A Life Overseas |

Beggar to Beggar: Finding Food and Walking Alongside . . . More Slowly

“Writers,” said David Brooks in a recent interview, “are beggars who tell other beggars where they found bread.” Brooks, a best-selling author, American political pundit, and staff writer for The Atlantic, called this his “favorite saying about writers.”

But wait up. I’ve heard a version of that phrase before, and I don’t remember it being about writers. Isn’t it about preachers, or missionaries, or just gospel-sharers in general? A quick internet search led me to the original:

Evangelism . . . is one beggar telling another beggar where to get food.

I was glad to find the actual quotation but was even more glad to find out its source. It wasn’t Elizabeth Elliot or Billy Graham or some other Christian from my American neighborhood. Instead, it was an evangelist and theologian from Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), D. T. Niles. Here is what Niles wrote in 1951 in That They May Have Life:

Evangelism is witness. It is one beggar telling another beggar where to get food. The Christian does not offer out of his bounty. He has no bounty. He is simply guest at his Master’s table and, as evangelist, he calls others too. The evangelistic relation is to be “alongside of” not “over-against.” The Christian stands alongside the non-Christian and points to the Gospel, the holy action of God. It is not his knowledge of God that he shares, it is to God Himself that he points.

It’s a great reminder to me that Christian wisdom doesn’t always flow from the West to the rest of the world—though it is so easy for me to get locked into a bubble of influence made up of people like me, where we are the givers of wisdom, and they are the receivers.

No, we are all beggars. We cross-cultural workers are beggars when we first arrive in a new country and have to ask where we can find chocolate chips or Jello (or good substitutes) or the best place to buy tea. We are beggars who need to be able to receive encouragement and motivation from our brothers and sisters around the globe. We are beggars who need to learn from others how better to come “alongside” them, to see the world through their eyes, to speak their language, to slow down and walk with them side by side.

In another book, The Preacher’s Calling to Be Servant (1959), Niles writes about how our habits of hurry have caused us to lose “the art of charity.” This is unlike Jesus, who, he says, though his ministry lasted only three years, always had time for the people around him. Niles shares a lesson from a missionary friend:

The Rev. Middleton Weaver, said to me, “When I first came to Ceylon, we travelled in bullock carts, now we travel in motor-cars, and the substitution of the one for the other has even ruined our evangelistic work. Now I rush down to a meeting and then get back home; when I used to travel in a bullock cart I really met people.” Yes, hurry means that we gather impressions but have no experiences, that we collect acquaintances but make no friends, that we attend meetings but experience no encounter. We must recover eternity if we are to find time, and eternity is what Jesus came to restore. For without it, there can be no charity.

The transition from bullock carts to motor-cars seems rather quaint to us today, but what more-modern inventions have given us the ability to hurry even more? Fast food? Microwaves and Instapots? High-speed trains? Immediate answers from High-speed internet? Immediate creativity from AI?

How can we not rush to take advantage of all these things?

Japanese-born theologian and missiologist Kosuke Koyama picks up this theme of slowing down to better serve those around us in Three Mile an Hour God (1980). The title is based on man’s average walking speed. It is the speed of the Israelites, he writes, who for forty years walked in the desert, learning that “man does not live by bread alone, but that man lives by everything that proceeds out of the mouth of the Lord.” And it is the speed of Jesus, traveling between Galilee and Jerusalem, bringing the “bread of life.” Koyama says,

Jesus Christ came. He walked towards the ‘full stop’. He lost his mobility. He was nailed down! He is not even at three miles an hour as we walk. He is not moving. ‘Full stop’! What can be slower than ‘full stop’—’nailed down’? At this point of ‘full stop’, the apostolic church proclaims that the love of God to man is ultimately and fully revealed. God walks ‘slowly’ because he is love. If he is not love he would have gone much faster. Love has its speed. It is an inner speed. It is a spiritual speed. It is a different kind of speed from the technological speed to which we are accustomed. . . . It is the speed we walk and therefore it is the speed the love of God walks.

British New Testament scholar and author N. T. Wright refers to this idea from Koyama in the short documentary Godspeed: The Pace of Being Known (2017). Wright says if we slow down, “we might actually be able, paradoxically and finally, to catch God up.” (We in the States would phrase it “to catch up to God.”)

Godspeed follows Matt Canlis, an American-born Anglican seminary student, on his quest to become a pastor whose vocation is patterned after the life of Jesus. While at Regent University, Canlis studied under Eugene Peterson, of The Message fame, who told him that he may need to leave America to learn how to minister like Jesus. Canlis and his wife later continued their studies at St. Andrews University in Scotland, where Wright teaches. While there, he also learned outside the classroom, serving the residents of Pitlochry Parish.

Canlis had some pretty impressive teachers in Peterson and Wright. And we can add to that company Alan Torrance. In this case, I’m not referring to Alan Torrance, professor at St. Andrews, though Canlis may well have learned from him. Instead, I’m talking about Alan Torrance, bushy-red-haired, kilt-wearing resident of Pitlochry. Canlis helped Torrance overcome his skepticism about Jesus, while Torrance helped Canlis understand how to “walk” more like Jesus in the community.

Torrance opens the video describing Canlis when he first arrived. “He meant well,” he says with a grin, “but he didn’t know quite what he was doing. . . . I think we helped.”

Callis responds, “I think they did help. I’d been running for most of my life, running through life to get somewhere else. But the thing about running is that you miss things, many things. And if I kept running, I was going to miss everything.”

You can watch Godspeed here. If you can take the time—it’s around 30 minutes long—please do.

[photo: “Bread,” by St. Blaize, used under a Creative Commons license]

Plant Your Trees

by Mary Silkwood

Another box packed, suitcases piled to the side of the hallway anticipating their next trip. Totes placed carefully into storage, joining the efforts of their counterparts in another corner of the world and holding life on pause until we return.

As sojourners in a missionary lifestyle, it can often be difficult to put down roots, at least deep ones. Roots that give assurance that when you meet friends for coffee and a bit of conversation, you don’t have to wonder when your next meeting will be. The kind of assurance that you’ll see your parents at church in the same pew as always next week, because those things never change. They are part of a revolving door in the beauty of the mundane.

I often find myself living life on the edge of my seat, anticipating what direction I will go next. Where will I hang my stockings next Christmas? What kitchen will I bake my child’s next birthday cake in? At times I even wonder what bed I will sleep in tonight. I know that in an instant it can and will change, just as it has countless times before.

What seemed to be the new is now old, and you are starting all over again. At moments you question its worth. To truly settle in yet again, but at what cost? To begin making room for more roots to grow, knowing another transplant looms in the future, all the while wondering what distinguishes us in this season of time?

When you do choose to plant your trees, to give the next chapter your heart, and a chance to put down roots, you soon realize there is a particular value in it all. It will be painful to pack up and leave again, but it’s not worthless. In fact, there is a unique element that this lifestyle produces. The ache of going is worth the wide breadth of friendships, rich memories, and profound reality you gain through the process.

Our roots don’t have the chance to go as deep in one spot as for others. But there are pieces of them spread around the globe. Being transplanted into new places doesn’t permit the same depth as for others, but it certainly allows them to grow wide, wider that I ever could have imagined. And in some mysterious way that may provide a strength and resiliency that a missionary life needs.

In this lifestyle I have had to learn balance. I cannot allow myself to become so comfortable that I forget that I have a revolving door that will always force change. I can’t be in a place where I refuse to be anywhere else, because as a servant of Christ, I must be willing to go anywhere at any time.

