Experiencing Foreign Culture in Chicago

I've completed another week of training, and wow, was it exhausting! This week was the first half of the middle "A3" session of training focusing on cross cultural awareness more and also self discovery. We are doing a thing called "LifeMap" where we examine our personality, passions, strengths, spiritual gifts, values, past experiences and a few other things to help us determine where we can best be used in ministry and help us to plan how to get there.

We spent a great deal of time this week learning about the Islamic faith, including a visit by a local Kuwaiti born Christian who has devoted his time to ministering to Muslims in the area. Some Muslims (usually scholars) are very confrontational about debating the Bible/Qu'ran, so this guy has devoted the past 14 years to studying common arguments and has been given an incredible gift of knowledge of both books enabling him to refute all of the common Islamic arguments and even point out a few fundamental flaws in Islam, praise God for that! He has posted all of these arguments as well as other information about how to minister to Muslims on the site www.answering-islam.org.

Yesterday, we went to a Hindu temple nearby and it was a very awkward experience. Having just studied spiritual realities including warfare, we learned about spiritual oppression and I think we all experienced a little bit there since Hinduism is a very spiritual religion. I felt a strange fatigue last night, almost like I had run a marathon from the conflict spiritually.

And today we went to Devon St. in Chicago, the Islamic/Hindu area of downtown Chicago. We visited the South Asian Friendship Center, a ministry of I-Teams that works with local Hindus and Muslims. There we received a full presentation on Islam in the United States. I learned the following:

• Islam is the second largest religion in the United States and growing
• Chicago has the highest concentration of Muslims in the country
• The South Asian Ministry Center is the only ministry in Chicago reaching out to Muslims, although other churches from time to time have groups do work
  

After the presentation, we went to an Indian restaurant, where I had my first Indian meal. It was rather interesting, but I like spicy food, so it was pretty good. I got to have tandoori chicken, curry chicken, and some rice, spiced cauliflower and nan, the flatbread they make which somewhat resembles a tortilla, but in strips rather than round.

In the afternoon we went to a mosque, one of the oldest in the Chicago area. For Muslims, Friday afternoon is their big day of prayer, so we attended a prayer service which was interesting. Their leader was talking back and forth between English and Arabic about Ramadan and then after about 20-30 min, they had their prayer time, which lasted maybe 10 min. After this, they had a special funeral service for a well known elder who had passed away last night. It was an interesting experience all in all, but not nearly as oppressive as the Hindu temple since Islam is much more materialistic.

I'll certainly have a very relaxing weekend . . .