him a couple of times through the night and at the end, we went up to him and said, ‘Look, if there’s anything we can do to help you, we’re willing,’ and he immediately took us up on that offer. So, we
PHOTO COURTESY OF IFM
Saudi Arabia,” Mark says. “We eventually talked to
went and signed up as host and student.” Having survived the speed dating-like awkwardness of the selection process, it would’ve been understandable for Mark and Sheryl to then think whatever came next would be effortless by comparison. But that would not be the case.
In addition to helping
invited them to an IFM luncheon and that’s where
match host families
they first heard about military families needing
with visiting interna-
sponsors. They suspected right then that this was
tional military, IFM also conducts arts classes for international children. For Carole Collins (left),
for them. “We had hosted an international intern who’d worked at our church,” Sheryl says. “So, the Lord had His hand in this from the beginning.”
who always wanted to be an art teacher, this
But still, that first night at Ft. Benning was, in a
is the fulfillment of a
word, awkward. At least in the beginning. “We
lifelong dream
didn’t fully understand how it worked,” remembers
10
Mark. “But it really was like speed dating.” Minutes after they arrived, armed with hors d’oeuvres in one hand and a booklet of student bios in the other, Mark and Sheryl began to circulate, going from one military officer to the next, making polite chit-chat and looking for something they couldn’t quite put their finger on. “But then we started talking to this one man and he was from
OMM_8-11_International Relations_3.indd 10
Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner? Most stories about Southern hospitality involve food. This one is no exception. A few days after they met, Mark and Sheryl invited their new Saudi friend and his family to their home for dinner. Sheryl has only one word, a word she now uses a lot, to describe what it was like when she first opened the door and saw their dinner guests. “It was awkward,” she says. “The wife was named Rheem and when we first met them at the door, she was wearing an abaya and a niqab. I had never seen, in person, someone dressed that way, much less someone coming to my home.” Sheryl had also never heard anything quite like the request their new Saudi friends made before sitting down to dinner. “We were instructed that the men and women had to eat separately,” she remembers.
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