Culture Clash

Culture Clash

One of the most significant culture clashes I have ever witnessed was when I went on my mission trip last year.

I went on a mission trip through Wheaton Bible to West Chicago (yeah, it’s kind of awkward to tell people that when they live in West Chicago, and also a bit awkward when you’re on a trip with a bunch of very nice kids, but they all go to Wheaton and Warrenville schools, and you go to West Chicago). We stayed in a church literally blocks from the high school and would travel every day to the Westwood Apartments by Aldi to partner with our sister church Puente del Pueblo to run a day camp for children.

The day camp was almost all Catholic Hispanic children. All us where non-denominational Christians (except for me) and we were all white, except for about 3 of us. Before we went on the trip, a man from Puente del Pueblo came in and had to explain how wary Catholics are of other religions. I found it really amusing because I was raised Catholic, and technically still am because I attend both masses at St. John, and services at Wheaton Bible. Many of my peers were really confused and kept on asking, “why?” While the man answered the questions, I thought of my parents. They very much dislike Wheaton Bible, even to this day, and I have been attending that church for 2 years. The main reason is that they don’t follow Catholic traditions, and because my parents totally believe Wheaton stereotypes. Before I went on the trip, my dad told me to look for signs of them being superior and looking down on “new Christians” When I came home from the trip, my mom, my dad, and my brother all asked how the trip was. When I said, “amazing,” they all looked really surprised and said, “really?”

But I digress. At the camp, I worked the sign up station (which was actually a bad move because I know about 3 sentences in Spanish and all the parents signing up the kids usually only spoke fluent Spanish) so I was almost always observing the kids interacting with our volunteers. The kids generally seemed quiet and shy around the volunteers. I thought it was because of the language barrier, but my Honduran friend Adam, who spoke Spanish flawlessly, still said that the kids seemed quiet and shy around him. I think they were mostly shy because they couldn’t relate to these non-Catholic white teenagers. We just came from different cultures. Some of it was small things, like many of the kids seemed confused when our volunteers would say a prayer and say amen, but wouldn’t make the sign of the cross. It was just culturally hard to relate to them.

By the end of the trip, some of the kids had opened up, but not as many as my volunteer peers would have liked.