Cultural Immersion Project

For the worship service, I visited one of the Quaker's Friends meeting houses. Since my family's religious background is Catholic Christian, This offered interesting views and different perceptions. Quaker's history and believes were especially brought me interest.

The people at Mt. Zion Baptist Church made me feel very welcomed, and less like an outsider. I had a lot of fun and got to experience something I would have never experienced before. If I am to go back in the future I will definitely want to learn more about the culture and religion to feel more engage with the service. I think it would be super fun to be able to sing along with everyone and be able to participate. I would also want to bring some caucasian friends with me so that they are able to experience another culture as well.The experience also taught me that being a minority can be scary and that if the people around you aren’t excepting of who you are then it can make the experience a lot worse. Therefore, it is crucial to be aware of other people cultures and be open to learning more about their

My first experience at Bridgetown church was very long overdue and very interesting. Most all of my friends and family all have been inviting me to Bridgetown specifically because they all really enjoy a specific pastor there that speaks on Sunday services. I never saw the need to go, mainly because of my night shifts are scheduled so oddly I was afraid of falling asleep at a religious sermon that I was not interested in embarrassing myself at and also not wanting to go out of my way to attend something that I was not particularly interested in. Bluntly writing I did not want to waste my time to go to something I wasn’t very excited about, especially when I do not know what to expect. This assignment did give the opportunity a bigger reason and I am glad to have been able to make such an insightful visit that I may not mind trying again in the near future.

Through these activities, I have gained crucial skills to interact efficiently with others, and learned how to meet others needs as well. Involving yourself in church activities can help you learn these important skills, as well as empathy and modesty; as you see your own community and yourself grow. And by interacting with the public through artwork is

Aside from being a place of worship, St. Paul’s Anglican Church makes an effort to communicate and interact with their community. They implement several types of activities for all age types and welcome everyone. These activities consist of, a coffee house event, where they build relationships with students and community members, they provide a chance for students form McMaster University to come and study among their leaders if necessary, and offer a program called Sunday school children and afternoon guild members (StPaulsWestdale,2015)

I have not attended a service, but I have been welcomed into their social events, which are fairly synonymous with their worship. Social events and worship flow seamlessly together. I have been impressed by the vibrancy of the community and their dedication to developing relationships – both with Christ and each other.

After my first cultural immersion experience interviewing Rabbi Tepper, I resolved to experience my second cultural immersion activity with the Jewish community. Ultimately, I wanted both of my encounters to be with one culture. I desired to achieve a deeper understanding of one culture, rather than gaining superficial understanding of two dissimilar cultures. Furthermore, I wanted my second immersion experience to consist of several activities. Rabbi Tepper was kind enough to invite me to attend Shabbat (Jewish Sabbath) and Torah study. These comprised a large portion of my overall experience. My hope was to include an activity that was more intimate as well, such as social time spent in the home or a shared meal. As luck would have it, I was able to share a meal with the congregation after Shabbat. This meal was a celebratory meal of the conversion of two individuals to Judaism. I was rather nervous leading up to attending the Shabbat service (my first activity), but I was also excited. The nervousness partially stemmed from not knowing what the proper etiquette for attending a Shabbat service and part of it was just a general anxiety about experiencing something new and different.

I went into the experience worried that I would be bored and wouldn’t be able to find value in participating. Any sort of religious practice is very foreign for me, as I don’t have much experience within religious cultures. Furthermore, the idea of finding religion in silence was something that I have never experienced and was hesitant to participate in. However, during the experience I found sitting in silence among other community members very reflective. The time went by incredibly fast and the meeting was over before I knew it. I purposefully did not bring a watch to the meeting and my phone was put away and silenced, so throughout the experience I did not know how much time had passed and was surprised by how quickly it

My experience was very rewarding because seeing people come together and be there for eachother really made me realize how valuable being part of something bigger really is. During mass on Sundays, I would stand by the door and greet people and although some of the people I saw every week were strangers, they treated me as though we were life long friends. Seeing people devote their time every week to come to the Church and to spend time at events or with each other convinced me to continue being an active person within a community in the future.

Cultural immersion has always been a desire of mine and joining a team of Broward College students and Faculty was my first true experience. I had traveled many times before with family but I adamantly believe that this trip set the tone for my intentions to travel. My first trip over the Atlantic was to Rome, Italy after watching Angels & Demons. I begged my mother to let me have a Tom Hanks moment in my life. There, the only Italians I met were the one taking my food orders or collecting my tour tickets. Part of the program in Mexico was to have daily conversations with people around the city. We had to get lost and find our way back by asking for directions, we had to learn how to send something in the post, if we needed our clothes washed

Passages from the Bible are read aloud and the congregation is walked through the Word and its meaning. By maintaining the service at a basic intellectual level, all members and visitors can feel a part of the Lord's grace. He uses the Word in a more direct way and engages the congregation in something which could be described as a contextual Bible study.

Through attending The Free Chapel, I have been able to deepen my understanding of it works into the fabric of social structure. Firstly, the church is located in Orange County, specifically Irvine which has a vibrant religious scene. With a wide variety of churches to choose from in the area, Free Chapel has to think of new and innovative ways to entice people to attend their church. This is exemplified in the grandness of the church, and the modernness of the inside. When we asked the pastor to tell us about the church, he said that they wanted the physical appearance of Free Chapel to be excellent to be great, because God is great. He also said that The Bible says that God judges by the inside, but people still judge but the outside. Embedded in this statement is the idea of

For this assignment, I went to the Ohio State University Hillel Center and was able to experience on-campus religious life. Throughout the experience, there was definitely a feeling of community and inclusiveness. Even though the congregation separated into different groups for the actual service, they began the ceremony together and ended it together. Before the groups separated for their respective services, everyone congregated for the lighting of the candles in the lobby and after each service, everyone congregated for kiddush before going to dinner.

For my second analysis, I went to a church in my hometown of Paris, Texas called Freedom Church. This church is a new non-denominational church that is trying to reach to the “de-churched and unchurched” as their tag line says. They have only been operational now for less than a year, so they are still trying to get new people to join their church. For this reason, this past Friday they put on a huge Easter event for kids and adults that had games, dinner, and a worship service. I saw and experienced some aspects of what non-denominational believe or practice, but also noticed that they had some Baptist influence in their service. Though they did some things different, I found throughout the service there were some similarities to the Baptist church I attended. There were also many things that happened throughout the service that I noticed are things that we talked about in class that I found they were successful in accomplishing or they failed at.

To experience a new religion is eye opening to me and was very interesting to visit and collaborate with people who attended the service as part of their lifestyle. First of all, I am Native American and I see that my Navajo traditions and worshiping services has a unique and precise way of worshiping. Considering I was raised as a Southern Baptist throughout my childhood of going to Bible camp and youth camps which has gotten me to see that it was the only right way of worshiping and seeing other religions idolizing other physical pagans which I saw this as wrong. However, this course was a way to be openminded about other cultures besides my own christian background. As this course concludes, I fine myself seeing the core roots set back in centuries of all religion of having similar foundations in all aspects of their history.