Building intercultural community on UC's campus

Building a community wherever you are is extremely important and sometimes difficult. Especially in a completely new country and culture. Being apart from a familiar community, culture, and being thrown into something completely new can be exciting and a little bit scary. I experienced this during the fall semester of my junior year when I lived overseas.

I was surrounded by people, but wasn’t able to really communicate with them. I longed for friends. On my walks, I would pray to God for friends whom I could have fun with and become close to. God answered my prayers and soon after we had many friends that would come to our apartment for dinners, movie nights, and a Bible study. We didn’t take that for granted so we built those friendships.

                                                                  Photo by Lydia Huggins
Lukas Jason and Jay Sanksakulchai
look for their countries' flags at the International Food Night
on October 21, 2016.

Since I understand the struggle of transitioning to a new country and finding friends to make college feel like home, I have been involved with University of the Cumberlands’ International Student Ministry (ISM) since freshman year. ISM wants to help foster friendships through providing community groups, having intercultural events like food and game nights, and anything else to help make UC feel more like home.

“Without international student ministry it’s hard to find such a nice group,” said Lily Yu Guo, a senior business major and communications minor from China. “They encouraged and helped me a lot. I learned a lot of things. They showed me American culture. They showed me love. Even now, we still are friends.”

Lily was one of the first international students I met on campus at an International Student Ministry game night. After my freshman year of being involved in ISM Ministry, my friend, Shantel Buchner, and I felt like God wanted us to start a Bible study for international women who wanted to learn more about Christianity during our sophomore year. Reaching international students with the gospel of Jesus Christ and teaching them to walk in the ways of Jesus is the main purpose and vision of international student ministry, according to Brett Martin, the International Campus Missionary for the Kentucky Baptist Convention. It’s important to us that we build a community of different cultures and have a place for our international friends to feel comfortable asking difficult questions about what following Jesus actually looks like.

Mercy Kavaya, a sophomore business and public health double major from Kenya, has been a part of the Bible study and has stepped up to help teach it.

“It is a way of getting involved with people and having friends,” said Mercy Kavaya. “It has been like a family. [Internationals] come to learn different culture from different people. It’s good for us to share these things. We can learn from Americans and Americans can learn from us.”

UC students, Mercy Kavaya, Sze Ying Tan,
Chisato Sasaoka, Lydia Huggins, Rejoice Olaolorun,
Shantel Buchner, and Caitlyn Howell, take a photo
at the International Student Conference on November 5, 2016.

Another great place for international students and American students to interact and learn from each other is at the International Student Conference that takes place the first weekend in November in Cave City, Kentucky. Muhtar (James) Mauhmut, a senior business administration major and math from China, has been to the International Student Conference three times during his years at UC.

“The first time I went was really fun,” said Mauhmut. “We had all different types of games to play and dancing so we can know different people better. We can make more friends that way.”

As the new leaders of UC’s International Student Ministry this year, Buchner and I are still learning how God wants us to go about building the intercultural community on campus. We want to learn from international students how we can help them transition to living in America.

 “Ministry is always changing and this semester may be different than the ones before, but we are trusting God will direct us and show us how to lead even when we don't know exactly what we are doing,” said Buchner. “The truth is we never have, but God has been faithful to show us and strengthen us in our weaknesses.”

Even before I lived abroad for four months, my heart had always desired to live overseas. Since the beginning of my freshman year at UC, it was natural for me to get involved with International Student Ministry. After the many trips abroad and interactions with internationals on campus, building a community for internationals on UC’s campus is very important to me because I know it is important for international students.