the question?

SPEAKER_03 53:03

Yeah is LGBTQIA identify identity discussed as well don't have my glasses on and I'm not sure if it was written on your documents yeah um within the Christian communities that we're with that topic is typically um uh assigned to parents to talk about with their kids so for example in our debriefing program um we run um one one one seminar on how to what's the new Canadian culture like as you move back from where you've been at because a a lot of people are moving from a more conservative culture into a much more liberal um culture like the Canadian culture. So we actually have case studies and we walk them through a process how do you as a family come up with your convictions? How are you going to address this issue within your own family system. So we address it but we we don't uh do that work with kids when you're only with them a very short period of time and it's it requires uh I think a sustained voice that's closer for them to do deal with that. We don't discount that it's not out there and then it's it's part of the journey of life and and understanding identity um and and we found that that's been helpful and for the parents to feel like their kids are safe because often the conservative christian community is is wary about who's um addressing that topic whether it's from their own family values. Yeah thank you and thanks for that uh mini presentation Carolyn that was a great run through so we're we're right on schedule wrapping up in the within the hour and so I have a but by the way by the way Ken and Carolyn are my cousins that's how I know they're genuine and genuine and authentic and I told Ken I want to give him a chance to pray spontaneously for I usually do a closing blessing but I want to pass that to Ken because he's such a good prayer in the moment unscripted and uncensored here so you can do it your usual way I just want people to experience the whole feeling of an authentic Christian praying if that's not too much putting you on the spot yeah thank thank you Cedric I accept those things humbly uh it's it's what God gives me in the moment that I I express myself to him. Yeah so yeah in the moment whatever comes yeah Deanna thank you for the chance to be here with you you as well and all the guests that are are unseen but are present thank you for all the comments as well and uh let me pray uh and uh I will finish the prayer with uh in Jesus name but I realize that uh yeah not all of our listeners are followers of Jesus and that and that as we've said already that's okay um but I will humbly talk to him with with my own words right now. Thank you Father so much for the chance uh to express uh the story that you've given us uh we believe history is your story his story Jesus story thank you Lord that you have given us your son Jesus uh to as an example and also the spirit that guides our hearts and whispers in our ear as we walk on this path. I pray that people here today will have been encouraged and edified and become better counselors and better listeners to people that have lived cross-culturally or people that are immigrating from far-off places to new spaces that they've never lived before may our counselors here Lord be able to discern uh that difficult circumstance of whether this needs spiritual direction and coaching or whether it is uh a health issue issue that may be uh needing uh attention so father uh we thank you for uh what you're uh what light you're going to bring into into the world through this conversation that we've just had and uh I pray that those that are followers of Jesus that this will have encouraged them to become more like Jesus and those that have not uh uh made that uh step uh Father may them may they have a better understanding of who you are because of what we've said here today in Jesus' name amen amen that's a first for soul portals to have an out and out in and in out and out prayer we'll see we'll see yes we we keep our prayer very ecumenical right um but I think it's important to as we uh interview people from different faiths and different experiences that that they have a voice here to s to speak from from their perspective yeah thank you I think that's the I think that's the the true nature of tolerance where we do allow people to have their own um opinion and conviction and I I appreciate the way that you've allowed us to do that.

SPEAKER_02 58:49

Great thank you everybody for attending um if if you are familiar with online events you know there's a copy of this in the library momentarily within the next day or two and it will also be available on YouTube and your favorite podcast download channel.

SPEAKER_04 59:09

And next month October we have David Rico who's a widely published author and very much you know a guru on the psycho spiritual path teacher and author yeah so hope hope you can come and join us in October.