How often you get together with your international friends may vary greatly. Some Friendship Partners live nearby their international friend and are able to see each other every week. Others have busy schedules or live some distance away and may see each other once a month. There is a great deal of flexibility depending on your schedule, your international friend’s schedule, and other practical matters. As a Friendship Partner, you are committing to making yourself available as a friend – to offer friendship and hospitality. You are not committing to an unusual investment of time, money, or other resources. Being a Friendship Partner is not the same as hosting an exchange student or sponsoring a foreign visitor. It is friendship, plain and simple.
One writer explained it this way:
International students are eager to get to know you and your family – typical Americans. They want to be included in your routine. Welcome them into your home as it is. Let them see your normal, day-to-day life. This is the relaxed hospitality they long for.
Genuine hospitality says, Join us today. Relax, watch television, play with the children, wash your clothes, bring a friend, take a nap, or whatever you would like. We offer you friendship. Come and be with us, just as we are.”
This is hospitality, not entertainment. Entertainment says, Before I can invite an international student into my home, I must have it neat and clean with everything in order. Hospitality says, Come into my home and be with us just as we are. Let me put another plate on the table. And bring a friend if you’d like.”
This is the comfortable, homey place every international student longs to find while here in the United States. The great tragedy is that very, very few ever get to experience it. (In fact, most international students return home without ever seeing the inside of an American home or church.)