Yet at the same time, I can’t be so quick on my feet that I don’t settle down, make a life for my family, and take the time to plant my trees. Trees take time to plant and even longer to grow. Many times I have found myself mistakenly neglecting the things that take longer in life because maybe I won’t have time to see the fruit.

Over the years, I have learned the value in planting my trees — wherever the Lord leads us. I could write a book with all the stories about the Lord’s faithfulness. This story is just one of them, of our special little mango tree.

One Sunday afternoon within the first year that we moved to Thailand, we were watching a family movie. Suddenly our cat crept quickly to the door, and we noticed a poisonous snake slithering into a small bamboo grove in the front yard. (It is good to have a cat in Southeast Asia.) When the snake decided to make the bamboo its home, my husband had to remove the grove for the safety of our young kids and pets.

Now we had a great bare spot with nothing there, and our home was a spectacle with people being able to see right in. It may not seem like a big deal to some, but as a missionary in an Asian country you feel the constant eyes of the local people watching you. That bamboo grove had provided the little bit of privacy we needed at home. We knew we needed to get a new tree to fill the bare space. A trip to the plant market was exciting. We decided to get a mango tree so that we could enjoy the fruit in the seasons to come.

I became nervous and a bit sad thinking of buying a tree. I thought, what if we leave? We will no longer have our tree! That is our tree that we would have planted, and planting it felt like an investment that I didn’t want to lose. My husband, growing up as a missionary kid, knew the importance of making a home no matter how long you plan to stay. “And besides,” he said, “it’s just a tree, have some fun!”

When we planted our little mango tree, not only did it grow, but our hearts began to change and grow. We became rooted again in the places right around us. It was just a few months later that we unexpectedly had to leave Thailand. We suddenly needed to move back to the States for health care for one of our kids. I began to realize how important it was that we planted that tree.

It was fun and exciting to go pick out and plant the tree as a family. To water it and begin to watch it grow. Our little mango tree was ours. It represented our family and our journey to that place at that time. It was more than just a tree to us. It showed how God had brought us there and reminded us of our adventures, both the fun and the difficult. And just like our tree, we were growing and maturing through it all. I decided then that in some way I would continue to “plant trees” each place the Lord would lead us to.

Before leaving Thailand, my husband moved our little tree to his parents’ house on the other side of the city. For a few years my father-in-law would send us pictures of it and tell about its growth. One Christmas, my son bought Grandpa a little airplane ornament, so Grandpa hung it on the tree we planted and took a picture of him and Grandma with it. That was the last email I received from my father-in-law before his passing a few months later.

Two years after we lost him, the Lord led our family back to Thailand and to the home where my in-laws had lived with our little mango tree. Staying in that home was supposed to be temporary, but with now two children with medical needs and COVID restrictions, we stayed there much longer.

We enjoyed many mango seasons eating the fruit that came from our tree. A tree that at one time we thought we might never see again, let alone taste the fruit from season after season. We watched our little tree grow right along with our children. I homeschooled under it while feeding babies. My kids climbed up in it and imagined for hours on end. They put blankets and teapots under it and invited friends to come in. Their stuffies were often found hanging in it, and yes, a few snakes tried to make their home there as well.

It was a refuge in a rainy season storm and a shady place when the hot season baked the earth. Each evening I would watch my children play around and climb up in it as I prepared dinner. For four years we lived there, and in some ways I forgot about the feelings I had before I planted the tree. My revolving door, for a moment, had given way to the beauty of the mundane.

The day came when the Lord had new plans for our family, and the chapter in that place was coming to a close. We called that place home longer than any other place we have ever lived.

A few years have now passed since we moved to Eastern Thailand. On a recent trip back to the north my husband went to our old house and discovered that the new owners had our tree removed. Our home is different, and not ours anymore, and our tree no longer there. The tree we planted is still a reminder of our journey — the journey that brought us there and led us away. Most important, however, is the time we spent planting our trees. And tree or no tree, a large part of our family’s roots can still be found there.

When we planted our lovely little mango tree, we did not just plant it to cover the home, but our hearts as well. It represents a place where growth began to take place in our lives. Now our little mango tree holds even more meaning; it’s not just a tree but a story.

It’s a story of a journey our family took to the other side of the world. It is a story of our adventures, our growth, our struggles, and our faith. It is a story of love and loss. It is a story of relationships we made and relationships we lost. That little tree holds a lot of memories, love, and life. Most importantly, it’s a story of God’s faithfulness ever present in our lives.

I hope my kids look back one day and see a life that was rooted. That their roots run deep, connecting them to people, places, and memories everywhere. That their home was a place of rest and security no matter where it was. That they have learned to plant their trees in each place, no matter how brief or long it may have been. And that they can see God’s glory and goodness in everything.

How about you? How has your family taken the time to plant your trees? It does not have to be an actual tree. It can be a variety of things that give us roots. Over the years, we have planted sunflowers, painted pictures to hang up on temporary housing walls, and raised chickens.

The year we moved to Eastern Thailand, we also went on home assignment. In that year alone we stayed in over fifty different places. Even during this time my son kept a small plant he potted in the window of our van as we traveled all around America. My children faithfully watered it each day.

Over the years our family has had over fifteen major moves. Many times there have been multiple moves within a year. Each place has provided opportunities to learn and grow, and wherever we go we take time to plant our trees.

~~~~~~~

Mary spent her childhood in the Midwest. After meeting her MK husband at a missions conference, her life was never the same. Together they have had a life of adventure following the Lord to many places and ministries around the world. Most days you will find her in a small village in Eastern Thailand surrounded by rice paddies with a coffee in hand, homeschooling her six children. There is something always baking in her oven and a yard full of critters and kids running around. She takes delight in studying God’s word and sharing its truth with others.

What My Cross-cultural Marriage Taught Me About Christianity

by Rachel Espazien

This month I’m celebrating six years of marriage to my Haitian husband. When people ask me about cross-cultural marriage, they expect stories of language differences, cultural conflict, or family traditions. Of course those have been part of our story, but the main lesson that comes to mind as I contemplate how my cross-cultural marriage has changed me over the course of the past six years is something different.

My husband didn’t introduce me to Haitian culture. I was already living in Haiti and learning the language before we got together. However, ask any cross-cultural couple, and they will tell you. The depth of your cultural immersion while living abroad, compared to doing life 24/7 with your foreign spouse, are two completely different experiences!

Through our marriage, God showed me that much of what I considered “Christianity” was actually American culture.

Growing up in America, I never realized how difficult it can be to separate my faith from culture. The two were so intertwined that I genuinely thought they were the same thing. Certain ways of speaking, dressing, worshiping, doing ministry, raising children, being productive, giving, and even managing time felt not only normal but morally correct.

Then I married someone who loved Jesus as I did but approached many of those things differently. When these differences would arise, I instinctively viewed them through the lens of right and wrong.

“Why would he, as a Christian, do things that way?” “Why can’t he see that ‘this’ is the right way?” “Surely my approach is more biblical.” But over time, God began exposing the truth to me that many of the things I was defending were not biblical principles at all. They were cultural preferences.

I discovered that serving God can look different from person to person and culture to culture. This doesn’t mean that one is more right than the other. The more I learned about Haiti and the more I experienced life through my husband’s perspective, the more I realized that Christianity is far bigger than any one culture.

Jesus did not come to make Haitians into Americans. He did not come to make Americans into Haitians. He came to redeem people from every tribe, tongue, and nation.

Throughout church history, Christians have, at times, confused the gospel with culture. Beginning in the New Testament, Jewish believers sometimes struggled to understand that Gentiles did not need to become culturally Jewish in order to follow Christ. We see these same beliefs affecting cross-cultural work and marriages today.

The gospel was not tied to a single culture then, and it is not tied to one now. That realization transformed not only my marriage but also my ministry.

Because of our work in Haiti, I regularly interact with people whose daily lives look very different from my own. Years ago, I unconsciously measured their practices against American standards. I assumed that what felt normal to me was somehow more godly.

Today, I try to ask a different question in my marriage. Instead of asking, “Why doesn’t he do things the way I do?” I ask, “Is this actually unbiblical, or is it simply different?” And “What would be the most loving thing? To adapt? Or to call him out on this?”

That question has saved me from many unnecessary judgments. It has also helped me appreciate the beauty of God’s global church. Around the world, believers worship differently, communicate differently, and live differently. Yet they serve the same Savior and are filled with the same Spirit.

My marriage has given me a front-row seat to that reality. Living with someone from another culture has forced me to examine assumptions I didn’t even know I had. It has challenged my pride, stretched my understanding, and reminded me that my culture is not the standard by which all others should be measured.

Most importantly, it has deepened my understanding of the kingdom of God. The kingdom is not American. The kingdom is not Haitian. The kingdom is God’s, and it is beautifully diverse.

One day believers from every nation will stand together before the throne of Christ. Our cultural differences will not disappear, but they will all find their proper place under the lordship of Jesus. Just as diversity makes our worship beautiful, diversity makes marriage beautiful too.

In a small way, cross-cultural marriage offers a glimpse of that future reality. It is two people from different backgrounds learning to build unity without demanding uniformity. For that lesson, I am deeply grateful.

What began as marriage between an American woman and a Haitian man became one of God’s tools for teaching me a larger truth: Following Christ does not require making others look like me. It requires helping people look more like Him.

Cross-cultural marriage is refining, it’s stretching, and it’s so, so beautiful. How blessed I am to be living this life between two cultures and raising a daughter who is the best of both of our cultures. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

