Leadership Team
Elizabeth Trotter. Editor-in-chief. After a military childhood, a teenaged Elizabeth crash landed onto American civilian life. When she married her high school sweetheart, her life plan was to be a chemical engineer while he practiced law. Instead, they both fell headlong into youth ministry and spent the next ten years serving the local church. When her husband later decided he wanted to move overseas, Elizabeth didn’t want to join him. After eight years of life in Cambodia, it was hard to imagine living any other way, but covid brought them back to the States earlier than expected. She is now figuring out how to live in her passport country again. Elizabeth blogs at www.trotters41.com and is the co-author of Serving Well: Help for the Wannabe, Newbie, or Weary Cross-cultural Christian Worker.
Marilyn Gardner. Marilyn grew up in Pakistan and as an adult lived in the countries of Pakistan, Egypt, and Iraq. Marilyn has birthed 5 kids on 3 continents and currently lives in Boston, Massachusetts, fifteen minutes from the International Terminal at Logan Airport. She is the author of Between Worlds: Essays on Culture & Belonging and Worlds Apart – A Third Culture Kid’s Journey. She works as a public health nurse in Boston and heads back to the Middle East as much as God allows. She loves God, her family, and her passport in that order. She blogs at: Communicating Across Boundaries.
Jonathan Trotter. Jonathan and his wife Elizabeth served as missionaries in Cambodia from 2012 to 2020, when COVID-19 happened and they relocated to Missouri, USA. Before crossing the Pacific, he served as a youth and worship pastor for ten years and worked as a trauma nurse for three. Before all that, he went to law school, passed the bar, and became a licensed (but not practicing) attorney. In Cambodia, Jonathan provided marriage coaching, pre-marital prep, debriefing, and transition and grief coaching for cross-cultural Christian workers, NGO folks, Cambodians, diplomats, and others. Some were believers and some weren’t. Additionally, he helped lead an international church with folks from about 30 countries. His goal is to gently walk with people, whatever their nationality and background, towards Jesus and the healing and freedom he gives. www.trotters41.com | facebook: trotters41 | twitter: @trotters41
Amy Medina. Amy grew up in an MK’s paradise on the shores of Liberia but went to high school and college in California. Nine months after she married, Amy and her husband were on their way to the coast of Tanzania in East Africa. They spent 16 years teaching third-culture kids and training pastors, and they adopted 4 amazing Tanzanian kids along the way. In 2020, the Medina family relocated back to California and Amy is now serving with ReachGlobal as a pre-field coach to newly accepted missionaries. Amy believes the best conversations happen in the kitchen and is always thrilled when her dining room table is full of guests. Amy blogs at Not Home Yet, and you can find her on Facebook or Twitter @AmyEMedina.
Andy Bruner. IT Specialist. Andy is a TCK who spent varying lengths of time growing up in Nepal, Papua New Guinea and Waxhaw, NC. He met his wife Kay at Bryan College and off they went in 1993 to the Solomon Islands to help the Arosi people translate the New Testament which was dedicated in 2005. Since 2007 he has been working as the finance systems manager for SIL Int’l in Dallas, TX.
Contributors
Abigail Follows. Abigail once asked God to make her a missionary. She promptly forgot her request, but God didn’t! As a result, Abigail and her newlywed husband Joshua launched to India in 2010, where they ate with their hands, hiked the Himalayas, and served as friendship evangelists. In 2018, they and their two energetic kids packed up and moved to a new continent, where they still serve. Abigail is the author of Hidden Song of the Himalayas: Memoir of a Gospel Seed Sower in the Mountains of India, and Whatsoever Thoughts, a newsletter inspired by Philippians 4:8.
Amy Young. Life enthusiast. Author. Sports lover. Jesus follower. Equipper of cross-cultural workers. Amy is the founder of Global Trellis, co-founder of Velvet Ashes, hosts reading challenges at The Messy Middle, and is the author of five books (Looming Transitions, Love, Amy, Enjoying Newsletters, Getting Started, and Connected.)
Craig Thompson. Craig and his wife Karen, along with their five children, served as missionaries in Taipei, Taiwan, for ten years before returning to southwest Missouri. His experiences, as well as conversations with other cross-cultural workers, have made him more and more interested in member care and the process of transitioning between cultures. Craig blogs at ClearingCustoms.net.
Beth Barthelemy. Beth grew up in Wisconsin, and has made home all around the world, including the Middle East, Taiwan, and for the past six years, South Africa, where she and her husband are involved in theological education and discipleship. She is mother to four daughters, lover of the outdoors, an avid reader, and a homebody at heart. Most of her time is spent writing, homeschooling, and cultivating beauty wherever she can. You can find her online at bethbarthelemy.com and on Instagram as bethbarthelemy.
Anna Glenn. Anna Glenn served as an agricultural missionary with her husband in Liberia, West Africa from 2016-2022. She now works back in her home state of Maryland doing agriculture education and youth development while staying involved with local and international missions. Currently her writing focuses on her experiences integrating back into the American culture, reflections on her time in missions, and advocacy for better missionary care and support.
Anita Rahma. Anita’s high school years were spent as an American TCK in the Philippines. For the past decade, Anita and her husband and two boys have lived and served in a slum in Indonesia. She enjoys learning piano, playing in the rain, and devouring Amy Carmichael books. She is the author of Beyond Our Walls: Finding Jesus in the Slums of Jakarta. You can learn more about the organization they serve with at servantsasia.org.
