international – Jerry Lout ⚬ Writer ⚬ Speaker ⚬ Mobilizer

November 21, 2024

Watershed Moments

As with many spouses of T.U. scholars, she had adopted a Western nickname (perhaps less daunting to the American tongue). Gayle and her graduate-student husband, ‘Dean’, had been in Tulsa nearly two years. The story of their faith journey corresponded with a marginal difference to that of another married couple, the Zhirs*. The Zhirs happened to both share a common first name. My wife, a twinkle in her eye, nicknamed them ‘Zhirs Squared’.

ISM enjoyed serving alongside host families – Christ-followers endeavoring to mirror the faith. Such households, with their knack of welcoming strangers in their midst, lived and breathed hospitality.

Dean and Gayle were an engaging couple eager to sharpen their “second language” skills. They instantly warmed to the ‘English Corner’ community.

Along the way Dean was notified that a significant academic opportunity in a distant location had been offered him. The couple’s departure from Tulsa was imminent. They would move in a matter of days.

Wednesday evening’s English Corner rolled around and the usual stream of internationals and American host friends arrived at our common meeting area, the campus dining hall. Alerted to Gayle and her husband’s news of soon moving away, one volunteer exclaimed, “Oh, Gayle, we are going to miss you so much!” At this, the young lady – overcome by the sincere gesture – excused herself and moved to a quiet area to gather her emotions. Tears flowed.

Some moments later she was joined by her host friend who had followed her from a respectable distance. In the moments that followed, Gayle, sensing a consoling presence which she discerned to be the love of God, expressed her desire to embrace the faith that so marked her friend’s lives. Shortly afterward her husband Dean followed suit. Christ proved himself true through their years following. Savior, companion and Lord.

Among the beautiful features of nearing, then crossing salvation’s threshold to God’s kingdom is the uniqueness of each person in their own pilgrimage. The circuitous route of the Zhirs (befriended by a different volunteer family altogether) would unfold across its own distinctive set of landscapes.

November 7, 2024November 6, 2024

Happy Tears

For this reason I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family in heaven and on earth is named*

Until their December visit to Colorado’s Bear Trap Ranch, several of the students had never seen snow. We offered up simple tips on navigating snow and ice after witnessing through barely-concealed grins their earlier attempts at the challenge.

Each exhilarating day of broomball on ice, indoor table tennis, family group, (pretend) Olympic games, and mountain hikes would at last wind down with mealtime. This was followed by a Christian ‘talk’ presented by a guest speaker. Nate Mirza of The Navigators endeared himself to the community time after time.

Through a small library toward the gathering room we moved after dinner, passing beneath the mounted head of a large and quite imposing form. The taxidermied head of ‘Bruce The Moose’ was affixed to a strong interior wall, peering down like a sentry keeping watch over library shelves laden with their literary stock.

I reflect on those yearly wintry seasons together with other community-centered events in a wide range of settings where groups of international students meet with a blend of fellowship, service and faith. I am stirred by a mix of nostalgia and gratitude. Whether it’s Bear Trap Ranch, the Springtime Car Care Clinic, our Saturday night ‘Strings n’ Things’, or road trips to Branson or St. Louis or Houston. One element seemed always to mark these times. The sense of family.

The final day of Bear Trap’s ‘International Student New Years Houseparty’ arrived – accented by scores of students scurrying about, rushing to toss their luggage into a waiting car or van. And (more urgently) rushing to get in a last hug from another student or campus ministry sponsor – complete strangers seven days before. Emotions ran high and winter coat sleeves served as Kleenex substitutes to catch the occasional and abrupt stream of tears.

A casual passerby taking in the scene might readily sense a sacred movement in the way a touching piece of music can stir heartstrings. Seeds of friendship had found their way into fertile soil within a short span at Beartrap. And some had been drawn deeper and deeper into a tighter-than-ever, more settling than imaginable, family identity. Through one who stays closer than a brother*.

September 26, 2024September 25, 2024

September Assault

Entering the quaint cottage off 15th and Memorial that Tuesday of early Fall, I assumed the small gathering would feature ‘the usual’. But calendars across the land had silently announced the dawn of another day. September 11, 2001, would never be remembered as an ordinary day.

Inside the cottage I was met with hurried motions of unusually somber hosts, urging me to join them before a television screen. Scenes of billowing smoke boiling from upper floors of one of New York’s twin towers left our small prayer group sitting bewildered. Our attention was held captive. We sat transfixed, silent.

