by Jim and Judy Bangsund
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Missionaries to Tanzania (East Africa)

Missionaries are really not greatly different from you or anyone else you know. I hope this does not come as a disillusionment to you -- and it probably will not if you know any real missionaries. Missionaries have all of the same interests, concerns, hope, worries, and, yes, even petty attitudes and jealousies, as anyone else.

There is one major difference. They usually live far away from their home culture. At least we do. And this difference brings with it some particular situations, challenges and needs.

In what follows, we will share with you four general areas in which you can pray for us and for others who serve in overseas work. These areas are

• Personal
• Family
• National Church
• Missionary Community

Personal. Personal needs will be much the same as your own. Pray that we:

• Make time for reading of scripture, personal reflection and prayer each day, usually in the face of a hectic schedule
• Tend to personal health needs, including exercise, so as to always be part of the solution and not part of the problem
• Deal effectively with feelings of anger, jealousy, frustration, depression -- also so as to be part of the solution and not part of the problem
• Keep up to date in one's professional skills, often in settings where resources are limited
  

Family. Two areas are usually of greatest concern: children and parents. Pray with us as we seek to:

• Keep up healthy, loving relationships between husbands and wives, when each one is often heavily involved in different activities (sound familiar??)
• Find a good source of medical care, especially for children
• Find good schools or other educational opportunities (such as home schooling) for children
• Help our younger children learn that their new culture is different, not wrong.
• Help our older children, as they return to the States for college or jobs, likewise to see that American culture is "different, not wrong." America looks far different to one who is raised overseas and then encounters "home" as a new arrival. Daughter Naomi: "We had more culture shock coming back here than we did learning to live there."
• Keep in touch with family at home (many missionaries have e-mail these days, but many others do not)
• Fulfill responsibilities toward aging parents -- while at the same time avoid becoming immobilized by fear about their situations

And, although the above is concerned primarily with spouses and children, don't forget to pray for the many single missionaries whose situations are in some ways very similar, but in others quite different.

National Church. By this, I mean the church and its leadership in the country in which one is serving. These days, missionaries are less and less often in positions of leadership and decision making. And this is as it should be. Missionaries are more and more often providing assistance and specific skills while working under a national church leader. Therefore, pray that we:

• Build relationships of trust and understanding with people of cultures which are sometimes very different
• Learn that usually (though not always), other cultural institutional practices are merely different, not wrong. (It is not only our children who need to learn this -- again and again and again.)
• Overcome frustration at sometimes widely differing views of timeliness
• Bring a clear statement of the Gospel as Good News -- whether we are teachers, doctors, agriculturalists, house parents, etc.

Missionary Community. Missionary communities are often like small towns -- with all of the same strengths and weaknesses. We love to get together because it is less and less frequent for to live in "missionary compounds" (and this also is as it should be).. We raise some pretty amazing children. But we also gossip, become jealous, and in general give every sign of being quite human. Pray that we:

• Always get along
• Provide a witness of loving community to those around us
• Overcome feelings of jealousy when another missionary or missionary family seems to get more credit, attention or favor
• Live in ways which are mutually supportive of one another, but which also turn outward to the culture in which we live

"And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him."                  Colossians 3:17