~~~~~~~

Rachel Espazien is a missionary, blogger, and the founder of Espwa Demen Mission. Married to her Haitian husband, she writes from firsthand experience about the joys and challenges of intercultural marriage, cross-cultural ministry, and everyday life. Rachel is passionate about encouraging missionaries to learn their target language, embrace cultural differences with grace, and faithfully follow Christ wherever He leads. When she is not serving in Haiti, you will find her at home in Missouri raising her two-year-old daughter, selling at her antique booth, and language tutoring. She enjoys coffee, cooking, and fitness. You can follow her blog at espwademen.com/blog.

Practical Soul Care for the Busy Christian

Not so long ago, I unintentionally exalted ministry, obedience, and motherhood above soul care. I held it together on the outside but was bone-weary on the inside.

I don’t think I’m the only Christian who tends toward pouring out more than filling up. We, as Jesus-loving kingdom workers, desperately need to take the idea of soul care to heart. In fact, let’s do more than that — let’s take it to action with practices that help us slow down, internalize His word, reflect deeply and prayerfully, and implement new habits.

That all sounds grand, but actually getting there is a stretch for most of us. So, in response to my own need for soul care and my desire to help others along the way, I’ve created My Undivided Life: A Soul Care Journal.

This twelve-week guided journal offers original content, inspiring scripture, prayer prompts, creative space, and reflection questions to both usher you into deep places with the Lord and inspire you to live outwardly in love. It’s an invitation to live an undivided life — a life that truly loves Jesus with all of your heart, soul, mind, and strength. Bonus material includes a weekly habit tracker, additional soul care ideas, and book recommendations to further your spiritual growth.

But what is soul care? Is it simply a spiritualized form of self-care?

It does share similarities with self care: both aim toward personal health and wellness. But the center—the soul, if you will—of that wellness is vastly different. Self-care’s impetus is, simply, the self; soul care’s impetus is 100% Jesus.

When we acknowledge that we are created beings, breathing because God first breathed life into us, moving because in Him we live and move and have our being, and loving only because He first loved us, then we realize that the only care for our souls is deep connection to our Creator.

The idea of soul has many delineations, and yours may vary from mine, but here is my working definition: The soul is the deepest, truest part of you that encompasses and integrates the whole of your person. It includes your spirit that communes with God, your heart or emotions, your mind, and your body through which all the above are expressed.

I’d like to suggest that an activity (any activity!) can be soul care if:

It connects you with the source of life — God.
It integrates your body, mind, and heart.
It encourages open-handed trust and a release of what you’re not meant to carry.
It allows you to savor beauty and the Giver of all good things.

As Dallas Willard writes in Renovation of the Heart, “Our soul is like an inner stream of water, which gives strength, direction, and harmony to every other element of our life. When that stream is as it should be, we are constantly refreshed and exuberant in all we do, because our soul itself is then profusely rooted in the vastness of God and his kingdom, including nature; and all else within us is enlivened and directed by that stream.”

Your soul is invaluable.

Pause to consider Matthew 16:24-26:

Then Jesus said to his disciples, “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me will find it. What good will it be for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul? Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?”

Remember, soul care is much more than self-care. The aim is not to “save your life,” rather it is for your life to be swallowed up in Life Himself. In a way, it could be summed up in the idea of abiding in Christ. It’s one part position—you are in Christ—and one part intention—you keep yourself in Christ.

The following are some questions and prompts from My Undivided Life journal that you may want to sit with. See what they stir in you, and let the Savior of your soul guide you into ever-deeper places of abiding in Him.

What are you already doing that can qualify as soul care? Are there certain activities you want to invest more time in this week?
What’s one soul-draining task you can eliminate today?
What needs to change for you to intentionally partner with God in caring for your soul?
Sit quietly with the Lord. Ask Him to give you a picture of the state of your soul. Describe your soul as He sees it, and ask Him to shelter and care for it.
Rest today in the goodness of God. Inhale and exhale slowly as you breathe this prayer, and carry it with you throughout the day.

This post has been adapted from the first week of My Undivided Life: A Soul Care Journal created by author, teacher, and missionary Corella Roberts. To order a copy, click here.

From Fluent to Clueless in One Simple Plane Trip

by Patricia Paulichen

You really don’t realize how much of life you take for granted until you move overseas. You wake up on the other side of the planet, and suddenly nothing makes sense. Your brain has turned into mush, and you function and sound like a two-year-old.

And yet most people back home — who sent you there as a seemingly capable adult — have no idea of your sudden, invisible regression back to infancy.

The Toddler Phase: Relearning the Basics

So, you think you know how things work? Psych! Think again.

Previously effortless things like grocery shopping now demand Columbo-style detective work. Baking soda? Only in pharmacies, of course. Molasses? Available in greenhouses as fertilizer, obviously. (Both true stories.) Even seemingly simple things can go hilariously wrong. Imagine rushing in to use the loo only to realize (too late) that washrooms here double as election voting booths. Who knew?

Each day presents an escape room-style puzzle that you feel (and are) unequipped to solve. Learning how to complete even basic tasks feels like a full-time job, and the exhaustion of the constant decoding exhausts you; you wonder if competence will ever return.

The Language Barrier: When Your Brain Betrays You

Whether you acknowledge it or not, communication equals independence, and in the early days, you have neither.

Remember a time when you were articulate? Now you’re living in your very own episode of The Twilight Zone where you can only grunt like a caveman. Conversations become heavily gestured, frequently awkward, and often regrettable. You know what you want to say, but the words won’t come to your mouth. You want to yell, “But I have a college degree!” — anything to prove you’re even remotely intelligent. But fear of embarrassment keeps you smiling and silently nodding along, praying you can get through the conversation without losing it.

