What's a Yuck Duck?

For the past two weeks we have been at MissionPrep, which is a cross cultural training program. Our minds are full with information about how to successfully say goodbye to our home culture and enter into a foreign culture. 

Some of the ideas presented were:

  ▪️God's power is revealed in our weakness

  ▪️Find a cultural counterpart who you can ask questions about things you don't understand

  ▪️ Loving others means that you will be inconvenienced

  ▪️ Use ODIE when crossing cultures

         Observe

         Delay judgement

         Inquire - ask lots of questions

         Evaluate - Is this something that I want to incorporate?

   ▪️ Transfer trust by giving trust and placing yourself in a position of humility

   ▪️ Give grace to others who are crossing cultures at a different pace than I am

   ▪️ Life is a paradox - it can be very exciting to meet new people and see new places, but at the same time you can be very sad about leaving your own culture and friends. 

So what is a Yuck Duck? The symbol that was used to convey the paradox principle was a Pair of Ducks- one is a "Yeah Duck" symbolizing the good things about crossing cultures and the other is a "Yuck Duck" symbolizing all the difficult things abort crossing cultures. 

So while we are excited about the adventure God has in store for us we are also aware of the many challenges that lay before us. Our emotions are a mixture of Yeah Ducks and Yuck Ducks at the same time - we are living in a paradox!!