Bridges Across Borders: A Fulbright Journey Through Amman, Jordan - Hardcover

by Walter McCollum (Author)

This book, Bridges Across Borders, is my attempt to tell that story in full. It is not a technical manual, though it contains technical elements; nor is it a travelogue, though it includes journeys to remarkable places. It is a narrative about what happens when professional expertise, cultural immersion, and spiritual openness meet in a single year, in a single city, under the banner of a program created to foster understanding.

In the chapters that follow, I invite you into that year. You will ride with me from the airport to ACOR, walk into the Jordanian-American Commission for Educational Exchange, and step into ministry offices where presidential hiring is debated. You will visit universities, research centers, and museums; stand with me in the Roman Amphitheatre and on the heights of the Citadel; float in the Dead Sea; look out from Mount Nebo; and descend to Bethany Beyond the Jordan, where baptismal waters carry stories thousands of years old.

Along the way, you will see how consulting and higher-education skills can impact social change across an entire kingdom; how cross-cultural integration and long-term relationships make that impact possible; and how, in the midst of policy work and institutional reform, a person can experience spiritual emersion and affirmation of self-worth in a host country.

Fulbright gave me the opportunity to build bridges between my home context and Jordan. This book is a reflection on what those bridges looked like-structurally, culturally, and spiritually-and an invitation to others who feel called to cross borders, listen deeply, and let their own journeys be transformed in the process.