Well this is an easy topic for me because I know what it's like feel like the foreigner because of the places I've been. For me this is more a reality that I fight with because of being a soldier who's gone to war for his country. Interaction between the local population of Iraq and even returning home from what I honestly felt like a foreigner. My experiences give me a certain perspective when I meet people from other countries who are maybe foreign exchange students and when meeting other veterans because we are all struggling to some degree adjusting being back into our own country.
In 2006 I was deployed with the Minnesota Army National Guard in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and for the first six months of my fifteen month tour I was stationed on a small patrol base where I had a lot of interaction with the local population. I felt like a stranger to this land and I was. Learning the culture, the language and some basics of the religion they followed I began to understand what it must be like to be a foreigner in a foreign country. Even though I was a part of a military deployment around my friends and fellow soldiers I would feel out of place.
In 2007 I returned to the states, where I began the slow transition back into society. I struggle sometimes with feeling of culture shock because everything is completely different when it comes to how things work here versus how everything worked in Iraq. In Iraq we were all united under one common goal, but here back in the states people look out for number one meaning themselves. You realize that everybody is looking out themselves!
Oh that last comment is so convicting. God help us! May we be a community that places the needs of others before our own, that we would give our time, our talent, and treasure to help those around us and build one another up. Amen.
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