The mistakes pile up quickly. I know of one missionary who confidently asked a Sunday school child to “spit on” him instead of “forgive” him. The kid wisely refused. Another turned down help refining his sermon, only to open his Sunday morning message by declaring his “backside” had two halves instead of his past. The congregation dissolved in unstoppable laughter, and he had to leave the pulpit abruptly. (Though I’m sure he never made that mistake again!)

While it doesn’t take forever (even though it often feels like it), slowly but surely your brain and mouth catch up to your surroundings. Like a Biblical miracle, your tongue is eventually loosed and the words begin to flow.

The Cultural Differences: Rules Lurking Under the Surface

Every culture has unspoken rules, and the sooner you learn them, the fewer awkward situations you’ll find yourself in.

Greeting customs? Good luck guessing whether to shake hands, bow, kiss a cheek (or two), or awkwardly hover. And why does a latecomer to church have to greet absolutely everyone when they enter, even if it’s in the middle of a service? Public transport? Do you flag it down or just stand there awkwardly and trust that it stops? Is it even alright for “rich” foreigners to use it? (Learned that lesson the hard way.)

Beyond the daily logistics, cultural norms shape deeper aspects of life. Humour doesn’t always translate, and what’s polite in one place might be offensive in another. Hand gestures you’re used to using at home might put you in a more-than-awkward situation in your host country.

What’s considered a casual request in your circles might come across as demanding or demeaning in another. Even time itself can be twisted to the extent that appointments are suggestions (especially for the doctors you’re waiting to see), and events “starting at 6 p.m.” includes the time to get ready. (Who knew arrival times could be so fluid?)

The most frustrating part? No one tells you these things outright. Each day you learn from your mistakes, albeit sometimes rather painfully.

The Bureaucracy Maze: When Systems Feel Designed to Drive You Mad

Back home, things were predictable. Need to renew your driver’s license? You know exactly where to go and how long it will take. Need to pay a bill? Log into online banking, do a quick transfer, and it’s done, easy peasy. But when you move overseas, every system operates by a set of disconnected, unwritten, often baffling rules.

Each day feels like stumbling through a dimly-lit labyrinth full of bad LED lights and endless red tape where, after hours of standing in an unmoving lineup, a disinterested clerk tells you you’re missing one vital document that same person failed to mention to you when you were there yesterday, before waving you off to wait in line at another indifferent office, only for them to hand you a contradictory new mountain of paperwork and tell you to start over, leaving you wondering if anyone in this soul-crushing machine actually knows the rules or if it’s designed to wear you down until you question your own sanity.

Official tasks feel like being on a reality-TV show of trial and error, where every attempt uncovers a fresh complication that determines your survival (at worst) and makes you want to scream (at best).

As one missionary friend wisely shared, “If I can get one thing done per day, I’m doing really well. Anything more than that is unrealistic.” In this hamster wheel-type life, each stamp or signature is celebrated as a victory, proof you made it through some sort of bureaucracy without completely losing your mind.

The Hidden Cost: When Adventure Becomes Exhaustion

Reality check: It’s not all an adventure. This is simply how you live, day in and day out. The constant small frictions and low-grade disorientation are exhausting and take a real toll.

You miss the simplicity of home in ways you never anticipated: the ease of shopping and ready-made food, the predictability of schedules, and the comfort of blending in. Relationships are hard, and making genuine friends as an adult demands real effort.

No matter how long you stay or how well you adapt, you’ll always carry at least a subtle difference to the nationals. As my immigrant father-in-law said, “Once you move away from your birth country, no matter where you live, you will never fully fit in again.” Welcome to Third Culture Life, where belonging is layered with complexity and forever a little bittersweet.

The Redemption: Why We Stay (and How We Grow)

In the beginning, every day feels like a losing battle. But slowly, almost imperceptibly, you start to change. One day, you realize your brain no longer feels fried by 2 p.m. (Score!) Survival mode gives way to flow. Life starts to feel easier. You can finally exhale a little. You’re adjusting.

Living overseas in a new language and culture strips you down to nothing and rebuilds you with a new personality and a new way of thinking. In the grinding process, you cultivate real grit, adaptability, and the capacity to laugh at yourself. Over time, you come to love the new person you’ve become and to appreciate the challenges God used to get you there.

And somewhere in the journey, the foreign place that once overwhelmed you becomes home. You emerge from the cocoon of uncertainty as the beautiful, bicultural butterfly you have been called to be: more humble, more reliant on His grace, and forever transformed.

~~~~~~~

Patricia Paulichen is a Bible-centred life coach who is passionate about helping women in ministry and missions rediscover clarity, peace, and joy in Christ amid the demands of cross-cultural life. With years of overseas ministry and her own family’s neurodiversity journey, she brings practical wisdom and deep compassion to every conversation. Patricia and her husband currently serve in Uruguay, South America. They are parents to two homeschooled adult TCKs and two TCK kids-in-law, all living in Europe. When she’s not ministering or coaching, you’ll likely find her with a good book and a cup of tea, delving into languages, geeking out over neuroscience and faith, wandering in nature, or happily lost in a K-drama. You can connect with Patricia at patriciamyralee.com.

You Had to Be There (But You Weren’t)

by Jessica Albers

I never come home from Africa alone. I come home carrying stories. Not just stories. Histories. Experiences. Faces. There is a burden of responsibility, a weight of which I am acutely aware, that doesn’t translate neatly into conversation. It’s a quiet, but persistent disconnect.

People cannot fully understand what they have not experienced. The rational part of me accepts that. It’s not a failure of empathy; it’s a limitation of being human. We can do our best to overlap our experiences in an effort to find commonalities, something similar to anchor our emotional responses to, but even then, we will never quite find a perfect point of “getting it.”

There is another part of me — less tidy, more honest, that doesn’t settle so easily. The part of me still holding what I saw, and heard, and felt, and feel. My spirit is restless, carrying this tension between the two sides of this experience gap. Why aren’t you asking better questions? Why aren’t you pressing in just a little more? Why does this feel so surface-level when it is anything but surface-level to me? What do I do with all of this?

I’ve been here before. When my sister had cancer, people showed up with kindness. They understood cancer as a concept. Cancer is serious. Cancer is hard. Cancer is bad. But they did not understand what it felt like to live inside of it. The constant recalibration of life around uncertainty. The exhaustion of carrying that reality while everything around you continues as though nothing has changed. Every moment. Every day. For years.

As a child, I knew the experience gap. They just didn’t get it. How could they? And yet, when they didn’t respond to my frantic attempts to survive my reality with patience or understanding, anger bubbled to the surface. Why didn’t they try to understand?

You learn very quickly how to sanitize your story. You package it into easy-to-digest pieces. When a question is asked, and your lived experience wells up inside of your throat, screaming to be let out, but instead you swallow it back down. You hold it there. You pause for a moment to let your body reset as you smile and share that neat, clean, palatable message packaged appropriately for general audience consumption. Packaged for people who will never get it.

That internal tension. Knowing that full understanding wasn’t possible, yet still wishing, sometimes desperately, that someone, anyone, would try to get closer. That someone would step into the heaviness with me and try to understand. That they would ask different questions. That I wouldn’t feel so alone in something that so many people were aware of, but so few truly grasped.

I find myself holding these two truths at once. The gap is real. And the weight of carrying something that does not easily translate is real, too.

This is part of the human experience. People walk through grief, trauma, illness, moments that reshape them in permanent ways, and then they attempt to articulate those experiences to others who simply do not have the same reference points. We want to be seen. We need to feel understood; known by someone. It isn’t a lack of care that creates the disconnect. More often, it is the absence of shared experience. Without that, there is only so far understanding can go.

I’ve started to call this the experience gap — the space between what someone has lived and what someone else can meaningfully understand. And I am coming to terms with the fact that this gap cannot be fully closed. No matter how carefully we choose our words, no matter how many details we masterfully weave into the narratives of our experiences, there will always be some distance.

Before every trip to Africa, I ask God to open my heart and mind to what He needs me to learn. My job bridges a chasm of understanding. Here and there. There and here. This space where I am standing is isolating. On one side, I am listening to and carrying stories that are not mine. I am acutely aware of the fact that I am the one who is disconnected by my own lack of experience.

Because of that I am constantly wrestling, seeking, and searching. Am I asking the right questions? Do they see that I am trying to understand? Can they feel how much I care? How do I transfer these sacred stories, stories that aren’t mine, to an audience even further removed from those experiences.

This realization has been both clarifying, and at times, deeply unsettling. I’ve wanted to believe that if I could just find the right language, the right storytelling model, if I could just do my job better — understanding would follow. That expectation places a burden on storytelling that it was never meant to carry.

So I am reframing the goal. Perhaps it is not full understanding that we are after, but movement.

Not: Now you get it.

But: Now you are closer than you were before.

This shift changes how I think about telling stories, about communicating experiences that others have not lived. It asks less of the listener, but it also asks something different of the storyteller. Not to transfer the experience, that is not possible, but to build a bridge for connection. One that is honest. Specific. Grounded in real moments. One that allows someone to step toward the experience, even if they cannot fully step into it.

I wish that I could say that this new approach has settled my spirit — that I feel better, content, at peace. I don’t. A part of me resists this whole idea. I wish people could see what I have seen and heard as clearly as I do, feel it as deeply, and carry it with the same weight. That part has not gone away. I’m not sure it ever will, and I am honestly not sure that I want to be totally relieved of this discomfort. I want these things to change me.

There’s also something deeper at work in all of this. In Romans, we’re told that suffering produces perseverance, and perseverance, character, and character . . . hope. We’re also reminded that God comforts us in our troubles so that we can comfort others with the same comfort we’ve received.

That doesn’t make the experience easier, and it doesn’t resolve the tension of carrying things others don’t understand. But it does give it purpose. The very things that feel isolating are often the same places God uses to draw people closer to one another — and to Him — through presence, through empathy, through a willingness to step toward someone else’s reality.

We need to keep sharing our stories. Not because they will ever produce complete understanding — they won’t. We need to keep sharing because they make movement possible. A shared step toward one another, toward connection, away from islands of isolation. A narrowing of the distance, even if it’s small. That movement matters more than we often realize. It can shift people out of indifference and into empathy, out of distance and into presence.

Full understanding may never happen. But connection still can. And sometimes, that is what matters most.