Then, in disbelief, our modest gathering witnessed in real time an action so horrific that it could not in those fleeting seconds be adequately taken in.

While TV reporters – as confused as any of their viewers – fired off excited guesses, we beheld the unthinkable. The approach of airliner number two. Then a great burst of flame. More smoke. More pandemonium. America was under attack.

The cottage, cozy residence of senior-age friends Merland and Ann Severson, served for years as venue for Tuesday morning gatherings. The informal meeting featured friendly chitchat, followed by thanksgivings, updates and prayer for the international student ministry.

While we, in this abrupt moment carried scant details on the chaos unfolding in New York, our little band of believers carried a knowing conviction of something very concrete, at a deep, profound level. If there were ever a time for the Lord’s praying people to engage, the time is here.

August 15, 2024August 14, 2024

Aha Moment

“When we laugh, our brains release feel-good chemicals that enhance attention, memory, and creativity*”

International students coming in from across the globe, many of them sporting proper names that are both tongue-twisting and truly foreign to the Western ear, elect to adopt names common to North America. From early on Xianghui, aka ‘Paul’, together with his wife and two young sons, endeared themselves to the community. One memorable scene in the life of this electrical engineering student featured a common garden vegetable. It happened on a Thursday at mid-day.

For the weekly FIL (Free International Lunch) for which my wife had pulled together a cadre of Rock Star kitchen volunteers, we rolled out a special feature. Christening it the “English Slang Expression of the Week”, the skit-based treat soon captured the attention of student diners frequenting the downstairs buffet every seventh day.

This Thursday I conscripted our friend Paul to lend his talents in unveiling the day’s idiomatic treasure. Tossing him an unpeeled potato, I signaled to the long sofa with its vinyl black cover resting just inside the room’s entrance.

“Once the students are settled in with their plates of food, just stretch out over there,” I coached Paul who happily complied.

At the key moment, taking up a mic, I directed a sharp glance to Paul who lay there stretched out facing the ceiling – repeatedly tossing the veggie upwards and catching it. “Hey, there, Paul!”

The students all turned his way.

“What is it you are doing over there?!”, I asked in mock surprise.

Paul’s response was perfect, “Oh. . . not much of anything, Jerry. . . just being a Couch Potato!”

It was in such moments that a line from the ministry’s official Mission Statement easily sprang to mind.

(We exist) “to meet practical needs of international students”

The linguistic “pinch of humor” supplied just the right luncheon seasoning.

April 11, 2024April 10, 2024

Stated Intent

A brilliant and beloved Southern California professor was fond of urging his fellow believers to live life on purpose, employing principles which he dubbed VIM.

Those lives that bear the marks of wholeness and flourishing for the good, Dallas Willard contended, tend to stem from persons who have firmly embraced Vision (the first letter of the acronym).

Alongside Vision come Intention and Means. Our infant ministry on the Tulsa campus – testing its wobbly legs with gangly stops and starts that are common to the very young – had started hammering out our Intention piece.

Just what were we sensing that God actually wanted? What would bring a ready smile to his magnificent countenance?

Jim Garton and I set out to give it our best in crafting a mission statement. It was clear that International Student Ministries needed one.

What shall we count as ISM’s Intention (the aim or aims that could be counted on to mark us and keep us grounded and focused through coming years). While we understood that a mission purpose can be tweaked and that often the best of aims can meet with course corrections, we felt daily the gravity of this assignment. It weighed on us.

At long last, with a lot of needed grace from above, we landed the plane.

The stated purpose carried two crucial features, neither of which could be realized apart from the other. Students needed to be able to enjoy the assurance that they are genuinely welcomed and cared about. Relationship must be key, with Christ’s tangible love and presence the heartbeat of it all.

The team’s next newsletter to be rolled out would herald our reason for being. Our Intention:

International Community Outreach exists to glorify God by meeting practical and spiritual needs of international students, through acts of service and through the proclamation of the gospel of Christ.

With our stated mission now in place, all that remained was to live it out!

This was to take some doing.

February 1, 2024January 31, 2024

Constant Gains

We know of people who opt to change their proper name. Visiting the United Kingdom, I am sometimes tempted to tweak my surname. Hardly any of our British friends would think it a compliment being called a lout.

A few days after tackling my new duties on campus, I met a delightful student from East Asia.

“Hi, my name is ‘Constant’”, he smiled.

“Happy to meet you, Constant. I’m Jerry”. The introduction marked the start of a rich friendship. A couple days passed. My phone rang.