Emmy Lou Lopez. In the icy winter of 2008, Emmy and her husband Cole moved to Afghanistan, where they began learning life and language. After their first child was born, they moved to a more conservative corner of Afghanistan, where Emmy began wearing a burqa and learning yet another language. Their time in Afghanistan stretched into nearly seven years before they transitioned to the Arab Gulf, where they have been residing since 2015. Emmy spends much of her time with Afghan and Pakistani women. She loves mountain gazing, bird watching, and early morning runs. Emmy believes that openness about the darker aspects of global work deserves more attention, but is best served up with a healthy dose of humor and self-reflection.
Tanya Crossman. Tanya spent most of her childhood as a local in Australia and most of her adulthood as an expat in China (with stops in the U.S. and Cambodia). Along the way she unexpectedly turned into an expert on millennial TCKs, wrote a book, and starting travelling the world to speak on her favourite topic: why TCKs are awesome and how to serve them well. After completing an MDiv in Australia, she recently got married (to a TCK) and moved back to Beijing. Now she’s enjoying rediscovering everything she loves about China. She can be found online far too often, usually on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and occasionally at her website.
Alyson Rockhold. Alyson and her husband served as missionaries in Tanzania, Haiti, and Zambia for a combined total of 4 years. She used her Physician Assistant and Public Health degrees overseas. When Covid forced her back to Houston, TX, she pivoted careers and started a ghostwriting business. She loves helping people achieve their book-writing dreams. Alyson stays connected to Tanzania through serving on the board of the Divine Mercy Centre, a ministry that feeds and houses the elderly in Tanzania. You can click here to sign up for her encouraging, monthly newsletter and get a free copy of “Be Still,” her 7-day devotional.
Lilly Rivera. Lilly is a happy wife and mama to three brave TCKs. Originally from Latin America, she has moved cross-culturally many times. Her family has been living in the Middle East for six years, and she is currently pursuing accreditation in Christian counseling. Lilly is passionate about books, being outdoors — preferably near a lake or the ocean — and welcoming people into her home.
Abby Alleman. Abigail is a lover of story. She has endured many sorrows but has experienced the true joy of overcoming as God redeems her pain. Out of this place she writes of the good and hard of her overseas life and her current life in the Chicago area where she has just moved to minister to refugees. She has three rapidly growing children, an exceedingly patient husband, and one amazing God whom she adores—they are the beauty and sustaining strength of her life on this long road Home. She blogs her life and love of story at Abigail Alleman.
Julie Jean Francis. Julie has lived as an alien and stranger in Southeast Asia since 2012 among a large, unreached people group (less than 1% Christian) with her only teammate and husband of 15 years. Together they raise their many Third Culture Kids. She likes drinking tea, ministering to children, and talking about loneliness, the power of the Word, and the faithfulness of God in hard times. Julie is the author of Bowing Low: Rejecting the Idols Around Us to Worship the Living God and its companion Bible study. You can find her online here.
Anna Danforth. Anna’s cross-cultural journey began on her first day of kindergarten as the only non-French speaker in a class full of Quebecois kids. She moved to Cameroon at age 7 and later met her high school sweetheart, Sam, in Geometry class at Rain Forest International School. Anna and Sam have spent the last decade in southern Africa and currently live on a fruit tree and macadamia farm with their two kids, some dogs, cats, a horse, and best friends. Anna drew on her experiences as a TCK, missionary, and teacher at the Africa Orientation Course to write Raising a Family Overseas and to provide training on Ethical Image Sharing as a Global Citizen. You can find her online at Facebook, Instagram, and An
Past Contributors
Founders
Laura Parker. As a child, Laura wanted to be Amy Carmichael, and in college, she wanted to be an English teacher living in an African hut. When her first attempt at overseas missions became an epic failure, lasting three months instead of several years, she began to think that foreign ministry was perhaps more difficult than the books made it out to be. This was a truth made clear during her second stint living overseas, this time with three small children, in Southeast Asia. As a freelance writer and avid blogger, Laura wrote gritty and honest about her time in the field, building a community of missionaries hungry for authenticity about the difficulties of living overseas. In addition to writing for her personal blog, Laura has also been a freelance writer and photographer for Compassion International and has been published in several other online spaces. You can follow her on twitter at @MrsLauraParker.
Angie Washington. Angie recently returned to the United States after living in Bolivia for over a decade doing various missionary works. She and Laura met through their blogs many years ago. The online connection grew into a friendship. ‘A Life Overseas’ was born from the visionary foresight of Laura and the organizational strength of Angie. If you would like to hear more about re-entry and what life looks like after a life overseas you can find Angie on her blog: www.angiewashington.wordpress.com, as well as on Facebook: atangie, Twitter: @atangie, and Instagram: @photosangie.
This is a wonderful forum with superb content. I grew up as an MK after WWII (China, Ceylon). Later after a personal struggle, not wanting to be a missionary, I surrendered. lisaenqvistwriter.com
I’m writing about that now in a book I might call “The Captain’s Daughter”. My dad had bought a former minesweeper he rebuilt to be a Gospel Ship. That ship separated our family for months at a time, forcing us together for school holidays in its cramped cabins. No joyride.
This forum is rich with the experiences of others who have gone through – or are going through – the multiple mix of joys and sorrows in a life overseas.
I’m glad I found you. Thanks for creating this!