missionary – A Life Overseas |

When Callings Collide

As I woke up on Mother’s Day to breakfast in bed, hand-written notes from each of my children, and freshly picked flowers, I was deeply thankful not only for the blessing of my three sons but also for the much-needed reminder that I’m not a complete failure as a mother.

Two days prior I was weeping on my bed over a difficult parenting situation and reeling from feelings of failure that I couldn’t pull myself together to keep going with the day, to keep parenting, to even put supper on the table. I couldn’t keep fighting the fight.

And not only did I feel like a failure as a mom, but also as a wife and a missionary and a writer. In our current busy season, I couldn’t remember the last time my husband and I had connected, I still hadn’t visited the person I’ve been planning to visit who needs emotional support, I still hadn’t filled out the report my organization asked for last month, and I still hadn’t drafted an article for this blog.

None of the roles I play were performed. None of the hats were donned. None of the plates were spinning.

It was a classic case of callings colliding and the subsequent doubting of whether it’s possible to faithfully carry them all at once.

Most people have more than one calling at the same time, and most people have doubted those callings at one time or another. Some callings are lifelong, some are seasonal. Some are thrust upon us, some are chosen by us. Some are obvious, some are difficult to discern. Some are ours alone, some need to be shared and navigated alongside others. Some are vocations, some avocations.

And many of them exist in tandem. I don’t set aside my calling as a mother in order to pick up my calling as a missionary. They coexist today and will coexist again tomorrow. The same goes for everything I’m called to. I’m called to marriage, to motherhood, to missions, and to writing (among other things), and it’s the regular collision of these callings that is so difficult to balance.

It’s nearly impossible to succeed let alone excel in multiple callings at once. Many days I completely fail at one or another, and sometimes I fail miserably. I can easily identify all the things I haven’t accomplished in my various roles—all the writing goals I haven’t achieved, all the texts and emails I haven’t sent, all the times I haven’t played a game with my kids despite them asking several times, all the date nights I haven’t taken with my husband because it’s one more thing to plan for and it feels like too much.

It can be hard to pick all the plates off the floor, let alone get them spinning.

But that’s true for most of us. I am certainly not the only mother out there struggling to find time and energy to pour into my marriage at the end of a long day on the homefront. I’m not the only missionary in the world needing to process my cross-cultural life through writing and finding next to no time to do it. I’m not the only spouse on the mission field scrambling to justify the label “missionary” when I spend all day at home teaching the kids while my husband spends all day helping and serving the poor.

When callings collide, it can be rather difficult to keep track of all those callings, let alone live them out all at once.

Which is why it’s so complicated, and also why we need God’s grace every day to live out the callings He’s given us.

So what does it mean to be a wife and a mother and a missionary and a writer? What does that look like day in and day out?

I honestly don’t know. Because even when I focus solely on one calling at a time, I don’t do it well every day. I get annoyed with my husband, I snap at my kids, I shut myself in the house to avoid any cross-cultural encounters, I ignore my writing project because eating chocolate and watching Netflix is just plain easier. I fail, and fail, and fail again.

BUT. But God’s grace remains just as constant as our failures do, and His grace speaks truth into the lie that we probably weren’t actually called to this and God must’ve made a mistake.

God’s grace declares, “You were made for this even though you aren’t perfect at it.”

His grace speaks, “You should acknowledge your failure but you must also acknowledge My presence and My strength to hold you up.”

His grace breathes, “I created you and I chose you for this. I still choose you for this. I did not make a mistake.”

His grace sends the child who left you in tears one day to whisper in your ear the next day, “You’re the best. There’s no one like you. That’s the truth.”

When callings collide, so does God’s grace and love and mercy. He is gentle with us when we fail. He is comforting when we grieve. He is kind in his encouragement, tender in his care, patient in his guidance. And perhaps more than anything, He is bold in his continued claim of us.

God never called me to be a perfect wife, a perfect mother, a perfect missionary, or a perfect writer. He called me to be all of these things and to make of them whatever I could, with His help. But when He called me to them, He knew I would occasionally fail at every one of them. Despite that, He still claims me as His own. And He still invites me to fulfill these callings.

I think God is pleased that I accept the callings He’s given me, and also that I wrestle through the difficulty of when those callings collide rather than throw them away because it seems too hard or downright impossible to figure it out any other way.

So I keep taking them up, these callings of mine, and wrestle with balancing them most days. And I pray that God will always send this reminder when I need it most: when callings collide, so does God’s grace and love and mercy.

Photo by Theodor Moise on Pixabay

Responsibly Bridging the Gap Between Needs and Resources

Perhaps it was naivete, or maybe it was the years-long process of settling into life overseas, but it took a long time before we fully realized that one of our vital roles as missionaries is to be an advocate for resources.

We spent our early years just putting one foot in front of the other, doing the tasks assigned to us each day without thinking much beyond that. But once the haze settled, and once we lifted our heads a bit to look and see what others were doing with the long-term in mind, we realized that we could — and should — be doing something to connect nationals with resources they struggled to access otherwise.

Resources across the globe are distributed disproportionately. By definition, this isn’t fair. Some people, communities, and nations simply have access to different resources than others. Because my husband and I come from a passport country that’s disproportionately well-resourced, we began to consider what our responsibilities were in terms of sharing those resources with those around us in our less-resourced context.

The most obvious resource we could think of was of a financial nature. We live in a part of the world that struggles with poverty. I can never again underestimate how life-changing having access to money is because I can never forget the day our house helper asked for help to buy food. Her son had cried through the night because of hunger, and she’d had nothing to give him. He was the same age as our three-year-old son.

The words of James rang loud in our ears: “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to him, ‘Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,’ but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it?” (James 3:15-16).

Our house helper needed food, but she didn’t have the money to obtain any due to difficult circumstances. And I was hit square in the face with this reality: Money matters, and only those who have enough of it have the privilege of not thinking about it.

Over time, through a myriad of events, we began thinking about how to raise extra funds in order to help with ministry needs besides providing for our own living expenses.

On the one hand, it was difficult to think of raising more money than we had already raised for ourselves to live overseas. Any fundraising missionary will tell you what a huge task it is to raise enough funds to entirely support oneself, let alone a whole family, to live and serve in a place that cannot pay a missionary to be there. Then add to that task and raise even more funds? We were not particularly thrilled at the idea.

But we had seen it done by other global workers in thoughtful and effective ways, and eventually we started identifying ministry areas that would make sense for us to specifically raise funds for.

The reality is, we have access to funds because we have access to people with funds, unlike most of our African friends and colleagues. As Americans, our connections with people from the West automatically put us in a category of having more financial resources than almost anywhere else in the world.

We’ve also discovered that people with such resources are often able and willing to give. When we’ve reached out to our support base with a financial request for a particular need, we have routinely been surprised and blessed at how generous they can be.

Through their generosity, we’ve helped with a variety of projects over the years: renovating housing, funding tuition for our family medicine residents, upgrading infrastructure and sourcing medical equipment for the mission hospital, and purchasing Bibles for friends and neighbors. None of that would have been possible without our personal connections to people in our passport country with financial resources.

Yet we’ve also learned over the years that our ability to access resources goes beyond our personal network, proving even more the unique position we’re in to connect outside resources with the people right in front of us. I can’t count how many times the Lord has brought us financial resources through unexpected means. We can testify that the “six degrees of separation” theory is real as we’ve been given money from people who knew someone that knew someone else who heard through the grapevine that we were missionaries and decided to support us.

We’ve received financial support from people who follow a different religion than us, from people we’ve never met who sent a donation in memoriam of the deceased, from people who legitimately couldn’t remember my name, and even from a prison inmate. We’ve also been blessed with financial donations we never asked or looked for. God’s creativity in how He chooses to provide never ceases to amaze.

The point is this: We come from a place with resources. Our African ministry partners would not have access to those resources unless we were here to make the connection for them. Our role as missionaries in our context is not only to provide medical care and medical education, but to bridge the gap between tangible needs and helpful provisions.

Our access to resources is not only financial, however. We also have access to educational resources. We know where to acquire Bibles and books. We know how to get an account with a resource library like RightNowMedia. We know how to find and fill out an application for an educational institution. In a world that’s increasingly shrinking in terms of worldwide connections, we can be a resource to help our African friends and colleagues find and navigate opportunities that will help them.

Furthermore, we ourselves are a resource because of our own education and knowledge base. My husband and I both went to university. I went on to get a master’s degree, and he went on to get a doctorate degree. This knowledge is its own resource, and we have the privilege of sharing it with others.

Understanding this transformed our approach to ministry. It broadened our scope beyond our originally narrow focus. It helped us think about and embrace a more holistic methodology about what we do. It has positively impacted our relationships and has given us greater perspective when we consider things like, “Do not forget to do good and to share with others, for with such sacrifices God is pleased” (Hebrews 13:16).

Sharing what we have, material or otherwise, is indeed a good thing.

To be clear, I am in no way suggesting that we provide arbitrary handouts for the under-resourced. I live in a country where handouts have been given too often for too long, and I have seen the detrimental effects of such an approach to helping the poor. Rather, I’m in favor of providing specific and useful resources that are given to trusted people we know who will utilize said resources in a productive way, or who will learn how to do so as we walk alongside them and show them how to make use of those resources.

