How about a Families of Missionaries Sunday?

Last week I shared Cheryl Savageau and Diane Stortz’s tips on how to start a local Parents of Missionaries group. This week, here’s something else you can do to honor and encourage parents—and other family members—of missionaries whom you know.

Why not set aside a day each year as Families of Missionaries Sunday?

On that day your church could recognize those living Stateside who have sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters, sisters and brothers, and mothers and fathers who are serving abroad. It would be a time to honor them, show your appreciation for their sacrifices, pray for them, and give legitimacy to the grief and concern that naturally comes with having family members live far away, sometimes in non-secure areas.

Not only would this be a time set aside for FOMs in your congregation, but you could also acknowledge family members of missionaries whom you support, regardless of where those families live. And with only a little tweaking, you could include the families of other cross-cultural workers and those of military personnel serving overseas, too.

So what could you do beyond recognition and prayer? Give them a copy of Savageau and Stortz’s Parents of Missionaries: How to Thrive and Stay Connected When Your Children and Grandchildren Serve Cross-Culturally. Give them gift certificates for a nice meal out. Help them put together and ship care packages for their family members abroad. Give grandparents recordable books to send to grandchildren (and cover the shipping, too). Have a card shower for them. (Get the children’s Sunday-school classes involved in this one.) Invite the missionaries to send notes of appreciation that you can present, or have them share by video chat. Sponsor their attendance to a POM retreat, such as the one organized by the Missions Resource Network, or hold your own retreat. Bring in a guest speaker to encourage them and educate others on what they’re experiencing.

The rest is up to your imagination, but I would offer one caveat: Don’t put the family members on stage (or on a pedestal) to share wonderful stories of faith and joy. This is a day to bless them, not the other way around. FOMs already deal with the weight of unrealistic expectations—from others and from themselves— of how they should deal with their emotions. This is not a time to add to that pressure.

And finally, I even have a suggestion for when to have Families of Missionaries Sunday. How about next month? October is Clergy Appreciation Month, and while FOMs aren’t necessarily clergy, that wouldn’t be a bad fit, especially when you understand that honoring their families honors the missionaries, as well . October also presents a great opportunity to rally around FOMs before the arrival of the holidays, a time that can be extremely difficult for them. That’s why Savageau and Stortz include a chapter in their book titled “Happy Holidays? Coping with Holiday Stress.”

Of course, October is just around the corner and maybe you need more time to prepare. Not a problem. The when isn’t so important. The how isn’t so important either. What is important is the who and the why.

(Cheryl Savageau and Diane Stortz, Parents of Missionaries: How to Thrive and Stay Connected when Your Children and Grandchildren Serve Cross-Culturally, Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 2008)

[photo: “Eiffel Thanks,” by Lauren Manning, used under a Creative Commons license]

DIY Groups for Parents of Missionaries: Advice from the Experts

It is easy for Parents of Missionaries to feel isolated. Not only are they separated physically from their children, but they also can feel separated emotionally from those around them. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. One great source of fellowship for them is other Parents of Missionaries.

Cheryl Savageau and Diane Stortz, authors of Parents of Missionaries: How to Thrive and Stay Connected When Your Children and Grandchildren Serve Cross-Culturally, have produced a list of guidelines to help start a POM group. I’m reproducing it here, and the pair are happy for you to do the same. They just ask that you include the copyright line at the end.

Ten Steps to Starting a Local POM Group

1. Ask God to bless and guide your effort as you set out to build a local group. Talk personally to the POMs you know, even if it’s only a few, about your idea for a new group. Invite them to help you get a group going.

2. Set a specific direction for your group. It’s fine to talk about your missionaries, but the purpose of the group is to provide fellowship, support, and education for POMS themselves.

3. Find a professional Christian counselor who understands both family dynamics and the necessity of acknowledging grief as a key component of adjusting to new situations. If the counselor has any missions background or interest, so much the better. Ask the counselor to read Parents of Missionaries and volunteer to help you begin the group and moderate group meetings, especially in the beginning.

4. Introduce your idea to the local church and missions leaders you know to enlist their support and learn of other POMs in your area who might benefit from joining the group.