“Hi Jerry, it’s Constant. Do you have a minute?”

In time I learned the rationale behind my new acquaintance’s name change. Realizing his given name might prove tough for some Oklahomans to pronounce and wishing to take on a name reflecting his ambitions as a student, he simply landed on Constant. Staying focused and constant – not getting distracted or sidelined from studies. Things he knew were called for in his engineering pursuits. Makes sense! I thought.

“Sure”, I responded to his request over the phone, “what’s up, Constant?”

After a short visit, which included suggesting a few tips to ease his concerns over navigating English with a certain professor, I offered that Constant and I begin weekly meetups for conversational practice. He liked the idea.

I suggested two o’clock the following day.

“Yes, that time is great. At my apartment!”

Carrying forward with the Tuesday sessions over the next three years, our friendship grew. It was gratifying, making my way week-by-week to Constant’s apartment, seeing his second-language skills excel month after month. The English reading exercises we tackled featured an uncommon (for him) curriculum resource. Opening the New Testament week by week, we took in a narrative, then another – Tuesday after Tuesday – from the life of Jesus.

January 25, 2024January 24, 2024

Charlie Company

To love abundantly is to live abundantly, and to love forever is to live forever*.

It might be argued that Charlie Spear’s all-time-ever favorite term in the world is that over-spilling word – Abundant.

“Hey Charlie, how’s it going?”

“Abundant!”

“What was Christmas like with the kids and grandkids, Charlie?” “Abundant, bro, just abundant!”

Regardless the topic, the time of day, the weather forecast or just about anything else, the decades-long director of TU’s Wesley ministry rarely missed an opportunity to inject the ‘A’ word where any verbal exchange surfaced. Everybody loved him for it.

I would put his height at 6’ 2”, a full-bodied ponytail falling a good thirty inches toward his blue-jeaned waistline.

But neither his impressive height nor the distinctive ponytail nor the ever-present Abundant (that sat poised to break free from his larynx any second) fully explained the happy magnetism most friends and visitors sensed when entering the Wesley Foundation.

Long before I happened into this student center (christened after English Evangelist John Wesley) a vibrant spiritual garden for pointing students to Jesus had been planted and prayerfully tended. Charlie and team – all by their confession, ‘spiritual works-in-progress’ – had long since been leaning into Jesus, drawing on grace. The community remained stirred by a common passion. To know Christ and to make him known, as the Commons Room plaque asserted.

“So, Charlie”, I ventured after being the new ministry guy on campus a while, “the Wesley’s FNL (Friday Noon Lunch) serves the weekly meal here”. His arms in a relaxed cross, Charlie followed my ensuing proposal with apparent interest.

“What if our ministry – ISM – experimented with something similar, only focusing the efforts on serving international students.”

The Director seemed to warm to the notion as I wrapped up my pitch, which was being framed breath by breath,

“Maybe on Thursdays. But only one Thursday a month at first. We might call it FIL (Free International Lunch). Think that might work?”

When Charlie and his team gave the nod, the FIL was launched, my wife Ann orchestrating a volunteer kitchen staff and servers. We trusted heaven’s supply for funding.

Interest grew, appetites sharpened. The once-a-month international lunch (rice dishes never absent!) stretched to twice monthly. Our modest experiment with FIL took off. Eventually, every Thursday noon through the school year found students from across the world – most of non-believing backgrounds – filing to Wesley’s cozy basement dining hall. Nutritional cuisine for both body and spirit – found a pathway to a diverse array of scholars, graciously served up at the hands of cheerful hosts.

Week after week after week. Indescribable.

Abundant!

January 11, 2024

Sharp Turn

Impressive structures that weather the elements of time owe their long resilience to sound foundations. Moving about the Tulsa campus lying along the famed Route 66 corridor, I was garnering insights about T.U.’s own foundations. Not those to do with brick and mortar but of held convictions, beliefs and values – elements that gave rise to the university’s birth back in the nineteenth century.

Along the way I reflected how the many streams of higher education in America had sprung forth and flowed directly from the headwaters of Christian faith and practice.

The first colleges in America were founded by Christians and approximately 106 out of the 108 first colleges were Christian colleges. Harvard University, which is considered one of the leading universities in America and the world was founded by Christians. One of the original precepts of the then Harvard College stated that students should be instructed in knowing God and that Christ is the only foundation of all “sound knowledge and learning*.