Neither am I suggesting that sharing resources is a one-way street. On the contrary, I think it’s only right and fair that we share what we have since our local partners are constantly sharing with us.

If they didn’t share their social knowledge with us, we’d have no idea how to begin navigating cross-cultural communication. If they didn’t share their produce with us, I still wouldn’t know how to properly cut a mango or mix thorn fruit with other fruits to help dilute the taste. If they didn’t teach us how to appropriately discuss death in the hospital (which is vastly different than how we do it in our own culture), we’d be offending and alienating people right and left.

Perhaps my favorite example of this is the first patient my husband ever cared for in Kenya. My husband, a highly trained and competent doctor, found himself face-to-face with a young man with malaria, tuberculosis meningitis, and HIV. He had never encountered any of these conditions during his years of training in America and was completely at a loss.

If it hadn’t been for an intern, whose training paled in comparison to my husband’s but who knew these conditions well, my husband would never have made it through that first day. He had so much to learn, and he was able to because of people here who shared their knowledge with him. Although my husband is now quite proficient in all manner of tropical diseases and water-borne illnesses after nearly a decade of working at a mission hospital in Africa, he never could have acquired that knowledge on his own.

Our journey of understanding more about sharing our resources is directly tied to our particular ministry context, but I encourage you to ask similar questions that helped us realize our responsibility along the way:

What resources do I have access to?

How can those resources be useful in my context?

Which people is God inviting me to share resources with, and how can our relationships be blessed because of them?

It’s been said that God has deep pockets. May we readily participate in emptying them.

Photo from Unsplash by Alex Radelich

Fighting for Awe and Wonder – And Why It Matters

It was her question that I couldn’t shake. The type of question where harsh reality clashes with idealism. And I couldn’t ignore the drive to chase an answer, even if it took months to unpack. Or in this case, twelve months.

“How do we maintain awe and wonder?”

She wasn’t asking because I knew the answer. She’s way smarter than I am. She was asking because she sensed that our souls earnestly wanted to discover some answers together—or at least start trying as we meandered the whimsical neighborhoods of Portland. Her poodle sniffed a statue of Ramona Quimby at the Beverly Cleary Park.

Speaking of awe and wonder while exploring my favorite childhood author’s hometown and secretly snapping selfies outside her childhood home was the backdrop to her inspired question. Standing where Beverly Cleary would have sipped lemonade and chased playmates in Mary Jane shoes felt surreal. Ramona, Beezus, Henry, Ribsy, and even Scooter, and their white-picket-fence lives were friends who flooded my imagination as a child. I devoured their stories—where the biggest challenge is the neighbor’s complaint of your scruffy dog—over and over by the flicker of a kerosene lantern in a village in Africa.

The spark of our awe and wonder conversation felt magical, and everything in me was alive. The fact that I was having this exchange with a brilliant children’s book illustrator made it all the more invigorating.

Until I found out the hard truths about Beverly Cleary’s dingy childhood. There wasn’t much sipping of lemonade and chasing of friends along idyllic streets like I’d always imagined. It seems like her writing was less of a memoir and more of an escape to places deeply longed for.

It hurt to shatter the romantic lens. It was also inspiring. Because there was no better place for me to begin to wrestle with the question of how to maintain awe and wonder in a dark world than outside the childhood home of an author who lived this tension.

How do I maintain awe and wonder in a world that’s bent on crushing it?

And why does it matter? In a world where the bodies of children are swept away by swirling waters in Texas, the children in warring strips of lands are paying for centuries of conflict, and the minority children in Cameroon have been prohibited from attending school for fear of their lives, why does it matter to the beating of my very soul if I fight for a sense of awe and wonder? These things feel secondary when I can’t even ensure the protection of the least of these.

Twelve months later, I still don’t have a clean answer, but I’d like to share what I’ve learned so far and open the conversation to learn from you. I’m pretty sure if you’re reading this, you’ve lived a hard journey across global borders, raised children in hard places, served the unseen, lost a lot, been hurt a lot, wrestled with God a lot, and maybe, just maybe, have lost some awe and wonder in the process. So I think this community has something to teach me.

Why does any of this matter? Why did this question resonate with me and all of humanity?

Because the opposite of awe and wonder is everything that tears us apart from each other and from God. They are the things that disconnect us, suck our souls dry, separate us from empathy for our neighbor, and drive us away from praise. In stark contrast to awe is cynicism, indifference, disenchantment, boredom. On the farthest end of the spectrum of the human experience from wonder is jadedness, apathy, detachment, contempt, and dread.

A dreary worldview leads us to disconnection, comparison, and inaction. It leads us to seeing others as less than fully human and a growing disdain for the many forms of the goodness of God. We lose our ability to love selflessly and take on pride, gossip, narcissistic tendencies, and even war.

I do not want to be accustomed to these things taking up space in my heart. They are diametrically opposed to awe and wonder. I can hardly think of a closer description of hell. Or things that take my mind further from the heart of God.

Against a landscape of evil, hardness, hyper-self-preservation, disconnection, ingratitude, and danger, I must engage awe and wonder because it leads me to

praise God better,
which leads me to softness,
which leads me to share,
which leads me to connect,
which leads me to appreciate,
which leads me to protect.

As a teen full of imagination and wonder, someone informed me that my rose-colored glasses were evidence of a head buried in sand and that my wonder insulted the pain of others. More than anything, I didn’t want to participate in disregarding the pain of others.

So, instead of learning to better balance the pain of the world with my bursting curiosity, I tried to be mature like them. Bury liveliness. Embrace cynicism. Because jaded people seemed super informed, albeit crippled by inaction.

As someone who has lived and worked overseas for decades, I’m painfully aware that the pursuit and expression of beauty may be interpreted as disloyalty and abandonment of those in hard seasons.

But the abandonment of wonder left me hollow. So, I’m back at this question again.

Practically speaking, how do we do this? For starters, we need to name the things that deoxygenate our awe and loot us of joy. Screens. Inauthentic experiences. Passivity. Pride. Hypervigilant self-focus. Reading comments online—where criticism is acutely trained to detect imperfection and is blind to the bravery it took someone to produce art or work.

But simply avoiding thieves of joy isn’t what makes us connected and full. Our beings were made to actively seek the beautiful things that make us fully aware of God and in tune with each other. Here are a few fertile places I’ve found.

Good theology matters. Perhaps there was some level of truth that my childlike awe and wonder neglected to acknowledge the hard things of life, a TCK phenomenon I am only now grasping in my line of work with TCK research. Perhaps a better worldview and a deeper theology would have me explore the complex and uncomfortable truths—learning to hold in tension the beautiful and the hard—and that sometimes the hard is beautiful and the beautiful is hard. Perhaps my heart was meant for deeper worship without reservation when I am called to build a more solid theology of God’s goodness, suffering, sin, and to honor the feeling of paradox of things I don’t fully understand now, but will someday. Perhaps the greatest way to honor the good with awe and wonder is to acknowledge the hard and whisper an invitation for the Holy Spirit to be my teacher (John 14:26).
Cultivate tenderness. Tenderness sees the brokenhearted, turns the throat-lump into sea water running down cheeks, delights in the petal formation of a rose, pauses to ponder the markings of a toad, rebels against the overloaded schedule, believes the best in disquieting misunderstandings, and makes creamy chai for the neighbor. If tenderness is a soft landing place missing from our ability to breathe, stop, praise, notice, engage, maybe it’s time to go back to the root of love—the type that bears, believes, hopes, and endures the things trying to break us (1 Cor. 13:7).
Throw off the things holding me back. With haste. A good, hard look in the mirror paired with the sacred work of the Holy Spirit burns the secrets holding me back from the Father’s innocence, joy, awe, and empathy. Hebrews 12:1 is a much sweeter bid to freedom than a list of shoulds and condemnation. It is the invitation to drink deep of the things that make me alive and release the things that threaten to sink me. It is a call to marinate in Shalom peace, receive it, root in it, fruit it, and share it.
Train my eyes upon the unnoticed things. God delights in the song of the sparrow, Leviathan’s froth from playing in the sea, and he even cares about the sorrow of the tax collector. It’s pausing to admire delicate forest fungi while hiking among towering redwoods or listening to the layers of music in a song you’ve heard a hundred times. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. The innocent delight in the little things. To be easily awed is an enviable art these days.

For the past twelve months and twenty-one days, I’ve been sitting on the question I bring to you today: “How do we maintain awe and wonder. And why does it matter?”

Perhaps the steps of Beverly Cleary’s childhood house was the perfect place to begin wrestling with this question. The gift of her whimsical stories didn’t stem from an idyllic childhood but from a place of longing. Joy and wonder didn’t erase the scarcity but became an intentional step out of the dreariness.

So what about you? How do you fight for awe and wonder?

Photo by Chris G. Pexels.