5. Contact other churches in your area. Mail or e-mail a letter that introduces your idea to church and missions leaders you don’t know and state that you will make follow-up contact in a week. Make follow-up phone calls to letter recipients, asking if they know of POMs who might benefit from joining the group. Ask for help in making contact with those parents.

6. Choose a date, place, and time for the first meeting six weeks in advance and arrange for a meal (either potluck or catered for an affordable fee per person).

7. Contact all the POMs on your list to introduce yourself and the group idea. Invite them to attend the first meeting and bring either a covered dish or the fee for the meal, depending on your plan.

8. Facilitate the meeting by providing name tags and cheerfully set tables. Plan short opening remarks and serve dinner. Allow approximately 45 minutes to an hour for dinner, dessert, and conversation.

9. After dinner, ask POMs to arrange their chairs in a circle without tables or other barriers in the middle. Let POMs introduce themselves and tell in just a few sentences about their missionary children and grandchildren.

10. Lead a discussion on a topic of interest to POMs. Use chapters in the book Parents of Missionaries as a guide. We especially suggest discussing these topics (one per meeting): dealing with grief, learning to use technology, coping with the holidays, staying connected with grandchildren, building strong relationships with young adult children.

Harmonizing Sadness and Joy [—at A Life Overseas]

In 2012 I wrote “Can Grief and Joy Coexist?” In light of our own recent sadness, I’ve adapted it and posted it at A Life Overseas. Go there to read it all (and to hear the song at the end.)

Let me add my voice to those who are praising Pixar’s Inside Out as a great movie for the cross-cultural community. I think we’ll be showing clips of it to expats, repats, and TCKs for a long time to come. (If you’ve not seen it and don’t know what it’s about, I suggest you read Kay Bruner’s discussion of the movie, from a counselor’s point of view.)

I hope that someday Inside Out is made into a Broadway musical. I’d like to hear Sadness and Joy sing a duet at the end.

Dealing with Loss

My wife and son and I saw the film in the theater a few weeks ago. It was rather cathartic, as the past several months have been a time for us, like Riley in the movie, to deal with our emotions—while our emotions learn how to deal with each other. It’s been an especially difficult time for my wife. Her father died in March, and then a brother died last month.

Those events have brought back memories of difficulties we faced while we lived overseas. During our time outside our passport country, we experienced the deaths of my wife’s mother and another brother and of my father.

When you lose loved ones, it can trigger so much emotional confusion. When you live far away from them, a whole other set of complications come into play.

It’s not just losing someone we love, it’s often losing the opportunity to say Goodbye or the ability to grieve together when traveling with the whole family isn’t possible.

When should we go back? Who should make the trip? How long should we stay? What if we don’t meet others’ expectations? What are the rules?

And when sadness comes into the life of the missionary, it is so easy to ask, “Where is my joy?”

Read the rest at A Life Overseas.

[photo: “Golden Hearts on Blue,” by Lea Wiertel, used under a Creative Commons license]

“As Soon as I Fell”: Tumbling off the Missionary Pedestal

41FnzYpGVPL I have two new friends I’d like to introduce you to. Their names are Andy and Kay Bruner.

I first met up with Andy not long ago through email when he helped me with some of the technical details of writing for A Life Overseas. Then, a few weeks later, I got to know his wife, Kay—and got to know Andy better—by reading her memoir As Soon as I Fell.

I’m not usually a fast reader, but I started her book in the afternoon after work, kept going until I fell asleep that night, and grabbed it off my nightstand and finished it when I woke up in the morning.

It’s a fun read, as Kay tells how her family of four (in time, growing to six) moved to Papua New Guinea to learn about village life. Then they relocated to the Solomon Islands, where she and Andy worked to translate the Bible.

On their first trip to their new home in the Solomon Islands, Andy went ahead on a cargo ship, while Kay and their young daughter and son made their way on the torpedo-shaped Ocean Express, a boat that rolled violently in rough seas. After someone gave the children hard-boiled eggs to eat, and the waves grew larger in open water, Kay writes that she made her “first ship-travel resolution.”

Never, ever let anyone eat boiled eggs on a ship. I’ve heard that there are two stages of seasickness. First, you are afraid you will die. Then you are afraid you won’t. When you are on the receiving end of egg vomit from two small children, both stages pretty much hit simultaneously.

