World Class Alumni
By Maryann Kelly
May 8, 2004, was a warm, sticky afternoon for those of us in that year’s Anderson University graduating class. As we sat sweating in our black caps and gowns underneath the gray canopy of old Warner Auditorium, many of us were probably wondering what our futures held. I know I was.
What I couldn’t have imagined then, though, as I sat fanning myself with my diploma, was that I would now be writing this article 5,000 miles east of Indiana. As full of hopes and dreams as I was then, I never saw my future in Ireland, where I stare out the window this brisk winter’s day to watch the sun illuminate the green of the trees and the corner of a fading rainbow disappearing into a row of stone houses.
Yet, it’s been quite a journey getting here. After college, I watched my classmates become doctors, lawyers, teachers and athletes, while I followed my own providential path. I worked nearly four years for Heartland Truly Moving Pictures in Indianapolis and created a home for myself in that city.
While I still longed for far-off places, I didn't mind taking on the responsibility of settling down for the indefinite future. Then, without warning, I was swept off my feet by a handsome Irish filmmaker at the 2006 Heartland Film Festival. With uncharacteristic spontaneity, I sold my belongings, said goodbye to my family and friends, and moved to the Emerald Isle on January 1, 2008.
Since then, I’ve often thought back to my days at AU and of all that helped me get here, to the very place I’d never imagined I’d be. One thought grew into another, and I began to wonder about other alumni who had taken the daring step into the unknowns of other countries. How did they get there and why? What were their stories like?
Before I knew it, God had taken that one tiny seed of a nagging question and turned it into a search, and subsequently, this article you are about to read.
The ‘whys’ and ‘hows’
Nearly 150 alums are living around the world, from Japan to Zambia and Germany to Paraguay.
For some it was the clear hand of God that pushed them abroad, while for others it was the desire for adventure.
David Miller BA ’74 was one of the former, believing it was a mix of God and statistics that urged him to move to Bolivia in 1981.
“When I heard that evangelical Christians in North America spend 96 percent of their resources trying to evangelize their own continent, which only represents seven percent of the total world population, I said, ‘That’s terrible! Somebody ought to do something about that,’” he says.
Miller, originally from Warsaw, Ind., is the author of several books, including The Lord of Bellavista and The Path and the Peacemakers: The Triumph over Terrorism of the Church in Peru. He is currently the regional coordinator of global missions of the Church of God in Bolivia, where he lives with his wife, Barbara, and their four children.
A burning passion and dedication for evangelism in South America also called Julie BA ’97, MA ‘02 and Norberto Kurrle BA ‘98, MA ’02 , to the ministry on that continent.
The couple and their family moved to Paraguay in 2002, where they hope to stay “for the long haul, or until God directs us elsewhere,” says Julie, who is originally from Michigan. Norberto grew up as a missionary kid in Paraguay and is no stranger to the desperate needs the country faces.
As Julie explains, “[Paraguay] is one of the poorest countries in South America. There are the fewest number of churches per capita, the highest unemployment rate, and it is the fourth most corrupt country on the planet.”
Other grads have gone abroad to answer the call to social justice.
Katie Mahuron BA ’05 , spent a year in Serbia and is currently living in Northern Ireland. In both countries, Mahuron has been actively volunteering with the Bretheren Volunteer Service (BVS).
In Serbia, Mahuron was most closely involved with Women in Black (WiB), a feminist, antimilitarist organization. In addition to writing and proofreading grants for WiB, Mahuron was actively involved in the group’s peaceful demonstrations around the nation.
“The Women in Black Network-Serbia has been an active peace group since 1991,” Mahuron says. “It has been particularly visible in denouncing war crimes committed by the Miloševic regime, as well as in cooperating with peace and civic movements and groups in other war-affected countries of the former Yugoslavia.
“We have been very successful in organizing activities and in reaching out to women from all sides of the conflicts regardless of their ethnicity, religion, political and educational background,” she explains.
Working and living in Serbia for a year, Mahuron says she could fill pages with the broad range of experiences she had there.
Now in Derry/Londonderry, Northern Ireland, Mahuron is in an arguably calmer atmosphere, continuing her work for the BVS. She currently divides her time between two organizations – The Junction and Holywell Consultancy. According to their individual Web sites, The Junction is described as a community relations resource and peace-building center, while Holywell Consultancy is a social economy company.
Cultural curiosity drew still other AU alumni away from familiar American shores, plunging them into the swell of broader global experience.
A foreign exchange program sparked the interest of Dora Good Schmidt BA ’00 , and immediately following her graduation in May 2000, she relocated to Germany and became a nanny. It didn’t take long for Schmidt to realize she did not want to leave Germany, and this decision was only furthered when she met her future husband.
Schmidt’s nanny job in Berlin lasted six months, then she moved to Enkenbach in southern Germany for another six months, this time working in a nursing home. This first year’s experience was through the Intermenno Trainee Program and was limited to 12 months. However, after discovering that she had no desire to leave the country, Schmidt was able to find another position for a Mennonite organization called Christliche Dienste and stayed the following year.
