Many Cultures, One God

I was asked to participate in the Uniting Church Cross-Cultural Conference at Wagga Wagga recently.

It was my first experience of of this sort of gathering which included people from Tonga, Samoa, Korea, Lebanon, Armenia, Turkey, Niue, India, Sri Lanka and some people from Anglo-Celtic origins.
I listened to the stories of these people who struggled with a new country, culture and church culture. It was an eye opener for me as my experience is more or less mono-cultural.

Most of the stories people told were of there hopes and dreams of coming to Australia and their struggle with holding onto the richness of their own cultures in the church environment, let alone in the wider Australian scene.

I found my conversations with various people, the food we shared and the worship we participated all contributed to a fantastic week end.

It was a pity more locals could not avail themselves of this experience as I am sure they would have found it as life giving as I did.

Kel Hodge