~~~~~~~

Jessica Albers is a writer, communications strategist, and ministry leader with more than fifteen years of experience. She specializes in helping organizations and individuals communicate with authenticity and bridge the experience gap. Her writing explores faith, leadership, and the human experiences that shape us, with a particular interest in the places where personal stories reveal God’s presence and invite deeper connection with others. She lives in Texas with her husband and two children.

How to Help Mom Take a Sabbatical (even with kids at home)

I recently had a conversation with Global Trellis Podcast to answer a listener’s question about moms needing sabbaticals on the field or during home assignments, and she wondered how to make that happen in the busy of life with kids.

The question reminded me of my days with three little girls at home. I was often running on empty, homeschooling, working, taking ministry classes, dealing with health issues, and just doing too much.

I remember asking another older and wiser homeschool mom how she fit in quiet time or rest time during her days while also being a mom, teacher, nurse, cook, and playmate. She answered, “You take the time right there in the busy moments of the day. Sit on the floor with the kids, read your Bible, journal, write, pray, study . . . let your girls see you taking that time for yourself and for Jesus.”

Her advice stuck with me, and I obviously still think about it today. Implementation of the advice took a little trial and error as I worked out how to make it all work while focusing, praying, or learning. I had to adjust my expectations, reframe what I thought quiet time or rest time could be, and really allow Jesus to walk with me in the moment.

As I continued thinking about the answer to this listener’s question, I thought about this advice and how it could also apply to a sabbatical. Yet I also recognized that the simple advice I’d followed as a young mom needed more depth to fully apply to global worker families in need of true sabbatical time.

Is it even possible for missionary parents, moms especially, to take a sabbatical? Is it possible for couples with littles to have sabbatical time together, or should they plan separate times?

In the podcast, I offered some tips, ideas, and layered ways to make sure young families or busy moms can also take sabbatical time. There’s a lot to consider, but here are the top seven things you can do to take a sabbatical as a parent.

Redefine what sabbatical means for your season.

You don’t have to leave your home, your country, or your kids to rest. A sabbatical can simply be a slower pace, gentler expectations, and a little more breathing room. Think of it as a pause or a slowdown that shifts how you move through your days rather than trying to plan a dramatic break from your life.

Set a few intentions, goals, or expectations before you begin.

Ask yourself what you want to feel at the end of this sabbatical. What do you want to accomplish, learn, pray through, or focus on during your sabbatical? What you need to release, what needs to be restored, and what you want to hear from God?

These quiet questions can help you pay attention to what your sabbatical time is actually for, instead of arriving at the end of your sabbatical and wishing you’d been more intentional.

Make small, practical changes at home.

A home‑based sabbatical is built on small changes from normal. This could look like simpler meals, lighter homeschooling, fewer ministry tasks, a daily anchor like a quiet hour or a walk, and/or one day each week where you don’t host, meet, or do any outside work. Even small pauses like tea outside, a slow walk, a quiet hour, or a creative moment will begin to add up.

Choose what you’re pausing and what you’re keeping.

You can be strategic. Hospitality, team responsibilities, ministry output, language learning, extra personal goals, and discipleship of others can all be set down for a season. Basic parenting, simple family rhythms, and connection with God can become more normal during sabbatical. This isn’t quitting ministry or failing at global work. It’s choosing a time of sabbatical that fits what you’d like to have for a sabbatical.

Bring your family into the process.

Let your kids know you’re slowing down for a little while. Let them see you develop a sabbatical that includes them in the intentional plans. Create a family “slow list” of restful activities the kids can do while you read or study or exercise. Build small rituals like quiet mornings or simple meals. Kids learn rest by watching you rest, and a sabbatical can become a gentle reset for everyone.

Communicate clearly with your team or organization.

A few simple sentences of preparational communication can protect both your health and your ministry. You can say things like, “This is a temporary rest season,” or “This helps me stay healthy long‑term.” Most teams respond well when they understand the purpose behind your pause.

*I’ll add a caveat to all of this planning to mention that your organization might require special permission or approval for taking sabbatical time. Be sure to check in with them early in your process!

Set aside dedicated time, if needed.

For some, having a very free-flowing, easy, laid-back sabbatical time is the perfect fit for you. If it were structured, it wouldn’t feel restful. Plan that way.

For others, having a structured, planned, and fully orchestrated routine is going to keep you on track and help you stay motivated to accomplish what you’d intended for sabbatical time. Of course, there’s a group in the middle that needs to plan for some of both options!

It’s important to understand yourself and be self-aware enough to know what will be best for your rest, renewal, and refreshing while also helping you grow and learn.

Additional Resources for Planning and Taking a Sabbatical

Velvet Ashes has many specific posts and resources about taking a sabbatical.

Right here at A Life Overseas, you can find more information about taking a missionary or ministry sabbatical.

