Recently, I had the opportunity to talk with Alex Vasquez, director of Young Life in Sioux County, about his work in the community. He is speaking from several platforms that allow him to serve as a “bridge builder” between cultures within Sioux Center.
I have been contemplating the barriers that immigrant students and their families face in U.S. schools for at least the last year as this is the topic that I’m delving into for my dissertation as a culmination of my doctoral studies in multicultural education at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
As we gather as communities and (sometimes) eclectic groups of people to share a meal around the holiday season, we are reminded of the blessing of not only friendship but also unlikely friendships.
The people who walk through our doors every week have become our family. We are all so different; politically, socially, spiritually (the list could go on and on). But there is something about the table that allows us to put our differences aside and commune.
As with anything, just because something is hard or difficult doesn’t mean that we should stop doing it. In fact, sometimes we need to keep on doing the hard or difficult things because it helps us grow. There are times, though, when we face the realization that we can’t do something without help.
We make a big deal out of our daily worship and we also make a big deal out of how we worship. We have a hunch that over a period of time how we worship forms us in mysterious ways that we can scarcely understand.