Why We Need “Ineffective” Missionaries

We were newly appointed missionaries who hadn’t left for the field yet, and our paths crossed with some other workers who spoke about a previous overseas experience. They had been ministering alongside a veteran missionary who’d been there for decades. “But he wasn’t very effective,” they said. “He’d been there for nearly thirty years and didn’t have a single convert! He clearly didn’t know what he was doing.”

In the moment, I didn’t know how to respond. On the one hand, I was shocked and outraged that these people would judge someone for an apparent lack of obvious fruit in his ministry. On the other hand, I was suddenly and worriedly faced with the question, “Will someone say that of us someday?”

I suppose it’s entirely possible that this poor fellow, whoever he was, was an altogether ineffective missionary. There are plenty of people who are ill-suited to the task of living and ministering cross-culturally, and perhaps this guy was one of them.

But the context of the conversation made it clear there was a direct connection being made between his many years of service and his overall lack of success. No converts = bad missionary.

This conclusion demands a question of us all: How do we measure success as missionaries?

That’s a broad question, so let me ask another, narrower question: Is one missionary’s success more worthy of celebration than another?

Even narrower still: Are there tiers in ministry work? Is the work of an evangelist more important than the work of an educator? Is a Bible translator given special honor over and above someone doing Farming God’s Way?

It’s important to ask these questions because they help inform and shape our understanding of the Great Commission, as well as our understanding of how we view each other’s ministry work.

As someone who is primarily in the ministry of discipleship, the number of times I’ve led someone to belief in Jesus is low. The number of times I’ve helped someone grow deeper in their knowledge of and love for Jesus is extremely high, however. That line of work is how God has gifted me and called me. Would I pass the “conversion statistics” test? Probably not. But am I glorifying God by doing what He’s invited me to do? I sure hope so.

While I readily admit that it’s possible the veteran missionary in the story was actually ineffective, I imagine it’s more likely that he was wrongly accused of being so. If that’s the case, it’s worth exploring why such people are deemed ineffective, and why we really need people like that in missions.

It all comes back to being members of the Body of Christ. As Paul said, “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others” (Romans 12:4-5).

Put another way: “I planted the seed, Apollos watered it, but God made it grow” (1 Corinthians 3:6).

This means that someone in one area of ministry might be more likely to actually lead people to conversion, while others are more likely to lead up to that point or disciple people after that point.

Being able to record a large number on your missions report card for the number of conversions you’ve overseen is all well and good (truly, so good!) but it should never detract from all the other work done in an effort to bear fruit for God’s kingdom.

Later, after I had time to consider the critical assessment of the veteran missionary’s years of service, I hoped that he really did lead some people to Christ, whether anyone else knew it or not (including himself). It reminded me of two people who, years after the fact, told my husband that he was instrumental in helping them come to Christ.

As it turns out, he had planted a seed, or maybe watered it, and then God made it grow. My husband didn’t know they’d become followers of Jesus, and he still wouldn’t know to this day if it weren’t for these people choosing to reach out and tell him so. Maybe that’s the story of the veteran missionary too.

But even if it’s not, even if the missionary truly didn’t lead anyone to Christ in all those years on the mission field, does that mean he had no idea what he was doing? Does that mean his ministry was ineffective, useless, or dishonoring to God somehow?

Is an “ineffective” ministry completely fruitless?

Even if no one made a confession of faith as a direct result of this man’s ministry, we cannot and should not discount the soil he tilled, the seeds he planted, or the plants he watered (not to mention the fruit born within himself, as we hopefully can all attest to as ministers of the Gospel).

If we minimize this important work, we minimize the entire fruit-bearing process.

If we mistakenly assume that some parts of the process are more essential than others, the entire process is undermined. If we erroneously think that some aspects of mission work are more worthy than others, we’ve established an unholy tier system that has no place in the kingdom of God.

I’m reminded of the specialty “tiers” in the medical world, which became obvious to us leading up to my husband’s Match Day – the single most important day for any medical student, in which every fourth-year student is matched to a residency program for the next several years of their life. Match Day determines not only where you will go for your next season of training, but what specialty you will train in (internal medicine, pediatrics, neurosurgery, radiology, etc.).

For months before Match Day, there were ongoing discussions among my husband and his classmates about what specialties everyone hoped for. Everyone can choose their own specialty but must match to a residency program in order to actually train in that specialty.

Within the medical culture, specialties are unofficially placed in a tier system based on a variety of factors, namely the number of years you need to spend doing further training, the number of hours you’ll typically have to work once you’re a board-certified specialist, and your future expected salary.

My husband, who chose to pursue family medicine, was admonished more than once by fellow healthcare workers for choosing a specialty that “doesn’t pay much.” Family medicine is a low-tier specialty. You train for the least amount of time (only a three-year residency, which doesn’t scream prestige) and receive relatively low pay as far as doctors go.

Conversely, anyone hoping to become a pediatric heart surgeon will typically undergo a five-year general surgery residency followed by another three years in fellowship training. It makes my husband’s three-year family medicine residency pale in comparison. Such an extremely-specialized doctor will also undoubtedly receive a very nice paycheck.

Despite the stereotypes, the question must be asked: are some doctors more important by virtue of being more specialized?

Is my husband’s medical care less necessary because he’s never taken out an appendix or cured cataracts?

I would answer emphatically: no.

We need all medical specialties to cover the vast medical needs of the human body. When you don’t have access to all the specialties (as we certainly don’t at our rural mission hospital), you become acutely aware of how diverse and complex the human body is and how broad the gaps in medical care really are when certain specialties are MIA.

Again: “Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others.”

We need missionaries whose ministries convert people in droves, and we need people who faithfully till the soil even if they don’t see a single baptism after a lifetime on the field. Both are needed and both should be valued as doing essential kingdom work. Just like an internal medicine doctor consults with a general surgeon about a patient needing surgery, then the surgeon puts the patient back into the hands of a family medicine doctor for post-op care, each part of the Body relies on each other to get the job done.

If we recognize and value all those who labor for the Gospel, then we can see the big picture of what God is doing. God is a God who works over time, a God who writes stories that most of us will only ever see a sliver of.

Believing that God is on the move even when there is little if any obvious fruit in our ministries is why we can remember someone like David Livingstone, often considered one of the greatest missionaries of his day, as a paragon when he only had one convert who eventually backslid.

Grouping missionary work into tiers and/or assuming that success is gauged primarily by outward achievements exposes a lack of patience with God’s process and a narrow perspective of His kingdom.

Missionaries in all manner of ministries around the world are bringing Jesus to the world. Praise God! We need the ways of Jesus practiced and proclaimed around the world, through word and deed, and we should encourage and help each other along as we co-labor toward that end.

I’ve ministered cross-culturally for nine years and I’m not sure anyone has chosen to believe in Jesus as a direct result of my ministry. By all accounts, I’m a fairly “ineffective” missionary if the standard being used is how flashy or report-card-worthy my ministry is. But I like to think I’m in good company, both with others who’ve gone before me and with those who are faithfully ministering in this day and age.

Regardless of how many people I lead to Christ through my ministry, I hope others will be able to look at my years of service on the mission field and declare, “She obeyed and she went, and she was fruitful.”

Photo by Yurii Khomitskyi on Unsplash

Is Someone Holding Out on You?

I’ve discovered a strange kind of hypocrisy in my heart: I’m two-faced when it comes to money.

For one person, I’ll choose a quality gift that should last; for another, I’ll rummage through second-hand wares and call it good enough. For one person, I’ll take them out to eat at their favorite restaurant and insist they get a dessert, too; for another, I’ll take them somewhere cheap and stick to water. For one person, I’ll rejoice when they choose to celebrate a milestone; for another, I’ll cringe and question if such frivolity is worth it.

Why this discrepancy? And who is this “other person” that I’m so tight-fisted with?

As you may have guessed, the other person is me. I’m stingy with myself. I typically care for myself with far less generosity than I would any other person on the planet.

That first question is much harder to answer though. Where did this discrepancy come from? Sure, I was trained in frugality as a child, but that doesn’t account for the two-faced nature of my financial dealings. Or could it be that as someone who lives on the support of others, I’m hesitant to do anything for myself that might be perceived as indulgent or a mishandling of resources? That’s likely a piece of the puzzle too.

Money is a sensitive subject for most missionaries. We want to be shrewd with what we’ve been given, but what one supporter would call wise stewardship to care for family health, another might call unnecessary extravagance on a family vacation. Using finances wisely is complex to begin with, and even more so as a missionary.

But still, my hypocrisy isn’t fully accounted for.

I’ve spent more time during this season of Lent asking the Lord to “Search me and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting” (Psalm 139:23-24). And, apparently, our upcoming 20th wedding anniversary has provided just the mirror He needed to let me see this dichotomy in my heart.

My generosity has a limit, my love a fence. And where the buck stops is with me. As my husband and I considered taking a trip for our 20th, I couldn’t get myself to commit. In fact, when trying to make a decision, I got uncharacteristically emotional and, when I finally allowed myself to admit it, mad. Mad at God. Mad at being a missionary. Mad at the cost of obedience. Mad that somehow, in some way, God was withholding something.

