Care

International Friendship Program

Every year, hundreds of international students come to Cedar Falls to pursue academic studies or hone their English in the Culture and Intensive English Program. Studying abroad can be a wonderful and exciting experience, but it is often accompanied by a mix culture shock and homesickness. The International Friendship Program recruits friendly hosts from the Cedar Valley who are interested in making a student’s experience in the United States warm and comfortable while learning about another culture. By volunteering your time, you will become a source of friendship and learning for students who truly desire American friends in a home away from home. The International Friendship Program is non-residential host family program. In other words, international students do not live with their new American friends, but meet with their host family at their convenience and participate in a variety of activities.

Activities Include:
• Evening or weekend meals
• Family or community sporting events
• Decorating for the holidays and talking about traditions
• Sharing culture through conversation, art, music, etc.
• Playing board games or cards
• Going to university-sponsored IFP events

We generally recommend that committed host families arrange one of these activities with their student per month to ensure a continuous relationship.

By completing an on-line application, your family will be paired with a student who is studying in the Culture and Intensive English Program. Our students can’t wait to meet with you to learn about American culture and practice their English.

Click here for an on-line aplication.

Click here for more information about this program.

Questions or Comments?

Please feel free to contact Sally Roos:

sally.roos@uni.edu

(319) 273-2182

Praying for Influence in Brno, CZ

 

Jesus tells us in Mark 10:27, "With man this is impossible, but not with God; all things are possible with God." 

What an awesome promise!  Currently, PLC-ers Matt & Natalie Miller are in the Czech Republic, serving at a youth camp.  Pray for the Miller's and their team -- that they would experience God making impossible things in the Czech Republic, possible! 

As you pray for them, you can follow their trip updates on the Influence blog -- here's their most recent post after they arrived in Brno, CZ:

Today we continued our training at the Mayak Center in Brno, CZ. Most of our training today centered around Czech culture and the role that we are to play in the camp this next week. We spent the morning taking a tour of the city of Brno and learning more about both their history and what life is like for them today. Below you will find a photo of our team.

The missionaries here have spent a lot of time studying the Czech people and how we can best interact with them. For those of you who don't know, the Czech people in general tend to be very reserved. Relationships are very important to them, though. They say once you become friends with a Czech, you are friends for life. That's what makes these short term missions trips unique, and frankly somewhat challenging. The missionaries here have a list of "5 thresholds" that they use to gauge where the Czech people are at spiritually. Here they are:

1. Trusting a Christian
2. Curiosity
3. Becoming open to change
4. Seeking after God
5. Entering the Kingdom

Now the camp is made up of mostly high school and college aged kids who would not consider themselves to be believers. So the difficult thing for us to deal with is that there are very little conversions to Christianity that take place during the week at camp. However, when you understand the culture a bit more, it becomes easier to see that we can still make a big difference in the lives of the campers. If we can take the time to gain the trust of some of the campers by being their friend, then perhaps we can get them to the point where they are curious enough to start asking questions about God. Then, if we are able to come back the next year, hopefully we can pickup where we left off and get them to the point that they are willing to change some things in their lives in order to follow Christ.

Natalie and I are especially excited to continue developing some of the relationships that we started at last years camp. We are hoping that the trust we have developed with those campers will lead to conversations that get them asking questions about what it means to be a Christian.

(Two years ago we made a video about the history of Christianity in the Czech Republic.  Check it out.)