This study explores the phenomenon of a personal exploratory field visit to HIV programmes in Malawi and how that informs my future plans to work cross-culturally with HIV. I use hermeneutic phenomenology with the guidance of Heidegger and Gadamer, and draw on Ackermann, Hill, Maluleke, Moltmann, and Thielicke for theological direction. This study analyses how personal formation takes place and how the meaning of that experience can inform future cross-cultural interaction. The data of this study is drawn from a range of people interviewing ‘me’. This includes a pre and post interview in relation to my three week exploratory visit to Malawi, and recorded daily reflections during the visit. Upon return I was interviewed about my experience by ten people from the following areas: nursing, counselling, development, theology, business, medicine, clergy, an Expatriate Malawian, and a women working from a Maori paradigm. These interviews focused on my experience with questions framed from the interviewer’s specialty area. The transcripts become further data for my study. The findings of this thesis suggest that people wishing to work cross-culturally need to understand their motivation for their work, and understand who they are before entering a foreign land. This transformative journey also needs to continue as part of the process of working with people because we can only be effective with change if we are listening and hearing the other’s perspective. It is in being open to this difference between persons that we continue to find ourselves. While perhaps we have a tendency to want to make everybody like us, we can only grow into our full potential in relationship with truly different others. Tensions I experienced demonstrate that there is a complex need to understand how the context controls how HIV is perceived. This requires uncovering some of the deeper issues of HIV and culture, and knowing how to conceptualise these in both positive and informative ways. This thesis asks four key questions for the global-co-worker to work through before embarking on cross-cultural mission: 1. How do you know you should go?; 2. How are you going to make a difference?; 3. Who are you going to be?; and 4. What will sustain your involvement? My own experience has drawn me into a deeper awareness of the need for a vital connectedness of faith, hope and love underpinning the everydayness of such an experience.

One aim with the Swedish non-confessional religious education is to increase students’ understanding and respect for different ways of thinking and behaving. One opportunity to reflect upon other people's interpretations of life, are field visits. Many teachers and students want to make field visits but few actually do. This thesis explores educational opportunities and challenges generated by field visits as part of religious education. This is a classroom study in an upper secondary school (the students were 17 years old), during the teaching sequence about Islam where one part was a field visit to a mosque. Data were produced by classroom observations and observations from a mosque visit, students’ journal writing’s before and after the visit and student interviews. The students’ utterances about Islam are analysed using Michael Bachtin’s dialogue theory and Robert Jackson’s interpretive approach. The analysis shows that students apply a speech genre, which in this study is denoted genre of politeness. In some cases the genre of politeness affect the students such that they do not dare to ask all questions, in particular questions about Islam and gender. Another result is that students more widely apply a self-reflexive speech genre during and after the mosque visit as compared to before the visit. By self-reflexive speech is meant that the students mirror what they have met in the mosque with their own interpretations of life. The analysis also shows that the several students express critical opinions about Islam both before and after the mosque visit and the teaching sequence. The study explores educational opportunities and challenges generated by the mosque visit. Some of the themes that are discussed in the thesis are: 1) questions about representations of religion, for instance in what way “lived religion” and religion as a “philosophical ideal” can be combined, 2) the students’ different ways of reflection, 3) how do students relate and rely on the faith representative’s utterances, and 4) how students formulate questions to the faith representative. / Baksidestext Studiebesök är en metod i religionskunskapsundervisningen som förefaller vara uppskattad av både lärare och elever. Trots det visar det sig att det är relativt få lärare som verkligen gör besök, vilket delvis kan bero på en osäkerhet vad som händer ur ett elevperspektiv i mötet med en ny kontext. Den här studien har undersökt religionsdidaktiska utmaningar och möjligheter som aktualiserats genom ett moskébesök. Empirin utgörs av gymnasielevers yttranden om islam i loggar, elevintervjuer, klassrummet och under ett moskébesök. Analysen visar bland annat att elevernas tal under besöket påverkas av en ”artighetsgenre” som både kan underlätta och försvåra för eleverna. Vidare framkommer det att elever i större utsträckning under och efter besöket speglar det de möter i moskén i sina egna livstolkningar. Analysen visar också hur elever uttrycker att deras inställning till islam påverkas på olika sätt av besöket. Några religionsdidaktiska områden som aktualiserats av besöket och diskuteras är frågor om religioners representation, hur trosrepresentanten ska behandlas som källa samt olika sätt att ställa frågor till representanten.

This study explores the phenomenon of a personal exploratory field visit to HIV programmes in Malawi and how that informs my future plans to work cross-culturally with HIV. I use hermeneutic phenomenology with the guidance of Heidegger and Gadamer, and draw on Ackermann, Hill, Maluleke, Moltmann, and Thielicke for theological direction. This study analyses how personal formation takes place and how the meaning of that experience can inform future cross-cultural interaction. The data of this study is drawn from a range of people interviewing ‘me’. This includes a pre and post interview in relation to my three week exploratory visit to Malawi, and recorded daily reflections during the visit. Upon return I was interviewed about my experience by ten people from the following areas: nursing, counselling, development, theology, business, medicine, clergy, an Expatriate Malawian, and a women working from a Maori paradigm. These interviews focused on my experience with questions framed from the interviewer’s specialty area. The transcripts become further data for my study. The findings of this thesis suggest that people wishing to work cross-culturally need to understand their motivation for their work, and understand who they are before entering a foreign land. This transformative journey also needs to continue as part of the process of working with people because we can only be effective with change if we are listening and hearing the other’s perspective. It is in being open to this difference between persons that we continue to find ourselves. While perhaps we have a tendency to want to make everybody like us, we can only grow into our full potential in relationship with truly different others. Tensions I experienced demonstrate that there is a complex need to understand how the context controls how HIV is perceived. This requires uncovering some of the deeper issues of HIV and culture, and knowing how to conceptualise these in both positive and informative ways. This thesis asks four key questions for the global-co-worker to work through before embarking on cross-cultural mission: 1. How do you know you should go?; 2. How are you going to make a difference?; 3. Who are you going to be?; and 4. What will sustain your involvement? My own experience has drawn me into a deeper awareness of the need for a vital connectedness of faith, hope and love underpinning the everydayness of such an experience.