Over at Global Trellis, there is a full Sabbatical Journey Course with downloads, videos, and guided discussions that can be used in personal journaling, with your spouse, or in a group. Global Trellis runs small groups through zoom calls with other workers who are going through the course. These are offered when there is a need for community. If that’s you, please contact Global Trellis about groups or other ways to find community.

As you research, plan, pray, and start to build your sabbatical, coaching or spiritual direction can be very beneficial in giving you dedicated time to focus on your own journey through a sabbatical. If it is scheduled and on your calendar, it’s more likely to happen.

If you’d be interested in one-on-one coaching, I know there are people who’d love to help. There’s something special about having someone walk with you in this. All of the websites above have more resources for coaches, counselors, and spiritual directors.

If you’d like to talk with me specifically, please reach out!

Sobs of Joy: Surrendering the Grief of Singleness on the Field

by Emma Bell

A few years ago, I flew back to the U.S. from my home in Thailand to be a bridesmaid in my dear friend’s wedding. It’s a common missionary experience. Occasionally, if the moment is dear enough to us that we just can’t miss it, we might fork up the money to fly back for such an important event.

As soon as I landed in the U.S., delirious with jet lag, I was swept up into the flurry of the wedding: getting nails done, preparing the bachelorette party, sleeping on an air mattress, squeezing in a trip to Chipotle. After just a few days of craziness, I found myself all dressed up, standing to the right of the altar with the other bridesmaids and watching one of my best friends walk down the aisle towards her almost-husband.

At some point during the ceremony, we all sang the song “You’re Beautiful” by Phil Wickham. I was already failing to hold back the tears, but they really started to stream on the last verse:

When we arrive at eternity’s shore
Where death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful

I wanted to think that I’m just a sentimental person, that weddings are so beautiful and I’m just so tender, so that’s why I couldn’t keep my composure. But now, a few years later, I’m trying to be honest with myself: that moment was not only beautiful to me; it was also deeply painful.

I resent that singleness could make me feel pain. It feels embarrassing to care. It feels anti-feminist. It feels weak. I have spent years learning the gifts and the beauty of singleness and have preached it from the rooftops. I shout to anyone who will hear me, “Singleness is a valuable gift! Jesus was single! Paul recommends it! Marriage isn’t superior to singleness!” And I still stand by these things. At the same time, in my own experience, singleness has caused me deep grief.

I’ve been seriously processing my singleness since I was about twenty-four. At that age, it truly felt like everyone around me was getting married. I had two roommates who were planning their weddings, and that same year I was discerning whether or not overseas missions would be my long-term career. I imagined going overseas and being the only single woman in a missionary community of marrieds and their kids. I pictured the isolation on Christmas when others would celebrate with their families, and I would be alone. I pictured the humility of it — being regarded as less mature or less of a leader because of my single status.

[Praise God, most of these concerns have not been realized in the way that I had feared. God has given me wonderful friends—of both the single and married variety.]

It was age twenty-nine that singleness struck a new chord with me. I was twenty-nine when COVID upended my life. I found myself stuck in America, my home and possessions left behind in a country I had no idea if I’d ever get back to. Perhaps more importantly, I found myself living far away from my overseas team. I experienced, quite dramatically and suddenly, what I knew would come for me sooner or later: having to say goodbye to my teammates and closest friends — alone.

Because friends don’t come with a “till death do us part” promise, I parted ways with the friends I had come to depend on like family. I’ll always remember when I chose to relocate to Thailand in 2021, and my favorite married couple decided to stay in America and work on getting pregnant instead. They told me they would be exiting this next chapter of my life over a Zoom call. We stayed on the call and cried, hardly saying a word, for probably an hour.

About a month later, I packed my bags and joined a new team in a new country. The missionary life is full of goodbyes — goodbyes on goodbyes on goodbyes. But for single missionaries, it is uniquely difficult because we do it alone.

I saw a statistic once that said of all the single missionaries on the field, women make up 80%. This means a couple of things for us single ladies. First, it’s hard to meet someone out here. The odds are not in our favor. Second, I am mercifully not alone in my singleness. In fact, I feel more seen and understood where I live overseas by other single missionaries and single Thai sisters than I do back in my church community in the U.S. where it feels like everyone was married by twenty-three.

Are we missionaries because we are single? Do singles have more freedom to go to the nations than those who marry? That’s at least partly true. I can think of a few people who had dreamed of being overseas before they married someone who did not share that calling. So, are we missionaries because we are single? Or are we single because we are missionaries? Would I have met someone and been married with kids by now if I had lived in the U.S. for the last twelve years instead of Asia? Maybe. Not necessarily. I know plenty of single people who live in their home country.

Yet I find myself in a situation where my obedience to share Christ in an unreached part of the world appears to be at odds with my desire for marriage. I could “try” to meet someone, but again, there aren’t many options where I live. I could get online, but then I’d likely be meeting men who live somewhere else, so I’d have to be willing to at least consider leaving the field. Is my ministry calling more important, or is marriage? If a simple answer popped into your head, I doubt you’ve walked a mile in the single missionary’s shoes.

Singleness is a strange grief. It’s a grief that increases with time. I process it. I mourn it. I put it away for a time, only to take it out again and realize it’s grown bigger and changed shape.

I’m thirty-four now. Some days, singleness hurts. It’s not having anyone to bicker with. It’s the social smallness you feel in comparison to a couple. It’s a lack of physical affection. It’s having to build trust from the ground up all over again with another new roommate. It’s when your age is getting older and your life stage is the same as a recent college-grad. It’s the feeling of rejection compounded over many years. It’s when the conversation turns to pregnancy or kids, and I have nothing to contribute. It’s when baby showers have a new twinge of sadness and shame.

One night, lying in bed trying to fall asleep, my overactive mind stumbled upon a thought: What if God really loves me? A few days earlier someone had been praying for me, and as she prayed, she said this to me: “He loves you so much, Emma. He would do anything for you — just ask Him.” Those words stunned me. They felt so personal and specific to me. Days later, they were still ringing in my ears. Is she allowed to say that? How could she even know that that’s how God feels about me?

Yet I couldn’t deny that it had to be true. God’s Word says so over and over. Jesus said to his disciples, “Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13). And a few verses later: “Whatever you ask in my name the Father will give you” (John 15:16.) Romans 8:32 says, “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?”

The idea that Jesus deeply loves me and takes care of me wasn’t brand new information, but that night, the Spirit allowed me to believe it in a way I hadn’t dared to before. I sat up in my bed and started to cry. I started to really cry. Sobs. I had to get a box of tissues. Sobs of relief. Sobs of joy. Sobs where my walls of self-protection were being dismantled. Sobs I thought I might have if a man ever told me, “I love you, and I choose you.”

And ever since then, I’ve consistently found it much easier to believe God really loves me. His love is not theoretical. It’s not just for theologians to muse upon. He is near to us. He heals our wounds.

When we arrive on eternity’s shore
When death is just a memory and tears are no more
We’ll enter in as the wedding bells ring
Your bride will come together and we’ll sing
You’re beautiful

I may never ever have a wedding day. I may have to continue dealing with my ever-expanding, ever-changing grief for the rest of my life here. But I will be at that wedding — the marriage supper of the Lamb (Rev. 19:9). Because of Jesus, I’m invited to be in that marriage. The marriage of which all marriages are but a dim shadow — the eternal union of Jesus and His bride, His people.