“In between, I met a nice young man, fell in love, and here I still am, ‘stuck’ as I often say in German, but in a very positive way,” Schmidt says.
“I always had a passion for Germany and for the language, and I guess I always wanted to live in Germany, but never had I expected to stay indefinitely,” she says, “but that is what it has turned out to be.”
“My husband and I are certainly open to returning to the States or even possibly going to another country for several years, but I think we will always return to Germany.”
Adventurous Joy Nalywaiko BA ’04 decided in 2007 to move to Costa Rica to write a book.
“I figured if I lived in a house in the jungle in a country where I don’t know the language or have any friends, then maybe I could find enough focus to write,” she explained. “It worked for awhile despite having a tarantula fall on my head and poisonous snakes slithering around my feet.”
A few months and many hair-raising tales later, Nalywaiko, an Anderson, Ind. native, changed course again and this time headed to the Far East.
“China was a more spur-of-the-moment decision,” she says. “A couple that I worked with in Berkeley last summer had recently moved to China to teach at a university in Yantai. One day, they casually mentioned through e-mail that their university needed another teacher. At the time, I was sitting in an Internet Café at the beach in Costa Rica and woke up the next day with a plane ticket to China.”
While Nalywaiko is currently back in the United States, she is already plotting her next move.
“It can become addicting,” she warns of overseas residence and travel. “I am always planning another move or trip.”
Surprises
After the initial culture shock of moving to a foreign country — even English-speaking ones — there comes for many a series of discoveries behind a nation’s true makeup.
During my first weeks overseas, I first and foremost saw how Ireland — and Europe — view the United States, and what a huge impact my home nation has on people across the globe. I was also taken aback by the extensive presidential race coverage in the news, and how the locals spoke of the Commander in Chief as passionately as if he were their own.
Another aspect I found both positive and negative was that of the church in Ireland. I admired the way the Catholic church knits communities together unlike any church I have ever known. But, finding only three Protestant churches in a town of 30,000 people, it was also impossible for me to find a place of worship resembling my church back in Indianapolis.
And while some alumni moved abroad primarily to work within the church body, others, like me, have had problems finding a local church home at all. Mahuron says she was not involved with any churches in Serbia, partly because there are few with English-speaking services and partly because the Serbian Orthodox Church is the main denomination represented there.
“Unfortunately, the Serbian Orthodox Church is entwined with nationalism,” she explains. “During the wars in the ’90s, the church had a very controversial role. A lot of church leaders blessed soldiers before they went out to commit genocide and atrocities.”
The church in Serbia continues to have a controversial role in society, according to Mahuron, and for that reason, many people there associate religion with negative things such as war, repression of women, and nationalism. Mahuron says this also makes it difficult at times for the women she worked with to understand her Christian beliefs.
As for as other cultural differences, Mahuron, whose hometown is Cambridge City, Ind., says that while she tried to go to Serbia without any set expectations, there were still things that surprised her.
“Even though I had been forewarned, it was still surprising to me how little people acknowledge any responsibility for the war,” she says. “Some days I still find it shocking to see such hardcore nationalism and open support for war criminals.”
Schmidt says that after eight years, living in Germany just feels “normal” to her, yet she realizes how very different it is from how she was raised in “small town America,” Valparaiso, Ind.
Schmidt is also actively involved with a local Mennonite congregation in Germany, an experience that has proved to be a positive one.
“It’s been fun getting to know the Mennonite Church in Germany and being able to compare it to what I was familiar with growing up,” she says. “There are lots of similarities, but of course, a lot of differences as well. Learning about the church culture in general has also been a fascinating lesson. Obviously Germany comes from such a different historical background that the whole makeup of the church is different here than in the United States.”
For Nalywaiko, the culture she soaked up in both Costa Rica and China was surprising, but in “opposite ways.”
“The initial culture shock of moving to a foreign country [Costa Rica] without knowing the language definitely made an impact, but the spirit of the country moved me,” she says.
“China was so different that I was in constant awe of the cultural variances and walked around in a culture shock daze for the first half of my time there. But as I got used to the city and pointing to random characters on menus at restaurants — never knowing what I just ordered — it began to feel like home.”
“Chinese people have to be one of the most hospitable cultures in the world,” Nalywaiko concludes. “They treat foreigners like royalty. My students gasped, clapped, and began taking my picture when I walked in to teach on the first day, and these were university students.”
Thanks to…
It goes without saying that each of us living overseas owes a debt of gratitude to the people who shaped our lives while at Anderson University.
For me, hardly a day goes by without thinking back to the advisors, professors, staff, and friends who helped me in this life-changing step of living abroad. In particular, I am thankful for my two years in Model United Nations guided by Dr. Douglas Nelson and my cultural communication class with Dr. Donald Boggs. Also helpful were my liberal arts requirements in language, history, sociology and psychology, as well as my ethics of mass communication class with Dr. David Baird.