I wrestled with these unwanted thoughts and feelings for several days, laying them bare before God, sharing them with friends, journaling them out, reminding myself of His truth to overcome the lies. And all these practices helped. For a few hours. Then I’d find myself back in the same frustrated, emotional turmoil all over again.

But God is patient, and when I finally quit trying to psycho-analyze and fix myself, I went for a walk. There, by the emerald green rice fields while the sun set behind the tree-canopied hills, He simply asked me, “Is it possible that I’m not the one who is holding out on you here?”

Finally I saw it: my stinginess to myself. I was preventing us from celebrating. I was looking down on a joyful commemoration of love and faithfulness – ours and God’s. I was withholding generosity from myself. I was treating myself as I would treat no one else (except my husband, apparently).

God’s kindness, His grace, His love, His compassion, His justice, His forgiveness is wider, longer, higher, and deeper than I could possibly imagine. The extravagance of His generosity toward me is unending. God is anything but stingy.

And while I am still a full proponent of careful financial stewardship, I also recognize that sometimes saving instead of celebrating is rooted in fear. It can indicate a lack of trust that my Good Father will give me manna again tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. Like a child who devours her favorite meal and jumps down from the table to play without the slightest concern if her next meal would come again later, I, too, can enjoy God’s good gifts and trust that His supply won’t run out. I don’t have to operate from a scarcity mindset. My Daddy owns the riches of the universe.

If you, too, have a tendency to be generous with others but not yourself, I’ll leave you with a scripture and some questions to contemplate. Bring it before the Lord and listen for your own answer in all of this:

While Jesus was in Bethany in the home of Simon the Leper, a woman came to him with an alabaster jar of very expensive perfume, which she poured on his head as he was reclining at the table.

When the disciples saw this, they were indignant. “Why this waste?” they asked. “This perfume could have been sold at a high price and the money given to the poor.”

Aware of this, Jesus said to them, “Why are you bothering this woman? She has done a beautiful thing to me. The poor you will always have with you, but you will not always have me. When she poured this perfume on my body, she did it to prepare me for burial. Truly I tell you, wherever this gospel is preached throughout the world, what she has done will also be told, in memory of her.” (Matthew 26:6-13)

What is Jesus’ perspective on extravagant gifts given in love? Does it apply only to gifts for Him or also to others? Can it ever apply to me?

Photo by DNK.PHOTO on Unsplash

Do Extroverts Make the Best Missionaries?

I once sat in a conference room full of Christians when the speaker asked the group if we thought Jesus was an introvert or an extrovert. The question was offered offhandedly – it wasn’t meant to invite much discussion, let alone heated theological debate – yet it garnered an instantaneous and nearly unanimous conclusion: Jesus was an introvert. The reasoning was based on a handful of Scripture passages that mention Jesus going off by himself to be in solitude and to pray.

I’d never considered the question before. I’d certainly spent plenty of time and agony trying to identify my own tendencies. I’m one of those people who’s difficult to define in the introvert/extrovert debate. Years ago the DiSC personality test revealed that I’m a “flexor,” and a recent SDI assessment confirmed that earlier result, showing me to be a HUB.

But I’d never spent much time wondering what kind of personality Jesus had. His character? Sure, I’d thought about that in spades. But whether he made his bed in the morning or left his blanket a rumpled mess? Whether he liked to join an impromptu song around the campfire or sit and listen in silence? Whether he felt at ease or sick to his stomach while dealing with interpersonal conflict? These questions hadn’t ever occurred to me.

After further reflection, I think it could be argued that Jesus was a disciplined extrovert – someone who thrived on being with people but who knew the importance of being with the Father and prioritized time alone with him.

In truth, I could believe either assumption. Introvert, extrovert, or somewhere in between.

What I really wonder is how being an introvert or extrovert (or somewhere in between) impacts our daily lives as missionaries?

Consider Paul. He had all the trademarks of a rather social messenger of the Gospel, not only because of the countless people he interacted with on his extensive travel itinerary as a missionary, but also because of the exhaustive lists of people he mentioned and thanked in closing some of his letters. Paul worked with a lot of people and, furthermore, maintained relationships with a lot of people. These are seemingly extroverted qualities.

I’m reminded of an extroverted missionary colleague of mine. She never tired of welcoming people at her door who unexpectedly stopped by for a visit, she never balked at going to another meeting, and she never said no to whatever hangout or last-minute activity was happening. If she didn’t socialize, it was typically because she was already committed to another social engagement. She was well known and well-loved in our community. In a highly social culture, she had an easy time adjusting to the social milieu of this place, and she was able to make connections faster and deeper than some of her introverted counterparts.

And I found myself wondering, “Is she more effective than me, by virtue of being more present?”

But I also had to wonder how she would have fared in a different culture, one where people are wary of strangers and everyone tends to keep to themselves?

God might call an extrovert to a social culture, which is a gift and a blessing because they can bounce from one social engagement to the next and not lose steam. God might call an introvert to a reclusive culture, which is a gift and blessing because they can be at peace with people avoiding them on the street.

But God might call an extrovert to a lonely place, which is a challenge and a struggle because they can’t find an outlet for their social needs. Or God might call an introvert to a communal place, which is a challenge and a struggle because they can’t get enough time for themselves to recharge before reentering the fray.

God gifts each of us in certain ways and invites us to minister out of our strengths, but he also equips each of us despite our limitations and invites us to minister out of our weaknesses.

Obviously, there are strengths and weaknesses to being an introvert or extrovert (or something in between), and the strengths of each serve the Gospel in different ways. And, yes, I think some cultures are a more seamless fit for either introverted or extroverted tendencies, but that doesn’t mean one is better than another.

Sometimes, like Paul, we have to stretch ourselves to be all things to all people. Extroverts need to introvert. Introverts need to extrovert. We become all things to all people, including practicing the parts of our personality that we usually define as the weaker parts.

Similarly, we must also be wary of overdoing our strengths. I know of a missionary who extroverted so much that he neglected his responsibilities, including failing to report to his mission organization and connecting with supporters. And I know of missionaries who introverted so much that they did nothing outside of their required ministry obligations and therefore had limited relational depth or impact.

Do extroverts make the best missionaries? Not necessarily. Extroversion might be a particular asset in a particular place and time, but it cannot be assumed that extroversion outweighs introversion in a cross-cultural mission context.

A similar question might be asked: do singles make the best missionaries? After all, they don’t have the added responsibilities of meeting the needs of a spouse or children. Paul said as much in 1 Corinthians 7. He also exemplified a life with complete freedom to come and go and socialize and pour into relationships all day and all night if he wanted to. He was not nearly as limited as a married person.

Sometimes I’ve wondered how much less effective I am by the simple virtue of being married with kids. Don’t get me wrong, I am fiercely defensive of the notion that my ministry of discipling my children at home is of utmost importance and is building the Kingdom just as much as anything else. But mostly I’m impressed at how much single missionaries are able to accomplish compared to me.

Jesus himself was single, as was Paul. And as far as we know, all the disciples were unmarried except for Peter. Although being married doesn’t disqualify anyone from having an impactful and fruitful ministry – think of the notable example of Peter, as well as Aquila and Priscilla – being married has its drawbacks, namely a necessary division of labor between familial obligations and ministry outside the home.

Do singles make the best missionaries?

Do single extroverts make the best missionaries?

My colleague was not only extroverted, but single. She was a powerhouse of time and energy. What she was able to accomplish in a day was far and above my own capacity. But although she excelled in being with people and having time for any number of projects, she had limitations in other areas.

Strengths and weaknesses, weaknesses and strengths.

I found myself supremely thankful for my single, extroverted colleague, who sat on a committee I had no bandwidth for. Likewise, she expressed her awe and gratitude that I led our community Bible Study, which requires hours by myself to study and prepare for in addition to the social time at the actual Bible Study. Regularly, this colleague with extra social capital to spend would hang out with my kids and play games which freed me to do any number of other things that needed doing.

In short, we both had valuable strengths to offer, and we held each other up in our weaknesses.

So, who makes the best missionary? Or to phrase it another way: who makes an effective missionary?

Extroverts, introverts, marrieds, and singles.

Regardless of our God-given personality or marital status, the Kingdom is best served when we employ our strengths and allow others to do the same.

So let’s offer our strengths and support each other in our weaknesses, and in so doing, build up the Kingdom in whatever corner of the world the Lord has invited us to serve.

Photo by Pexels on Pixabay

Co-Grieving Loss with Your Repatriated TCK

We didn’t have words for TCK loss back then. Not when I left Cameroon at nineteen and stepped onto U.S. soil as a stranger to my own country. But just because there weren’t words doesn’t mean the ache of loss didn’t burrow deep. Nineteen and newly repatriated felt like drowning in a sea of people who looked like me and talked like me but didn’t know the red-earth-Africa that shaped me.

I hardly recognized the girl I became in the wake of losing Cameroon, my best friends, and everything that felt familiar. That season was one of the hardest – and one of the unhealthiest – of my life.

Now, after the years have fast forwarded to an empty nest, I find myself looking back, not just at my own story but at theirs. I think of my children, my third culture kids, who built rich and beautiful lives on South African soil, their home. How will they handle letting go? How will they carry the weight of leaving behind the people and places that shaped them?