At that wedding, rejection and shame will fall off my shoulders as I am welcomed by the King himself. To be included and chosen on that day will far outshine any loneliness I’ve ever felt. And I know that on that day, when I finally see Him with my own eyes and worship Him alongside people from every tribe, nation, and tongue, no part of me will regret trusting God with my singleness. Not one part of me will regret putting my whole life into His hands. When I hear Him welcome me home, I won’t have any more questions.

~~~~~~~

Emma Bell has loved doing evangelism and discipleship with the unreached for ten years now — first in East Asia and now in Thailand. If you’d like to respond to this article, Emma would love to hear from you. You can contact Elizabeth Trotter, and she’ll connect you.

The Faithful Goalkeeper: A World Cup Parable for Missionaries

If you’ve been around A Life Overseas for a while, you know I love sports. Looking back over posts I’ve written for A Life Overseas, I see I’ve written about the Olympics more than once. So, you can imagine I’m in my happy place with the World Cup right now and what I’ve been thinking.

I’ll admit that soccer (football!) isn’t my favorite sport, but one of the stories to come out of this World Cup reads like a parable to cross-cultural workers. It speaks to me about serving in obscurity with faithfulness, and I’ve become obsessed with learning all I can about the back story.

So, this is my imagining of The Faithful Goalkeeper.

There was once a goalkeeper who played in places no one could find on a map.

He had not always been a goalkeeper. As a boy in Mindelo, a small city on a small island in a small archipelago off the coast of Africa, he was a striker. His father, a military man who loved football, wanted to name him after an Argentine goal-scorer. But the name that stuck was Vozinha. Little Granny. The name his grandparents gave him when he ran to them after losing a match, and the older boys laughed.

He kept the name. He learned not to run from losses.

When he finally turned professional, he was 25, late by any measure. He began at the bottom: a modest club in Angola, then Moldova, then Cyprus, then Slovakia. Each move was a small act of faith. Each new city required him to start over — new teammates, new coaches, new languages, new loneliness. He was never the star. He was rarely even the starter.

But he showed up.

In Moldova, he trained in the cold. In Cyprus, he learned to read the sun differently. In Slovakia, he discovered things about his own reflexes that comfort would never have taught him. None of it made the highlights. None of it trended. His Instagram following hovered around a modest 50,000 for a professional player, just friends, family, faithful few.

Back home, Cape Verde was learning to dream. A tiny nation of half a million people that had never qualified for a World Cup. They were, by every measure, a footballing minnow. But they had Vozinha, a 40-year-old journeyman who had spent fifteen years preparing in obscurity for a moment that might never come.

It came.

On a Monday evening in Atlanta, Georgia, Cape Verde lined up against Spain, European champions, tournament favorites, a team built on generational talent. Vozinha pulled on his gloves in a locker room that smelled of nerves and disbelief. He was old enough to be the father of Spain’s brightest young star. He had played in stadiums a fraction of this size, for clubs a fraction of this prestige.

He was ready.

For ninety minutes, Spain poured everything at him. Twenty-seven shots. Reflex saves. Diving stops. The quiet, devastating competence of a man who had practiced these exact movements, in the cold, in the heat, in the empty stadiums of forgotten leagues.

The whistle blew. Cape Verde 0, Spain 0.

Vozinha fell to his knees and wept.

He wept for his grandparents, who had raised him and were gone now. He wept for his mother, who had tried to get a visa and couldn’t manage it in time. He wept for fifteen years of Moldova and Cyprus and Slovakia and the quiet, grinding, unwitnessed faithfulness of a life lived far from the spotlight.

“I thought about leaving,” he said afterward. “But I continued because of this dream.”

———

I’ve been sitting with Vozinha’s story for days now, turning it over and marveling as the story has continued since that first game.

I think about the cross-cultural workers I know about being faithful in assignments and callings that never made a headline, in cities their supporters couldn’t pronounce, in seasons that felt like they were disappearing into the air. The ones who wondered, somewhere in year seven or year twelve, whether the faithfulness was accumulating into anything at all.

It is. It always is.

What the world saw in Atlanta on June 15th was a 40-year-old goalkeeper stopping the best team in the world. What they didn’t see were the fifteen years that made it possible, the empty stadiums, the cold training sessions, the lonely moves to yet another city, the quiet decision to keep showing up even when no one was watching.

That’s the thing about faithfulness in obscurity: it doesn’t feel like preparation. It feels like waiting. It feels like being stuck. It feels, sometimes, like being forgotten.

But you are not forgotten. You are being formed.

The kingdom of God is full of goalkeepers playing in empty stadiums. People learning languages that don’t impress anyone back home. People showing up for work that doesn’t trend. People being shaped in ways they can’t yet measure, for moments they can’t yet see.

You don’t manufacture faithfulness when the moment comes. You arrive with it, forged from ten thousand unwitnessed repetitions.

Keep playing. Keep showing up.

(And GO ____ fill in the blank with the team you love!)

An Invitation to Help Improve Member Care

by Andrea Sears

For too long, people care and development (member care) for cross-cultural workers has been operating with no shared guidelines to shape our field. But now, the Shared Foundations Initiative at MTI (Mission Training International) aims to gather the voices and wisdom of the Great Commission community to work together toward thriving for cross-cultural workers. We are currently accepting submissions for the Thrive Outcomes Project, and you are invited to participate!

[For more information on the Shared Foundations Initiative, scroll to the bottom of the article below the author bio.]

This project seeks to answer the question: What does it take for a cross-cultural worker to thrive? As cross-cultural workers yourselves, you know what helps you thrive and what hinders your thriving. We want to include your voices in this important research.

We believe the Thrive Outcomes Project has the potential to:

add depth and clarity to what member care is and does,
strengthen organizational conversations,
help practitioners access quality thinking on how to support cross-cultural workers well, and
lay strong foundations for collaboration.

We cannot build this project alone. Would you consider contributing your voice and insights for the strengthening of cross-cultural workers? This is an evolving research endeavor, and we have published preliminary results from initial submissions, which you can check out here.

See what ideas are still missing or need to be strengthened, and submit your ideas here. We’re looking not only for your personal experience, but also for evidence from books, blogs, podcasts, or published academic research (when available) to support your ideas. This helps us to ensure that the results are strong, evidence-based, and credible, which will increase their utility to organizational leadership and care teams.

~~~~~~~

Andrea Sears and her husband, Seth, spent thirteen years in Costa Rica, working in the largest immigrant squatter settlement in Central America, and founded the community development ministry giveDIGNITY. She now runs the ministry from the U.S. and recently accepted a faculty position at John Brown University, teaching Intercultural Studies, Humanitarian & Disaster Relief, and Bible courses. She previously oversaw a missionary attrition study, which was summarized in a series here at A Life Overseas.

Additional information about the Shared Foundations Initiative:

The Shared Foundations Initiative (SFI) exists to strengthen the health, resilience, and long-term thriving of cross-cultural workers from Global North cultures by cultivating shared language, fostering alignment, and hosting thoughtful, collaborative conversations related to cross-cultural worker care and development.

Rather than prescribing uniform practices, we seek to offer ideas and examples of practices that could be done, to help organizations and individuals translate shared values into a lived reality within their specific contexts (denomination, organizational culture, organizational size, cultural context, etc).

Our vision is a Great Commission community in which quality care & development for those sent is consistently understood and practiced, contributing to the faithful witness of God’s love both to those sent and to those they are serving.

SFI’s vision is shaped by the following guiding commitments:

Unity without Uniformity
We affirm shared values and principles while honoring the diversity of organizational models, theological traditions, cultures, and contexts.
Field-Informed Wisdom
Guidance emerges from the lived experience, research, and discernment of practitioners and organizations actively engaged in cross-cultural worker care.
Non-Prescriptive Influence
The initiative does not set standards, accredit programs, or enforce compliance. Its influence is catalytic, invitational, and relational.
Holistic Understanding of Thriving
Cross-cultural worker health includes spiritual, emotional, relational, physical, vocational, and communal dimensions across the life cycle of service.
Learning as a Shared Stewardship
Knowledge is held as a commons to be cultivated, shared, and responsibly stewarded for the good of the whole field.