The more I drank in of T.U.’s legacy the more I felt a grateful kinship. I paused at the courtyard of Sharp Chapel. Bedrock elements like truth and compassion, mercy and justice – qualities embodied in the person of Jesus himself – had birthed this place. These and other such virtues, all featured front and center at the school’s inception.

The University of Tulsa arose out of Presbyterian Mission roots by way of Kendall College. Even now the ‘vital signs’ of the Christian faith bore evidence of active life. Via several streams of campus expression. From Presbyterian to Baptist to Methodist to Catholic, alongside a range of parachurch ministries.

Buoyed in part by my recent ‘until they know that you care’ moment, I rallied my courage.

Entering through large ornate doors of Sharp Chapel I followed a stairway up to the Chaplain’s office.

Would my request be approved? I wondered. Would International Student Ministries be endorsed as a formally sanctioned presence. To offer, through the Lord’s grace, a witness to the life and hope resident in the person of Jesus? Particularly, among scholars and students even now making their way to this place from across the world.

December 21, 2023December 20, 2023

Conundrum

During unsettling times, from the terrifying to the mild, a prevailing hope in many is to catch sight of some proverbial North Star.

For centuries and for throngs of people in numberless settings a wildly diverse company of pilgrims called Jesus followers, have centered and then re-centered their trust in this one person. The carpenter’s son. The Messiah. The Good Shepherd. . . (It seems interesting that a noteworthy feature of any credible shepherd is that he leads).

So, What now, Lord? The days going forward found me itching for resolution. With my mentor (Jim) now off the scene what am I to make of this teasing draw toward international student ministry. Am I to press forward along the intriguing but ill-defined road? Or, shall my wife and I – as advised by one pastor – suspend missions work altogether since we are not now overseas, “Take up pastoring”?

Day by day I kept being drawn to the student community. Apart from whether or not a ‘call from above’ was in the works, a couple factors loomed large.

Do I have what it takes? (Obviously, I was skating toward the ‘Lord, help my unbelief!’ zone)

Undertaking Christian service among a diverse company of university scholars from around the world (“the brightest and best” goes the phrase) would mean something far different than what I had known.

The other factor playing on my mind was the question, to whom or what would I hitch my faith wagon to? Until this point, New York’s Elim Fellowship had been serving as our overseeing body.

In the end, several answers to the puzzlements had already started making their way my direction. The surprising turn of events would mean the end of my two-fold conundrum:

With what group might God have in mind for us to work alongside?
Any chance my limited knowledge and experience could pass muster?

November 30, 2023November 29, 2023

New Normal

Funny how conditioning works – not that of the hair treatment variety.

A person flies off to another land and settles into the things of life and work. Some years later, having grown conditioned to her adoptive culture, the person returns to her homeland only to find life disorienting.

Depending on how deeply entrenched he has settled into that ‘other life’, the reentry and reorienting process for the returnee may leave him reeling. I’m clearly a misfit, he reasons.

Such a person may feel more at ease in the company of the clerk tending to the nearby Asian or Latin-run convenience store than with many of his acquaintances of an earlier time.

It happened with me at the intersection of Sixth and Birmingham. Where aromas of Indian Curry and Chinese dumplings hung in the air.

ISI’s area director Jim Tracy had reached out, inviting me to accompany him on his rounds – connecting socially in informal friendship with international students hailing from lands abroad. Malaysia, Venezuela, China, the Middle East. . .

I fussed with upside-down feelings day by day as I routinely shadowed Jim, venturing along from one apartment dwelling to the next. Where we happily sipped hot chai offered up by our gracious, momentary hosts. (But wait. Aren’t we. . . us ‘Yanks’. . . meant to be hosting them?)

I grew mildly surprised sensing how the needle of my social barometer tilted in uncommon directions. Feeling less at home within my own mainstream American culture than with the young college students coming from places far, far away. I had hardly begun to know these ‘outsiders’ yet an easy kinship felt more in reach.

For a while this tug-of-war left me unsettled, musing over my ‘space’ and my identity (aren’t I the same red-blooded American fellow who merely relocated for a while those years back?).

In time I made peace with befuddling but pardonable reality. I had changed.

Change had happened on the inside of me. Living in Africa for a couple decades among people groups of varied customs and languages had ruined me – in the best kind of way. Components of my worldview had shifted, broadened. My preferences on many fronts had tweaked. In short, I had taken up a strange and intriguing and somewhat messy cross-cultural identity.

This new normal, it’s going to need some time.