When I saw Megan Norton’s invitation to write a letter to my recently repatriated TCKs for her upcoming book, Letters Now Sent, I knew exactly what I wanted to say. I know the grief of leaving a place that tattoos an indelible mark on your soul. As their mother and as a TCK myself, I want to co-grieve their losses of saying goodbye to a life they loved in South Africa. And I know where I want them to root themselves now, as they step into adulthood in the U.S.

This letter is a new beginning with new language for parents of TCKs. It is my way of opening the door to a safe and sacred conversation with my young adult children—one established in love, shared understanding, and the kind of hope that reroots through the cracks of even the hardest losses. While their reactions to my letter are deeply personal and honey to my heart, I can tell you that this budding conversation was met with warm reciprocity and open arms.

A letter to Elaina and Sawyer Danforth, 2025 (republished at A Life Overseas with permission)

My two dearest toasted marshmallows,

You are eighteen and nineteen now. University carries a steep learning curve for everyone, but especially for the ones like you who left home, country, and friends to be grafted back to the place of your heritage.

As second-generation TCKs, you belong to a tribe that your father and I know well. Your childhood was formed in the womb of the cradle of humankind, in KwaZulu-Natal, and it ended abruptly on the other side of a plane ride to the United States. But the things that formed you there still sing in every crevice of your mind and shape the way you see the world.

Repatriation is a season when the losses of the familiar sink in hard for TCKs. And these are the years when you become aware of your roots, the ones that have been transplanted to new soils and now feel wildly distinct and out of place. The places of your childhood are the places where your formative and deepest roots grow. And the soil of South Africa no longer surrounds or supports you.

You’ll remember from working on our farm that a transplanted plant often wilts for a while. It is learning to survive in a new and unfamiliar environment. Its roots aren’t sure what to make of its new home. They don’t know whether they can unfurl and take new life or whether the newness will be hostile to growth. Repatriating TCKs are the same.

While my roots in South Africa will never be as deeply formative as yours, I am here to co-grieve your losses with you. I did the same as a nineteen-year-old with my Cameroonian roots. And your father did too, at eighteen with his Congolese and Central African roots.

Some losses are obvious. Our imperfectly perfect little farmhouse and the stability of its cracked walls. The foamy blueness of whales flirting between the horizon and the Indian Ocean. The oneness of our multicultural, multi-lingual farm family. The wind-whipped cheeks from four-wheeling wild past giraffes. The saggy eyes after Minecraft all-nighters with friends. The laughter with your non-blood sisters farmsteading in the mountains. The crispy-edged pancakes hot off the griddle every Saturday morning. The seasonal ebb and flow of subtropical downpours and droughts.

But some losses are hidden. Some, you won’t even know you miss until you come across them years later. And you’ll be caught off guard by a sudden feeling of home. Hidden losses are the sounds, smells, and invisible things that God sprinkled into the backdrop of your childhood. They are the things that you didn’t even know weren’t everywhere on planet earth. Until they weren’t.

Your hidden losses don’t have to make sense to anyone else. They don’t even have to be pleasant. But something about these background sounds and smells had a profound impact on developing the unseen part of who you are today. And we honor those gifts by naming them.

The background sound of your childhood is the cry of hadedas filling pink southern skies and beckoning your sleepy eyes open. You didn’t even know the sound was missing until that first morning in a Midwest dormroom when the synthetic shock of an alarm clock demanded your attention.

It is the faithful singsong Xhosa greeting “Molweni” on your proud farm stoep. It is the mourning doves telling each other off gently and sternly. It is the inexplicable peace of violent rains threatening to crash right through tôle roofs. It is the baying of hounds, whether to threaten skelems or to give chase to dassies, outside your burglar-barred window.

It is the South African flavor in which people have always said your name. It is the twisted, segregated history healing in real time through the harmony of church songs in English, Afrikaans, and Zulu. It is the comfort of our family’s age-old call to meals that reaches back to the recesses of your first independently held spoon, “On va prier.”

The background smell embedded in the roots of your childhood is a eucalyptus flame licking Karoo lamb ribs on the braai. It is soft buttermilk vanilla steam from an Ouma rusk dunked in Five Roses tea. How can something be so moorishly crunchy and goopy at the same time? It is the barely-there salt in the air where the Indian Ocean laps at the sky. And yes, it is even the familiar sewage plant every time we try to hold our breath at that bend in the highway by Uvongo.

Your roots will fumble around in this new place of red, white, and blue for a while, figuring out what is friendly soil and what isn’t. And this is the time. Dit is tyd to close your eyes, take a breath, and rediscover the power of your one unshakable tap root. It is your deepest root. The most formative one. The most familiar one. The most stabilizing one. It is your one root that pushes far past all the others, past every good and rocky soil, reaching like life depends on it, to the source of life. Water. Living Water.

It is in Living Water that you’ve always found life and truth and all that is good. When everything around is unfamiliar, this source is the familiar.

You’ll find community in the taproots of familiar people planted there too. And you’ll come to know new people who are automatically family because their taproot seeks life in the same place where yours does. This is the good stuff, my toasted marshmallows.

While your secondary roots stumble around and try to make sense of star-spangled life, sink all your energy, all your questions, all your everything into your taproot’s source of life. It is the one and only thing that will never change no matter where you go, how far you fall, or how unfamiliar everything else seems.