This was not the only stomach-churning adventure that they had. In fact, throwing up is something of a common theme in Kay’s writing. As I read through the book, I thought of playing a drinking game, taking a swig (of Maalox, of course) every time someone lost her lunch. The nausea seemed to reach its apex when Kay was pregnant with their third child. While describing the intricacies of prenatal care in an island town, she says that she “was sick as [she] never knew it was possible to be sick.” “The smell of the kitchen cabinets made me throw up,” she writes. “For the next four months, I threw up. Throwing up was my life.”

As Soon as I Fell is also a challenging read. Kay writes candidly about the times when the difficulties were no longer humorous, when reaching a breaking point was not a concern but a reality. She tells how her upbringing had led her to strive for perfection, and when that wasn’t possible, to “perform at any cost.” This was part of what led her to mission work, but it was also what led her to a place where she couldn’t continue any more.

In the middle section of the book, she shares journal entries, giving more day-to-day details of their lives as Bible translators.

Then, returning to a more reflective style of writing, she introduces the book’s third section with

How do you write about something so horrible, so disgusting, that it makes you feel like you’ve been vomited on? Something that makes you feel like a bag of garbage, thrown on the side of the road?

This time, the nausea was worse than seasickness. Kay had already written about the strains on her marriage with Andy, fueled by the unhealthy ways each dealt with stress. Now she had discovered that her husband was addicted to pornography.

My heart breaks for what the two of them went through.

There were the struggles that caused them to leave the field. There was the leaving itself. And there was the difficult task of returning to the leadership of their mission organization and life in the States.

While you can read Kay’s perspective of their experiences in As Soon as I Fell, Andy is open to sharing about it as well. In his blog post “Want to See What a Porn-Addicted Missionary Looks Like?” he tells of the prevalence of pornography among Christians and discusses ways to confront the issue. One is to open up conversations about pornography so that those who need help will be willing to ask for it.

Of his addiction, I would have to paraphrase the English chaplain John Bradford: “But for the grace of God, there goes Craig Thompson.”

After returning to the States, the Bruners began attending a new church. Kay spoke to a pastor there whom she’d not met before. “I wanted to tell him a little of my story,” she writes, “but all I could say was, ‘I’m a missionary,’ before I started sobbing.” That brought tears to my eyes, too.

I am so glad that Kay was able to tell more of her story in As Soon as I Fell. I’m so glad for her honesty and that of her husband. I’m so glad I have two new friends.

Now I hope to meet them some day.

(Kay Bruner, As Soon as I Fell: A Memoir, CreateSpace, 2014)

Mom and Dad, Thanks for Letting Us Go without Letting Go of Us [Repost]

[In honor of Parents’ Day, July 26, I am reposting an open letter from my wife and me to all parents of missionaries. We wrote it during our time serving in Taiwan.]

Dear Mom and Dad:

Thank you for raising us to know about God and his love for the world.

Thank you for letting us go without letting go of us.

Thank you for forgiving late birthday cards.

Thank you for praying for us.

Thank you for giving up time with your grandchildren.

Thank you for your e-mails and letters and calls.

Thank you for sending Barbie Dolls, Tic Tacs, Koolaid, socks, Reader’s Digests, and Lucky Charms cereal.

Thank you for your questions about our new home and work.

Thank you for being patient and understanding when we tell you how exciting it is to live in another part of the world.

Thank you for being patient and understanding when, two days later, we complain about living in that same place.

Thank you for not making us feel selfish for wanting to go. Sometimes we feel that way on our own.

Thank you for listening to our stories about people you’ll never meet with names you can’t pronounce.

Thank you for being our ambassadors.

Thank you for sending clippings from our hometown newspaper.

Thank you for telling us about our neighbors, classmates, and cousins—all the stories that don’t make the news.

Thank you for letting our brothers and sisters stand in for us when we’re too far away to do our part in the family. (They really should get their own letter.)

Thank you for loving us.

Thank you for trusting Jesus to take care of us when you can’t.

Thank you for being proud of us. We are proud of you.

We chose to be a missionary family, not you, and we understand that our move has meant many sacrifices for you. You are not only a part of our family but an invaluable part of our team.