The cornerstone of our approach is applied research into what factors are helping cross-cultural workers to thrive. This research is conducted by researchers and practitioners that have come together to form the John Powell Institute (JPI) at MTI.

Finding Identity While Crossing Cultures

by Rebecca Lebens

We define ourselves both to belong and to be set apart. We identify with a place, a culture, a language, an age group, a profession. By our personality, attributes and abilities, by our roles, relationships and religion, we declare who we are and where we belong and why we are special.

Maybe because God met me when I was only five years old, drowning, to show me a ladder and remind me how to crawl—I never thought about creating my own identity back then. I was God’s beloved daughter, rescued from death for now and forever.

I didn’t set out to be a missionary. I asked God if I should be, but I didn’t think I had the personality or the ability for it. I enjoyed traveling and had some ability to learn languages, was extraverted enough to want to meet new people and to share God’s love with strangers, but I was afraid to ask for help and disliked “standing out.”

I hoped He would send me to countries where the people look like me and where I could learn the language well, so that my foreignness wouldn’t be noticed. Maybe I could have a normal job and just moonlight as a subtle advocate for the kingdom of heaven.

When I had the opportunity to study abroad in France, it perfectly suited my preferences and skills. I thought that was the start of my journey, where I would become an undercover religious ambassador. And I loved the way of life that I found there, even though I was surrounded by non-believers and constantly made to defend my faith and challenged to uphold my values.

I made plans to go back after graduation, only waiting on a green light from above. Instead, friends, teachers, and a persistent prompting from the Holy Spirit pointed me in the direction of southeast Asia, specifically South Korea.

Do you ever catch yourself making deals with the Almighty? “Okay, God, but then back to Europe.” He is so gracious — three times He sent me to Asia to work as a teacher, to grow my faith, and to share my love of God with others. And every time He opened doors for me to spend time in Europe after, an irregular sort of furlough.

I am on my third such furlough, and I recently I had to face my fear of being sent back. Since coming back to Europe, I was refusing to cook non-European foods, avoiding using non-European languages, pretending I wasn’t missing Asian dramas and Asian music and my faraway friends. I didn’t want to be associated with anything other than Europe. Like a billboard, I wanted to advertise to God with my choices that I could give up everything I like that is outside of Europe.

In return, He asked me: Where are you trying to belong? Do you belong to a country? To a language? To a certain church?

As a child, I knew I belonged to the God who cared enough to save me. My identity was His daughter; my skills were His gifts. Nothing else mattered. As an adult, I learned to appreciate other identities — and the comfort that comes from fitting in.

Everything I love about Europe also exists in Asia, except that I can pass for a local in almost any European country. I didn’t like being stared at in Asia, just because I look foreign. I didn’t like people asking, “So how long will you be here?” and then deciding whether to be my friend based on the answer.

I didn’t like the smallest word being treated as amazing — wow, you can say hello? And the longest speech being treated the same — wow, you can say all that? I didn’t like being constantly made aware that I didn’t belong, that it wasn’t my language, wasn’t my place.

But do you know what is beautiful about belonging to God? That identity stays true no matter where we are in the world. No matter what languages we speak or what roles we take, we are His children.

And maybe, sometimes, it is in the places where we stand out that His light can shine through the most clearly.

I am re-embracing that identity. It was never forgotten, only covered by other worries and overlooked because of misplaced hopes and fears. More than being unknown, or being known for something else, I would rather stand out for my faith. If I cannot be bold already because of a worldly desire to belong, how will I be bold about God?

Wherever I am, I want that to be my first identity. I do not want to define myself by other roles or traits or interests, or by specific languages or cultures, or as foreign or not foreign, but as a Christian.

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Rebecca Lebens’s passport country is the US, but she has spent the last decade living from promise to promise, following God’s calling across ten different countries where she has worked as a teacher, studied languages, earned a master’s degree, and grew in her faith. Now she is using the knowledge she accumulated along the journey for her PhD research.

Why Do People Follow Jesus?

When I was nineteen, my mom converted from Christianity to Judaism. This sent me on an intense, all-consuming search. I wanted to know the truth, no matter the consequences. Was Jesus the Messiah or not?

My search was long and exhausting as I scoured the Old Testament, read books, and prayed. But my journey was worth the work when it finally led me to a deep and abiding faith in Jesus.

So when I sat down to interview Sovath, a former Buddhist and Khmer Rouge survivor, I thought I was ready. He too had diverged from the religious path of his mother. I thought in some small way I could relate to his journey.

It was Sovath’s wife who had originally asked me to write his family’s story as a narrative nonfiction book.

“It’s just too miraculous not to be a book,” she had told me. So, with her initial notes in hand, I traveled, interviewed, and read about the Khmer Rouge genocide. Despite the trauma of remembering, Sovath and his siblings recounted their amazing story.

Everything was going great. Until we came to the very question I thought I could relate to.

“Why did you decide to follow Jesus?” I asked. Ever humble, Sovath mentioned that he had been initially attracted to the extra food and clothing the church distributed. He was taking guitar and English lessons at the church. There was nothing else to do in the refugee camp.

Then he stopped talking.

Knowing Sovath is deeply religious, I tried other questions.

“What really convinced you?” “How did you know it was true?”

Sovath described the meaningful discussions they had at Bible studies. The agony of knowing he might hurt his mother if he followed Jesus. The way Jesus appeared to him in a vision at the very moment of his greatest confusion.

I wrote furiously. Yet I still wracked my brain for the question that would help me tell the more important story: Why did Sovath choose Jesus?

We ended our interview without an answer. Over the coming months, I prayed about how to write Sovath’s story. I thought back to my years as a missionary in India. For many Hindus, truth is seen as an illusion. This sounds like fancy philosophy, but it trickles down into the worldview of many ordinary people, too.

Buddhism came out of Hinduism, I remembered. What if Sovath’s struggle to follow Jesus was very different from mine?

The next time we met was one year later, and I had a new question: “What made choosing to follow Jesus difficult for you?”

I learned that Sovath’s deepest question was not about the truth at all. In fact, he believed what the Christians taught was true long before he accepted Christ as his personal Savior.

Instead, Sovath’s questions were all related to identity and loyalty. Is Jesus just for Christians, or for all people? Who am I if I’m not a Buddhist? How do I relate to my family and society as a Christian? Is it more important to be loyal to my parents and my country, or to my Creator?

Once I realized identity was such an important piece of Sovath’s story, I understood the conversion of two of his siblings, too.

These siblings asked the Highest God for a miracle. And He answered. Not only by saving them from certain death, but by giving each of them a new identity.

Chantana felt she had no voice when the Khmer Rouge treated her like an object to be destroyed. But Jesus heard the cry of her heart and called her His daughter.

Vudh and Nary, defiantly loving and caring for their young family under a dangerous and brainwashing regime, later found themselves blessed and beloved in the family of God.

Sovath was torn from his family at eleven years old and forced to work. He almost starved. But God brought him back to his family in time to escape death and ultimately showed him the way to eternal life.

In the end, searching for the right question helped Beyond a Thousand Shadows to represent a little less of my worldview and a little more of Sovath’s. And it reminded me of the importance of understanding the Most Important Questions of others — especially of those who are engaged in the agonizing search for an answer.

Read about what God did to save Sovath, Chantana, Vudh, Nary, and their family in my newest book, Beyond a Thousand Shadows.