Taprooted to the Source with you,

Mom (Anna Danforth)

~~~~~~~

Inspired by Ruth Van Reken‘s book Letters Never Sent, Letters Now Sent will be a collection of letters from TCKs, parents of TCKs, and system leaders to share personal stories about their experiences with TCKs, being a TCK themself, and/or raising TCKs. This book is a fusion of both memoir and anthology written in a specific “Dear [name]” format.

Here is the Google Form link to submit a letter with additional details about length and content prompts: https://forms.gle/jQyzq3TtFqfyznvCA. The deadline to submit a letter is March 31, 2025, and the book will be launched in July 2025 at Ruth’s 80th birthday celebration. Families in Global Transition is hosting the 80th Birthday party in Chicago on July 26, 2027, and registration will be live on their website soon. You do not have to be a member of FIGT to register for this event.

The Harvest is Plentiful and the Workers Won’t Stay

Within three months of landing on the mission field, my husband found himself overseeing six departments at the hospital. Several factors led to such a sudden and taxing situation, but the underlying cause was the absence of nearly all other physician personnel at the time. Some had recently left for Home Assignment, others hadn’t yet returned from Home Assignment, and still others had left to make their final transition back to their passport country.

The all-consuming work and responsibilities my husband had to shoulder during that season hearkened back to a bygone era when pioneer missionaries were often entirely alone to bear all the work singlehandedly, enduring by pure grit and God’s grace.

It was the first of many times we’ve found ourselves remembering the words of Jesus: “The harvest is plentiful but the workers are few” (Matthew 9:37).

There is nothing new under the sun. There weren’t enough workers when the disciples and Paul were traipsing around the Ancient Near East and beyond, preaching the Good News to whoever would listen. There weren’t enough workers when Hudson Taylor prayed and pled for more missionaries to serve in China. There aren’t enough workers now when the world has never been more connected and yet untold numbers still haven’t heard the name of Jesus.

The realities are not new – the workers remain few – but the reasons for that reality have arguably changed.

Although the lack of workers for the harvest has been a persistent problem since the time of Christ, nowadays there is a new and noticeable trend in missions: those who go don’t necessarily stay.

The definition of what it means “to stay” will differ from one person to the next. I won’t attempt to argue that point since I don’t have a concrete answer myself. What I’m pondering is the noticeable shift in less missionaries staying for an entire career or even a lifetime, compared to our predecessors throughout history.

Many missionaries famously gave the greater portion of their lives to living and serving cross-culturally. People like St. Patrick and Adoniram Judson spent decades in their place of service, ultimately living out their days there. Lesser-known servants like George Liele and Lilias Trotter also have incredible track records of spending more than half their lives overseas. Even in my own country of service, Kenya, a pioneer missionary named Johannes Rebmann served here for 29 years before eventually returning to his home country of Germany because he was so ill and blind that he was finally persuaded to leave.

There are still people who commit an entire career, or lifetime, to the mission field – we know several from our own organization – but the number of people staying for 20, 30, or 40 years is growing smaller by the decade.

Is that a problem? I’m not sure. The state of missions is much different than it was even a hundred years ago. No one boards a ship to spend weeks or months just traveling to a mission field, let alone knowing it will be an untold time before they might see family or home again. We hop on a plane and arrive at our destination in a time that can be measured in hours, meaning we can hop on another plane and return to our passport country in the same relatively convenient manner without much thought.

That is perhaps one of the most obvious reasons why not as many people stay long-term anymore: international travel has made it so much easier to come and go around the world that short-term and mid-term options have become plentiful and accessible for many. People can go without needing to commit to a career or lifetime of service. As missionaries who are regularly helped by short-term and mid-term volunteers, I can testify to how impactful that length of service is, meaning that although increased options for length of service have impacted how long people tend to stay, it also means that more people are choosing to go in the first place. Fewer are staying longer, but more are going than ever before.

What else has impacted how long missionaries stay on the field? Countless reasons exist, not least of which include required visas to remain in country (a concern of the modern era which neither Paul nor Patrick had to worry about), and prioritizing the health and welfare of our families (many great missionary heroes of the faith were faithless to care for the concerns of their families, who suffered greatly as a result of their missionary zeal).

All of these factors are part of the ever-changing face of missions. For various reasons, we’re seeing a trend that missionaries aren’t staying as long as they used to. Some of the reasons are troubling; some are good; all are interesting to consider.

Jesus was clear that the workers are few. That was true in His time, and it remains true in our time. We have personally felt that reality, but we also know that someday we’ll be the ones to leave (assuming we don’t stay here till we die), leaving others after us to feel that reality too.

What to do? First of all, we need to heed the words of Jesus: “Ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest fields” (Matthew 9:38). The first response is prayer.

Additionally, we need to consider how to increase the longevity of those who are already in the harvest fields. If some can stay longer, the number of workers will naturally increase over time.

Regardless of whether a missionary unit decides to stay for long or short, what matters most is whether their choice to leave could have been a choice to stay if certain measures had been put in place to increase their longevity. Sometimes there is nothing to be done. A denied visa signals a clear exit from the country. A medical crisis compels us to get the help we need, often off the mission field. Sometimes our length of service is completely out of our hands.

My question is how to increase longevity when we do have some semblance of control? There is no clear-cut answer, but I wonder what measures could be put in place to help us in this modern era of missions?

One response is the current rise in both the awareness of Member Care needs as well as an increase in personnel in Member Care departments across mission organizations. Member Care services seek to improve and/or maintain the well-being of missionaries, whether it be physical, emotional, mental, relational, or spiritual. Member Care departments that can help missionaries remain healthy can also enable them to stay longer.

Another response comes from an organization that has noticed the trend away from long-term missions and is making an attempt to reverse that. The Longevity Project, a ministry of MedSend, exists to help medical missionaries stay on the mission field longer. Medical missionaries are notorious for experiencing frequent episodes of burnout, often due to moral injury and little time for self-care, ultimately leading to high rates of attrition. To combat this, MedSend created a “multi-faceted initiative to provide professional, relational, and spiritual support to healthcare missionaries. The Longevity Project not only supports the welfare of the missionary family but also works to ensure they can continue in their service on the mission field.” Some of the services they currently offer include financial assistance to access counseling, retreats specifically designed for medical missionaries, and support for raising and educating TCKs.

The Longevity Project is one attempt to overcome the barriers that keep people from staying longer on the mission field. How else can we, as a broader missions community, as sending churches and organizations, and as people committed to sharing the Good News around the world, find ways to increase missionary longevity?

We need to ask this question because our hearts are aligned with Jesus, who, right before He spoke that famous harvest quote, saw the crowds of people in need of hearing the Truth and had compassion on them because they were “like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).

We care that the Gospel goes forth. We care that the name of Jesus is proclaimed. We care that the whole world has a chance to hear of the Savior. And this should lead us to care about how to help missionaries continue participating in the Great Commission for as long as possible.

Photo from Pixabay

Introducing a New Middle Grade Fiction Novel for TCKs

Sam’s Roommate Disaster released today on Amazon as the newest TCK book on the market.

Have you ever read a story and felt like you were reading your life? Growing up as a kid in Cameroon, I never had that experience – even though I poured over the books in our extensive homeschool library. My new book, Sam’s Roommate Disaster, is my attempt to change that for young TCKs.

TCKs can get exhausted from frequent change and loss. While there’s a lot of loss in the globally mobile experience, there is also precious gain, and that is the beauty of the TCK experience. I want third culture kids to have relatable stories where, even in the pain of unexpected change, they see that it is worth leaning into new experiences and new people to see what is on the other side.

I wrote this book for the kids whose backgrounds are underrepresented in children’s literature. I wrote it for the kid who doesn’t like school and who struggles with reading. I wrote it for the one who daydreams during class, the one who wants to be outside exploring. I wrote it for the kid who does something without thinking and then wonders, “Why in the world did I just do that?”

I wrote it for the kid whose friend moved away and they’re pretty they’ll never make a friend like that again. I wrote it for the kid who is misunderstood and doesn’t want anyone to know why.

I wrote it for third culture kids who live behind cement walls, the ones sitting in metros, and the ones running barefoot through jungles. I wrote it for their monocultural cousins who need a sneak peek at childhood overseas. I wrote it for the kid who needs an imaginative escape into a world of friends and adventures.

I wrote it for the moms who have to send their kids to boarding school. I wrote it for the dorm staff who became like second parents for TCKs during formative years. I wrote it for international school teachers who want a fresh book with settings that don’t have white picket fences and characters who make all the right choices. But mostly, I wrote it for your kid.

I wrote Sam’s Roommate Disaster right in the thick of an incredibly difficult season in my own journey as a global worker. It was a time when I needed to come up for air. And that meant revisiting the awe and wonder of childhood stories, both mine and my husband’s. It meant sharing stories with my kids around the dinner table.

It meant listening to the giggles of old friends as they told stories from their perspective. It meant opening doors to hear fresh adventures from my in-laws about their wild child, Sam, who did all the things, took all the risks, made some mistakes, and picked himself back up again. And it meant fanning a spark of creative writing which soon became a flame that brought me great joy.

Disappearing into these stories transported me back to steamy jungle rains, clunky old bikes with tales that could fill libraries of books, tight sibling bonds, and small schools where your youth group leader is also your math teacher. It took me back to the feeling of dread after doing something dumb and realizing you made a mistake. It awakened the feeling of hot tears on freckled cheeks, the rush of wind through hair on a runaway horse, that first crush. It made me remember small class sizes where even the tattletale belonged and the unforgettable innocence of childhood BFFs.

As your kids read this book, I hope it solidifies their belief that the world of third cultures is one in which they belong. This is their tribe and TCKs are their people, whether they’re in Thailand, Hungary, or Uganda.

If you grew up overseas and you read this to your kids, I hope it transports you back to a time of jungle rains, small schools, and BFFs. Mostly, I hope it unlocks your ability to share your own story with your kids, because that’s what they really need to hear.

Book Teaser:

“Sam’s heart pounded like a hot basketball in his ears. If he heard one more snore from his roommate, his anger might just spill out, and there was nothing more embarrassing than crying in fifth grade. Scrunching the covers tighter around his head didn’t do anything to muffle the noise rumbling from the bottom bunk. Being eleven at boarding school was hard enough, let alone sharing a room with Jordan, the only kid at boarding school who snored like a freight train.”