With all our love,

Your children

[photo: “leaving us,” by Petras Gagilas, used under a Creative Commons license]

Encountering God: A Tale of Two Bushes [—at A Life Overseas]

[I’ve written a post for today at A Life Overseas. The introduction is below. Come join me there, finish the post, and stay awhile.]

11432576575_fc04ffc019_z — A fresco by Raphael, in the Vatican Museums

I want to hear God. I want to know his specific will for my life. I want him to tell me what to do next. I want . . .

A Burning Bush

It worked for Moses. When he was on Mt. Horeb and saw the bush that burned but didn’t burn up, he went over to get a closer look. That’s when God spoke to him in an unmistakable, clear, audible voice.

God called him by name.
He announced who he was.
He told Moses the overall plan.
He answered Moses’ questions.
He promised to be with him.
He gave Moses a sign to show that he had sent him.
He revealed his name to him.
He gave him step-by-step directions.
He told him what to expect.
He gave him the ability to perform three miraculous signs.
He promised his help.
And he responded to Moses’ fears by allowing him a helper.

Yeah, a burning bush. That’ll do it.

As a former missionary—oh, forget that—as a believer in God, I’ve faced many times when I’ve wanted him to communicate with me through a miracle. I’ve even been tempted to let my imagination wring meaning out of not uncommon occurrences: The supermarket is selling spagghetti 50% off? Surely that means that God want’s me to move to Italy . . . and I can leave with only half the money raised . . . right?

But when it comes to hearing from God, I think there’s another kind of Old Testament bush that we should look for—

A Broom Bush . . .

Go to A Life Overseas to continue reading.

[photo: “O Adonai,” by Lawrence OP, used under a Creative Commons license]

Steve Saint: Serving with Scars

After hearing the news of Elisabeth Elliot’s death, I went back to the post I had written in 2013 about her and Steve Saint.

That led me to look for an update on Saint, as it’s been three years since he suffered a severe spinal-cord injury, leaving him an “incomplete quadriplegic.” What I found was another “next chapter” video produced last year by his Indigenous Peoples Technology and Education Center (I-TEC).

In it he talks about the value of using our suffering, our scars, to help others who are suffering in the same way. He refers specifically to Christians ministering to those who don’t know about Christ’s love, but his advice can also be applied to Christians sharing honestly with each other, not hiding the hurts they have faced, not “with makeup over all their wounds.”

People want to see Christ followers who have scars where they have wounds, so that they know that, hey, this person has been where I am, and then they trust us. So it’s time to take the makeup off, time to quit buttoning our collars up to our throats and wearing masks. People want to see that we have hurt.

I appreciate Saint’s willingness to show us how he is doing, even when he’s not doing as well as he, or the rest of us, would like. The whole of “God Doesn’t Waste Hurts” is well worth watching.

A few months before this video was posted, Saint spoke at the 2013 Global Missions Health Conference. During his presentation he fell, and used that moment as an opportunity to talk about North American missionaries. As people from the audience rushed to his aid, he said, “Wait a minute. I can do this.” And as he worked to get himself into a chair, he added,

You know, this is like missions. Whenever something happens that we don’t expect, we North Americans always want to run in and fix it. And sometimes what we need to do is we need to just wait and give the people there a chance. . . . I can do this, I just need a chance.

You can watch his complete presentation on YouTube. It’s titled “Let God Write Your Story (But What If We Don’t Like the Next Chapter).”

[photo: “Cracks,” by Jamie Johnson, used under a Creative Commons license]

Elisabeth Elliot, December 21, 1926 – June 15, 2015

[W]e are sinners. And we are buffoons. . . .

It is not the level of our spirituality that we can depend on. It is God and nothing less than God, for the work is God’s and the call is God’s and everything is summoned by Him and to His purposes, the whole scene, the whole mess, the whole package—our bravery and our cowardice, our love and our selfishness, our strengths and our weaknesses.

These words are from Elisabeth Elliot’s 1986 epilogue to her book Through Gates of Splendor. I found them while writing a blog post nearly two years ago about her and Steve Saint. Elliot wrote and said so many notable words. These will never be her best known, but they speak deeply to me.

(Elisabeth Elliot, Through Gates of Splendor, Carol Stream, IL: Tyndale, 1986)

[photo: “Trees, Fog and Bench,” by Wayne Dixon, used under a Creative Commons license]

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