The others in this article were quick to add their thanks as well.
“There are so many professors and classes that impacted us during our time at AU and the School of Theology,” says Julie Kurrle. “Our business and communication degrees have been put to great use here.”
“We’d especially like to thank Dr. Juanita Leonard (emeritus) for being a mentor and spiritual support, Norm Beard (emeritus) for developing our love for intercultural experiences, Professor Paul Saltzmann for his love and encouragement in and out of the classroom, and Dr. Barry Ritchey for his friendship and support,” she says.
David Miller, who at one point divided his time between 232 Churches of God in Bolivia, said he still prepares his sermons “the way James Earl Massey taught us.”
He continues his praise for AU faculty, saying, "John Roys, my psych prof and supervisor, was one of the most kind and courageous people I’ve ever known. Paul Saltzmann taught me more algebra in one semester than I learned in three years of high school, even taking half the class period for scrippy scraps and one-pointers.”
Dora Good Schmidt says she gives her German professor, Dr. Andrew Wisely, a lot of credit for helping her absorb the language.
“He was always very patient with me and my attempts to learn German, and he connected me with a program from Wheaton College that enabled me to study in Germany for a summer, which improved my German skills up to that point significantly,” she says. “I was never really convinced that I would actually learn the language, but here I am, conversing and living the language on a daily basis.
“Sometimes I think it would be nice to be able to talk to him again, just to show him that I did manage to learn German.”
Language courses were a common thread tying overseas alumni to their positive impressions of AU.
“My summer Spanish class with Professor [Inge] Baird helped me in Costa Rica,” says Nalywaiko. “Although I didn’t retain much of the language, bits and pieces came back to me as I struggled to haphazardly string random words together in Spanish. It certainly got a lot of laughs from the locals. But without those summer classes, I would have been even more lost!”
It was history and political science courses that were the greatest asset to Mahuron in her move to Serbia.
“I took a class on Central European history with Dr. Murphy in which we read The Bridge on the Drina by Ivo Andric´,” she says. “The book — and the class — gave me some building blocks to start my time here.”
Likewise, the courses Mahuron took from Dr. Doug Nelson relating to international politics, particularly ones that covered the conflict in Serbia, were invaluable to her.
“These classes have been vital in framing my experiences here,” she says.
“Interestingly enough, any class I took in relation to U.S. history or politics has also come in handy,” Mahuron says.
Schmidt said when she remembers her time at AU, she especially appreciates the unique college experience itself.
“The German university system is completely different than in the United States, one thing being the different approach to a college setting, which has made me come to appreciate those years in a different way,” she says. “It wasn’t just about what I was learning in classes, but also about how I was learning to be independent and make choices, both good and bad, but all still in a pretty safe environment.”
Advice and Lessons Learned
So would we recommend moving abroad? Absolutely.
"Do it!" said Nalywaiko. "It can be hard at times, but it is definitely worth it. Living abroad, or even travelling abroad gives you a different perspective on, well, everything.”
“We think living overseas has been one of the most life-impacting decisions we’ve ever made,” Julie Kurrle says. “We highly recommend cross-cultural living, because we believe heaven is going to be as cross cultural as you can get.”
Miller’s recommendations for moving overseas included saving money and getting in shape. He also said that learning to adopt a simple lifestyle would give flexibility in transitioning to any culture.
Schmidt said she definitely encourages students to go abroad, particularly if they are truly willing to immerse themselves in the culture, its people, and the language.
She cautions, though, “They should be aware — it is a life-changing experience and they won’t come back the way they left.”
“Living abroad is an incredible way to open one’s eyes and heart to new cultures, perspectives and seeing God at work around the world,” Kurrle adds. “Be flexible, be a learner, don’t be afraid to use your language skills even if you make mistakes, and please don’t be a ‘typical’ American abroad.”
Kurrle’s advice came from years of humbling personal experience.
“I’ve learned how judgmental I can be,” she says. “I would frown upon different ways of cooking, accounting procedures, and even evangelism techniques. I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut, listen more, and pray for discernment before speaking.”
Similarly, Mahuron says it is good if Americans can maintain a positive outlook when entering a new country.
“Since arriving in Serbia I have had a lot of interaction with other ‘internationals’ and ‘ex-pats,’” she says. “It is amazing to me how negative they can be about the culture here. Yes, there are negative things and it can be difficult to live here sometimes, but there are many beneficial and wonderful things about life here.
“My advice is work to find that precious balance where you can fully take in the culture — the negative and the positive.”
“I guess the main thing I have learned about myself is that I still have a lot to learn,” Mahuron concludes. “There is a lot I don’t know about myself and the world around me. Sometimes that is overwhelming, and sometimes it is exciting.”
Maryann (Koopman) Kelly BA 2004 currently lives in Drogheda, Co. Louth, Ireland with her husband, Frank. She works as a freelance writer and keeps updates on her blog, http://maryannk.wordpress.com.