Buckle up for adventures in the jungles of Congo with boarding school kid, Sam! Hold on tight, because 5th grade for Sam includes a run-in with a highly venomous green mamba, a runaway horse, a heart-pounding close call on his dirt bike, and an angry mama pig. His biggest challenge, however, has nothing to do with snakes or pigs. Sam’s greatest challenge is his new roommate, Jordan.

Jordan is making 5th grade impossible. He’s loud and messy, and he ignores Sam. When Sam realizes there may be more to the story, will he decide to keep his distance or give his roommate a chance?

What kids are saying:

“I like the suspense, the love, and disliking feelings.” –Sam, age 11 (Indonesia)

“Readers beware: full of motorcycle chases, green mambas, flying lizards, and the

dreaded banana bread.” – Michael, 8th grade (Cameroon)

“I really loved how the descriptions made me feel like I was with them throughout their adventures! After reading this book I would really like to learn how to ride a dirt bike!” – Eliana, age 11 (El Salvador)

“It was really fun and exciting, and it was encouraging at the perfect time when I needed it.” – Charlie, age 9 (Hungary and Mongolia)

“This book was really great! I could really relate to my own life as a missionary kid and all the adventures I’ve had!” – Kora, age 10 (Colombia)

“It was cool to see what missionary life is like in other countries. Just watch out for banana bread and lizards with parachutes!” – Andrew, age 12 (Indonesia)

“I liked this book because there are a lot of different adventures, and it’s based on real life. It’s an exciting book, and there’s never a dull moment!” – Asher, age 9 (South Africa)

Fun Facts to share with your kids AFTER they’ve read the book:

Yes, the stories are based on true events from either Sam’s childhood or mine.

Yes, I’m one of the characters.

No, I didn’t meet Sam until high school.

Yes, Sam hates bananas that much.

Yes, soccer really was that big of a big deal. Jordan went on to co-found Petrichor Football Association.

Yes, Josh and his red-headed crush ended up together. They live on a happy little farm in Indiana.

Yes, the lizards were fine.

No, I’m not done writing kids’ books. I’m working on Book 2 of the Barefoot Around the World series.

Where to find it:

Head to Amazon now and grab your copy of Sam’s Roommate Disaster! Dive into exciting new tales that resonate with TCKs around the world. For a limited time, enjoy special discounts on b ebooks ($3.99) and paperbacks ($8.99) through August 23rd. Let’s revive storytime and make it an adventure your kids will love!

Follow Raising a Family Overseas on Instagram and Facebook for practical tips and conversations about doing global family life.

Why Public Speaking Skills Make a Difference for the Gospel

She pulled my husband aside and said, “We want him to let more missionaries speak during the service, so don’t screw this up!” The woman didn’t bother whispering despite the referenced person being well within earshot. As a former medical missionary and long-time supporter of ours, she was unashamed and undeterred in her mission to put missionaries in the pulpit when they visited the church during furlough.

We were scheduled to speak during the Sunday morning service and had been given the full sermon time to share about our ministry in Kenya – a rarity under the current pastor. Despite the church’s long history of faithfully supporting missions and enthusiastically listening to missionaries speak when they came through, this particular pastor wasn’t keen on giving missionaries the spotlight.

His rationale? After decades of pastoring, he’d heard far too many terrible missionary presentations, which vastly outnumbered the compelling ones.

The church – as missions-minded as they come – had been trying to convince him that missionaries should get the pulpit and the full sermon time, as they used to when previous pastors had been in charge, but he routinely pushed back, saying they could have a Q&A afterward and take all the time they needed when the service was done.

The pastor wasn’t opposed to missionaries sharing about their ministries around the world. He was opposed to giving them a microphone and too much time on the stage.

The woman’s comment to my husband was a charge to prove that missionaries can speak in churches and not make everyone in the congregation regret giving them the pulpit.

Despite my own zeal for the opposite measure – giving missionaries the chance to speak when the most people are apt to hear them, i.e. during the Sunday morning service – I can’t say I blame anyone for viewing such an occasion as high-risk.

Public speaking isn’t exactly the kind of job skill listed on most missionaries’ resumes. We tend to do well with people in less-formal settings, doing things like Bible studies, community health development projects, discipleship, and children’s ministries. We equip ourselves with skills like translating, evangelism, mentorship, organizational leadership, and, in the case of my husband, medical work.

All of this means that most missionaries aren’t gifted in public speaking. Most of the population doesn’t have the gift either, and many people in Western cultures even fear it. Glossophobia, the fear of public speaking, is very real. Even missionaries who do have a God-given skill in the art of rhetoric probably didn’t become a missionary because they thought, “I’m good at public speaking! I guess I should become a missionary!”

In reality, the vast majority of missionaries felt called to missions first and only later resigned themselves to the public speaking part of the job. And it is a part of the job, not only because supporting churches have a right (and hopefully a genuine interest) in hearing about the ministry they’re financially and prayerfully supporting, but because it’s biblical.

The apostle Paul left on his first missionary journey after the church in Syrian Antioch commissioned him and Barnabas and sent them off. After traveling around Asia Minor, preaching the Gospel and ministering to the churches, Paul and Barnabas “sailed back to Antioch, where they had been committed to the grace of God for the work they had now completed. On arriving there, they gathered the church together and reported all that God had done through them and how he had opened a door of faith to the Gentiles” (Acts 14:26-27, NIV).

I have no doubt that Paul and Barnabas shared a myriad of stories. They talked about intense struggles they faced along the way (including a stoning so severe that Paul was left for dead), but I imagine they focused mostly on sharing stories of people who heard the Good News of Jesus.

Paul and Barnabas knew the importance of testifying to what God was doing around the world. They knew it was vital to report back to those who had sent them, not only for accountability and responsibility’s sake, but for the encouragement of God’s people. They all – we all – need reminders that God is on the move, all around the world, all the time.

The question then becomes: When we as missionaries have the opportunity to return to our sending churches and report “all that God had done,” how do we speak without botching it? Paul and Barnabas were in the minority – they were gifted speakers and were even in the preacher category. Speaking was not a resigned part of the job for them. It was the job.

In fact, in Iconium they “spoke so effectively that a great number of Jews and Greeks believed” (Acts 14:1b). Returning to Antioch and speaking to the believers about what had happened was just one more time they spoke in front of a group of people.

But what about the majority of missionaries, the non-preachers, the I-would-gladly-do-anything-but-speak folks? How do missionaries speak without making pastors and congregants cringe as they sit in the pews? It’s a question we need to take seriously because, of all the responsibilities in our care, testifying to what God is doing around the world is of utmost importance.

We’ve probably all heard stories of bad missionary presentations – when a missionary was boring or long-winded at best – and hoped we wouldn’t be the next person to further cement the impression that missionaries are terrible public speakers.

The only way to combat this is to actually improve in this area, to train ourselves to be presenters and speakers whether we’re only given a few minutes on stage to introduce ourselves or are actually allowed to speak at length. We want our opportunities to talk about what God is doing around the world to be memorable – for all the right reasons.

I have often joked that the tagline of missions should be: “If you’re here, you’re the right person for the job.” Missionaries spend countless time and energy learning skills they never imagined needing, yet we do it for the sake of ministry. We learn to fundraise, learn languages, write grants, oversee renovation projects, plan events, homeschool, and so on. Public speaking is no different. It’s a part of the job, and it’s something we should train ourselves to do no matter how uncomfortable it makes us feel.

Whatever it takes – reading books, watching YouTube videos and TED Talks, practicing in front of a mirror or a trusted friend – we should care about improving our public speaking skills. The goal is not to become the next Paul and Barnabas. The goal is to be welcomed to share “all that God had done” when visiting a sending church because we can be trusted to testify well to the work of God around the world.

Before that Sunday morning when my husband and I were graciously given the full sermon time to speak, we prepared by discussing not only what we wanted to say, but how we wanted to say it. We discussed transitions, tones of voice, pacing of speech, and movements on stage. We were eager to share stories of how God is moving in Kenya, but also hopeful that the presentation of those stories would have an impact.

Later, the pastor who was so reluctant to give us the pulpit expressed that in nearly 50 years of ministry he’d never heard a more effective missionary presentation.

Thank God we didn’t screw it up.

More to the point, thank God that He is truly at work all around the world, including in the hearts and minds of missionaries who find themselves in a position of speaking publicly about Him.

Photo by Irina L on Pixabay

What 7,300 Moons in Africa Taught Me

An outline of banana leaves framed the inky, glittering expanse that August night so long ago. My father raised his face to the moon and asked his father in heaven, “Lord, how many more moons will I witness in the African sky?” It was this farmer’s first night in Cameroon at the beginning of a Bible translation assignment that would span the next several decades of his life. With his homeland behind him, hundreds of moons would cross the Cameroonian sky before he would see an Iowa moon again. I was seven.

I have now witnessed over 7,300 moons in the African skies between my childhood and my adult life. Here are the stories I wish I could go back and tell that farmer the night he stared at the hollow moon and considered the cup he bore.

“Dad, a few weeks from now, under this very moon, my brother will fall deathly ill from malaria, his feverish body folded in a wool blanket. Your desperate prayers will be driven by the crushing story of the two young sons your friends lost to malaria earlier this year. My brother will look small and skinny, and you’ll be scared. Take courage. God will heal your son, and Mom will nurse him back to health. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“Under this tropical moon, Dad, my imagination will spring to life chasing tales and adventures across hundreds of pages in hundreds of books with the help of a kerosene lantern and a healthy diet of Vivaldi playing in the background. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The moon will be weak the night you lay your exhausted head down after pulling lifeless men, women with bodies broken open, and babies with legs twisted backwards out of a horrific taxi accident down the street. Brace yourself. It won’t be the last time you do this. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The light of this moon will peacefully fall on the volcanic mountain ranges around our home each night, and your children will close their eyes to the sound of your and Mom’s voices filling our cement hallway with humble prayers uttered from your room, over each child, each family member, each Cameroonian family member. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“This moon will faithfully mirror the sun night after night from the first word you learn in Nooni till the day you write your first speech in the previously unwritten language. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“By the haze of this equatorial moon, I will memorize the deeply furrowed lines in the faces of my Cameroonian mamas as they rotate roasting ears of corn by the fire of their mud brick kitchens for their white child. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The moon will light up the sky every Friday night when Mom lovingly folds pizza dough on her rickety kitchen table and us kids pick out our favorite movie. You’ll whistle your way out under the stars to fire up the generator for our weekly huddle of six around a 9-inch screen. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The moon will shine a little brighter in your world as you sit in your prayer chair and ponder the gift of Mom. You’ll burst with pride watching her skillfully raise a family in a foreign land, make excellent food from scratch, trek mountaintops in a skirt and boots, navigate impossibly rutted roads like a pro, and work with a people you’ll come to love to write the rules to a language that’s never been written. She’s pretty great, Dad. I’ll learn what a woman can do by watching her. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“A sliver of this moon will dampen sad and heavy the night that our family experiences a Big T trauma that will forever shake our lives. Dad, the sun will come up the next day, but there will be a lot of hard moons after that. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“The rays of this moon will pierce through a burglar-barred window the night that I will find freedom and love in Jesus Christ as a 16-year-old under your roof. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“By the glow of this moon, a boy I met in geometry class will take me hippo-watching along the banks of a muddy river in the Central African Republic. Did you know that hippos grunt so loudly you can hear them a mile downstream? It will be amazing, Dad. You’re really going to like this boy. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“Dad, a few years later, our trusty moon will cast light on a red clay path for that boy from geometry class as he steadies his shaky legs and musters up the courage to knock on your door. He’s going to ask you if he can love me forever. You’ll be glad you said yes. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“This orb will pierce the sky with light and a never-ending message of hope through our family’s most tear-stained bitter nightmares and our sweetest toasted-marshmallow dreams. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“This moon will dance like glitter the night the last verse of scripture is translated into the Nooni language, breaking open access for people to read God’s word in their heart language for the first time. They’re the same people who, four decades earlier, wrote a fervent plea in the language of colonizers for their mother tongue to be developed in written form. God’s grace is sufficient for you.

“Thousands of moons later, I will also look up at the unchanged luminous sphere, but this time it will be framed by the outline of macadamia trees on a farm in KwaZulu Natal. I will have just sung my own babies to sleep and herded my Irish Wolfhound to her blankie. I’ll think of you and Mom, and I’ll start my own mooncount on foreign soil as an adult. Oh, and Dad, the boy from geometry class is the best thing that ever happened to me. God’s grace is sufficient for me.

“Dad, whether it’s your first moon under the unpolluted Cameroonian sky or your eight hundred and thirty-first moon choked out by harmattan winds, you will find that God’s grace is sufficient for you. 7,300 African moons later, I came back to tell you that the moon at this angle is beautiful. It’s going to be an integral part of our family faith story. I’ve wrestled with the same moon, and I’ve found the same thing. God’s grace is not only sufficient, but lavish, for me.”

5 Ways to Communicate with Supporters About a Ministry Transition

I remember facing our first ministry transition and Googling, “How do I tell donors that we’re changing ministries?”

We hadn’t served in our first overseas assignment for very long. There was a lot of uncertainty surrounding our very unexpected change in plans and country of service.

I hardly knew how to process the unforeseen change myself, let alone how to concisely communicate it to our donors. I felt like we had failed them. I was anxious and needed guidance with this intimidating task.

The blank screen that met me told me that no one talks about this.

Maybe that’s because people don’t go to the field expecting a change in their ministry. I certainly didn’t learn about the situation in training – or how to communicate about it.

But it’s more common than you might think. If you plan to serve overseas long term, it is likely that you will face adaptation in your ministry or furlough plans at some point. We expect global life to be fraught with transition, and we know how to pack a bag to exactly 49.5 pounds, but we are usually left feeling vulnerable and ill-prepared to communicate the delicate matter of ministry transition.

If you are in this boat, I’m sorry. I’ve been there. I know the baggy-eyed exhaustion you are facing after a season of debating and seeking God on what to do. I also know the sleepless nights of wondering how your supporters will receive the news.

On the other end, after multiple transitions over the last decade, I also know the staying power of the people on our support team. Their dedication to God’s heart for the nations shouldn’t surprise me anymore, but I guess I never take it for granted.

No matter the ministry transition, you’re probably living in some discomfort and uncertainty. You might have an idea of future ministry plans, but many things are still unclear.

The very public nature of mission work with its fundraising and partnership development exacerbates an already delicate season. You not only have to navigate your own pain and incertitude, you have to promptly, concisely, and clearly communicate your shift to your ministry partners.

Transition is also a time ripe for misunderstanding, which can damage relationships. Uncertainty can be crippling and may leave you unable to communicate with crucial ministry partners, even if you have stewarded these relationships well for many years.

The goal here is to preserve your valuable partner relationships even when it feels daunting. These people are FOR you. There are things you can communicate, even if you’re still living with some uncertainty. As you do so, you will move from a place of ambiguity and non-communication to a place of greater clarity and new confidence.

In the midst of an unclear season, I offer five tools that you can apply when you communicate about your ministry transition.

1. Share what you are praying and learning.
What have you prayed through this transition? What have you learned about God, his heart for people, and the sacrifice he modeled?

When our family made one significant ministry transition, we prayed for God to open our eyes to where he was at work and how we could join him there. We learned that it was extremely important to us to partner with the national church, and we wanted to do this on a deeper level in our next assignment. We shared this with our partners and used it as a guide for discerning where to plug in. Your partners will cherish knowing how and what you have prayed through.

2. Communicate threads of continuity.
People respond well to threads of continuity during transition. What will stay consistent? There is an overarching and unchanging aspect to conducting ministry that remains the same no matter where you are and no matter what you are doing.

What was the original vision, or part of the vision, that launched your family into missions and still propels you today? This is the “why” that transcends your specific job descriptions or geographic assignment. You may need to step back from your specific ministry roles to look at the bigger and more timeless picture of your role in spreading the gospel message, however and wherever you do that.

When we transitioned out of one ministry to another several years ago, we faced a lot of change, including our job descriptions and country assignment. However, we leaned on two significant threads of continuity that we could communicate to our donors. Our long-term passions and skill sets included skills training, education, and discipleship. These ministry aspects are part of who Sam and Anna Danforth are and how we do ministry. They are the “why” beyond our specific job descriptions or location.

Your threads of continuity carry a sense of timelessness that aligns with God’s call to make disciples of all nations and utilize your skill sets. Even though everything around you is changing, this isn’t a total shift in your identity or your approach to missions. It is an affirmation of the timeless call to make Christ known among the nations and of your role in that call.

3. Avoid getting bogged down in details about the past.
Your story is important, and transparency builds trust. But too many details can be confusing and may actually detract from your message. You are moving forward. Communicate what comes next.

You may be dealing with difficult immigration officials or toxic team dynamics that are a major contributing factor in your need for a change. Focus on what is changing in the ministry or your situation, not all the details that led up to your transition.

For example, “We were unable to secure our visas last week as we hoped and will have to return to the United States until further notice.” Share your next step instead of a very long explanation of every detail that went wrong at the immigration office.

Instead of communicating the need for distance from your team, you can share, “We will be meeting with our teammates for vision casting quarterly instead of monthly.” If you are dealing with a private or sensitive medical issue, try, “One of our family members is experiencing some health issues that need to be addressed with a trip back home. This is a difficult time for us, and we ask that you enable us to protect our family privacy during this vulnerable time.”

You can always go back and share more when you are out of the thick of the mess. Remember that anything you share may be shared publicly or forwarded to anyone. Starting with less gives you a chance to deal with your own pain and lack of clarity first.

Do not promise that more details will come. Simply state your current situation or what is coming next. Allow yourself to choose whether you can or should go into more detail later on.

4. You have agency. Own your choice where you can.
If any part of your transition was your choice, own it. Embrace your role as a decision-maker. Avoid blame. This may not always be possible, but where it is, it moves you from a place of helplessness and reactivity to a place of confidence and proactivity in following God’s guidance.

If your sending organization has made a major shift in their vision or policies and you can no longer stay in ministry with them, avoid blame. Instead, talk about how your future sending organization provides the vision or opportunities you need to carry out the mission that God has placed on your heart.

Avoiding blame is especially important when family members are concerned. If one person in your family is dealing with a major issue or health problem that forces a change in ministry, avoid focusing on that family member.

Instead, communicate your decision to pursue family health. For example, “After _____ years on the field, we have determined with our member care team that we need to return to the U.S. for a season to pursue care and resources that are not available in our host country.” Or, “Our family will be moving from our rural station to the capital city so that we can still serve in this cross-cultural context while accessing the resources that our family needs at this time.”

5. Avoid overly detailed promises about future plans.
What is the main thrust of your next assignment? You may feel a deep sense of responsibility to communicate a clear and detailed plan for future ministry. However, your future ministry may not shape up exactly as you plan. It is ok to share general plans for future ministry and how God is leading you to fulfill those plans without making specific promises of future outcomes. Prepare your heart and the hearts of your partners for open-mindedness on how God may shape your future ministry. It might turn out differently than you expect.

For example, instead of sharing, “We will raise up Thai leaders who will show the Jesus film in rural villages,” try saying, “We will work with local people to share the Jesus film in their own communities.” It is possible that the leaders God brings to you will be of other ethnic groups or that they will share the Jesus film in urban areas too, not just in rural villages.

Instead of saying, “I will be working in a soup kitchen three days a week, tutoring high school students two days a week, and teaching Sunday School once a week,” try, “My ministry will include working in a soup kitchen, tutoring students, and teaching Sunday School.” Your time allotment may have to adapt and change according to community needs once you get there.

Avoiding overly detailed language may seem unimportant now, but it could save you heartache and miscommunication in the future. Partners typically latch on to the first news they hear during transition, and it can be difficult to communicate a different plan later on.

For example, when we were starting up a new auto repair ministry, we bounced around the name “Titus Garage” as an idea. The name actually became “Titus Auto Centre.” But years later, even after hundreds of social media posts and dozens of newsletters using the correct name, partners still called it “Titus Garage” because that is what they first heard. You can avoid confusion by refraining from details now.

Unexpected change in ministry is both inevitable and unsettling. These five tools serve as a starting point to help you clearly communicate your timeless call to serve Christ while maintaining your valuable sending relationships, even when you’re not sure what to say. Because nobody needs to stare at a blank screen when there are people on the other side who care about you.