Culture Shock and Awe

“Barron County is a county located in the U.S. state of Wisconsin. As of 2000, the population was 44,963. Its county seat is Barron.” - from Wikipedia page on Barron County (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barron_County,_Wisconsin)

I live in a mostly white county. Exhibit A is a short article on Barron County that I found at (where else?) Wikipedia:

As of the census of 2000, there were 44,963 people, 17,851 households, and 12,352 families residing in the county. The population density was 52 people per square mile (20/km²). There were 20,969 housing units at an average density of 24 per square mile (9/km²). The racial makeup of the county was 97.69% White, 0.14% Black or African American, 0.81% Native American, 0.32% Asian, 0.04% Pacific Islander, 0.32% from other races, and 0.69% from two or more races. 0.96% of the population were Hispanic or Latino of any race. 34.4% were of German, 21.8% Norwegian and 5.3% Irish ancestry.

In case you're wondering if anything has changed in the last decade, the facts I gleaned from a report on the 2010 Census reveals that while we have experienced a slight population increase, at 96.5% we remain a predominantly Caucasian bastion of people of northern European descent. Of course, we do have a smattering of Native Americans who live primarily on the northwestern end of the county in the Cumberland/Turtle Lake area. Due to Seneca Foods being located there as well, every summer Barron County receives an influx of Hispanic migrant workers as well. But in Chetek, located on the far eastern end of the county, we never see any (if you don't count my neighbors down the street from me who relocated from Mexico some years ago.) All this to say that when we usually use the word “culture” it means an entirely different thing than what it means in, say, Minneapolis or St. Paul. “Getting exposed to a little culture” for us may actually come down to sampling some lefse and lutefisk at Chetek Lutheran at their annual fall feed here.

Some people wait all year to get their helping of lefse and lutefisk at Chetek Lutheran

But as I have related elsewhere (Same time next year), we've been found out. Somewhere around the turn of the 21^st Century, Somali refugees moved into Barron seeking employment at Jennie-O's Turkey Store, a plant that slaughters and packages 27,000 turkeys a day. While no one really knows how many Somali are living here now, estimates are between 600-700. There's enough of them to support not one but two mosques now and if you happen to be driving down LaSalle Street on a Friday afternoon, it's hard to miss the followers of Muhammad heading to the place of prayer. And it appears they are here to stay. Barron not only has a McDonald's and Subway now but two eateries owned and operated by local Somali businessmen to cater to local Somalis who seek halal (i.e., “kosher”) food. As they put it on one of their web sites, “Somali Food for Your Soul.” 

They serve a pretty good tea

But still at 12 miles as the crow flies from here, we don't see them around our town. There really would be no need for them to come here anyway. A person can get better prices and a far greater selection at Wal-Mart in Rice Lake where so many people from around the county, Somali included, do their shopping. So, with the exception of a few African-American children from a handful of “blended” families, we are mostly white people here whose children go to school with other white children and are taught by almost exclusively white teachers (if you don't count Senora Checkalski who despite her Polish last name is every ounce a Hispanic.) I personally don't believe that this is an equation for the breeding of latent racism because of the internet and easy access to Eau Claire to our south and the Twin Cities exposes us all to a greater world outside our small town. Still, “culture” in, say, Minneapolis is one thing – call it exotic, or adventuresome – but at the end of the day we can come home to our white neighborhood and eat mac and cheese or pizza and feel “cultured” enough for one day. “Culture” - be it Somali or First Nations people – is “over there” at arm's length not as close as our next door neighbors who act oddly and dress weirdly.

Dolores w/two of the Waterhouse girls March 2000

When we first moved here in the early 90s this isolation from people of other color came home to roost when Linda was at the mall in Eau Claire with Christine, our oldest, one day. At five years of age she “discovered” her first African-American and asked what was the obvious to her: “Who is that chocolate man, mommy?” Yes, it's a cute story but the idea of our kids growing up in a community off the beaten path and fairly insulated from the rest of the world frightened us. Apart from the Spirit of God, that may have been a motivating factor in seeking a greater involvement in the cause of mission. In time, we became a partner with a fledgling ministry on the Lac Coutre Oreilles Reservation about an hour and fifteen minutes north of here. Sporadically we would send crews up to help build their ministry center. And when they began a training school there made up of Ojibwa mostly from northern Ontario, they would come and join us at least once a term for what I called our reenactment of the first Thanksgiving. First Nations people and descendants of those who first settled the eastern seaboard sitting down to eat turkey, mashed potatoes and gravy with some frybread and wild rice on the side. We always had sharing. One year we even had dancing. Some of these folks became my friends and one winter I went with a team to visit one of the reserves in northern Ontario where a few of them are from.

Somali men at prayer

We became involved in ministry to the local Somali first through prayer. We got a little educated and then during Ramadan for a few years running would host times of prayer for the Somali. When a young couple from California felt led to come to Barron to begin a ministry to this segment of the Somali diaspora five years ago, they were “launched” from Refuge. We have been in partnership with them ever since. A woman from our fellowship with a penchant for cooking has become pretty good at frying up a batch of sambusa when the need arrives. While only a handful of us have actually had conversations with any of the Somali, that's still way more than how it once was. Our son, Ed, is a student at UW-Superior, about two hours north of here, and one of his study partners is a Somali kid from Barron – a kid that is well known by the founder of The Well International in Barron. I find this more than coincidental.

As I like to tell people, our last name is “International.” In response to a prophetic word, we didn't just become “The Refuge” back in 2007; rather, we are now “The Refuge International.” Personally, I was quite shy about this at first. After all, in a town that hardly boasts minorities (if you don't count the Poles and the Swedes) to my ears it sounds rather pretentious to give yourself a moniker like “International.” One thing I've done has helped bring a needed corrective to my understanding of our missional purpose. Several years ago I started asking guests from foreign lands who addressed the weekly worship gathering to take a few moments to pray for us in their native dialect before concluding their message. I just figure meeting people from different cultures and hearing the languages they speak in our sanctuary somehow prophetically “laces” the atmosphere with a desire to learn more of our neighbors who just happen to live across the ocean. Since making that the “price of admission”, as it were, we have heard many dialects spoken in our place – from Asia, from Africa, from Central America and elsewhere. In fact, in the last six weeks alone we have heard prayers in Russian, in Luganda (Uganda), in Swahili (Kenya) and in Ojibwa (LCO) all prayed by those from these places who have been our guests to share at a regular worship gathering here. It's like we've put our flag up on our little mailbox and the deliveries keep coming. I'm persuaded there is something big to this small act of prayer in other tongues.

This past Sunday, in our worship gathering, we had a Somali believer in our midst, friends of the founders of The Well, on one side of the sanctuary while across the way was an Ojibwa woman, fruit of the ministry that we have helped support on the reservation all these years. They were both present because they accompanied their friends to participate in our annual Thanksgiving service. Shire, the Somali man, asked for prayer to help find a job. Dolores, the Ojibwa woman, shared her need for prayer due to the fact that her cousin had died suddenly the night before. Later she was the one who on behalf of Discovery/the Church of Love and Compassion presented us with an official flag of Lac Coutre Oreilles and, at my request, prayed over us in her Ojibwa dialect. It was a special moment and afterward, one of our deacons suggested that we make it our aim to post a flag from every nation that has worshiped with us. That in itself may not be fulfilling the Great Commission but it speaks of a greater openness to getting on with what we need to be getting on with.

The flag of the Lac Coutre Oreilles band of the Ojibwa