Pathways Press.com

Written by Catherine Montgrain, from the Village Church.

When I moved from Canada to the USA (moving to a small town in Indiana and not California quite yet) , I was what I could call doubly culture shocked. Shock from learning a new bilingual culture in Quebec from my native UK , to shock from moving from that multicultural experience to a small mid-western town where many people had never traveled out of their country or even their state. I asked God to guide me on this journey and he showed me how life plays out when we let ourselves be guided. How does this happen? By engaging with the people we meet in each new place. After joining churches, school activities with our four children who were also in culture shock from Canada , we were humbled and grateful for how caring the people were in the USA. I joined charities to provide shoes to schoolchildren whose parents struggled to buy them, worked in a free Catholic-run  clinic to give medical help to people without insurance,  and joined many school fundraisers of all kinds with our children. I was so impressed with how selfless and hard-working all these kind Americans were. They would work so hard and literally tire themselves out helping people. I will never forget the example these lovely people from all walks of life gave me. Commitment, dedication, love, and mainly faith. I soon forgot my homesickness and started trying to emulate them . I still haven’t managed to but God is helping me.  

But give as alms those things that are within and behold, everything is clean for you [Luke 11:41]