Tag: A Life Overseas

When You Want a Different Life

On November 2, 2016

I live in a tropical paradise. The glorious Indian Ocean is my backdrop—I can see it between the trees at my house, when I run errands around town, and when I watch my daughter’s soccer games. For fun we take a little boat to an uninhabited island and snorkel over colorful coral. The weather is always warm; even in “winter” it rarely goes below 70 degrees at night. We can drive just a few hours to see all the famous animals of Africa. I am surrounded by people who are friendly and generous, eager to help and appreciative of any attempt to speak in Swahili. I can walk down the road to produce stands heaped with fresh pineapples, avocados, mangos, bananas. I live in a 3 bedroom house with a yard big enough for a soccer field for less than what we paid for our tiny, one-bedroom apartment in California. I have a house helper who comes four mornings a week and does my cleaning and laundry.

My children attend a top-quality school, an incredible place that is the best of many worlds. Their teachers are kind and wise Christians, and their classmates come from a wide range of nationalities and religions. Their curriculum includes art, music, computers, Swahili, and swimming. My husband and I work in pastoral training and have the privilege of seeing lightbulbs go off for church leaders as they grasp God’s sovereignty or grace for the first time. We get to do something significant for eternity, and we get to have fun while we do it.

Sound great? Envious? Wish you had my life?

It’s all true.

But things are not always what they seem…..

Click hereto read the rest of this post over at A Life Overseas.

When It All Blows Up In Your Face

By Amy Medina

On September 1, 2016

In Other

Sixteen years ago, my husband and I were all of 24 years old when we arrived in Tanzania for our first term. We had only been married nine months, and we were passionate and dedicated, but incredibly naïve. We had absolutely no idea what we were in for.

We were working in youth ministry in a local church plant, and my husband was coaching sports as a way to get to know young people. One young man came into our lives with a real interest in the gospel. He was earnest and really seemed sincere, and it wasn’t long before he made a profession of faith. Since he was from a religion that is usually opposed to Christianity, we were thrilled.

Over the next year and a half, this young man dominated our time and our prayer updates. He was in our home almost every day.

Then, six weeks before we left the country, we found out he had been regularly stealing money from us.

We returned to the
States utterly shattered. For many
other reasons, it had been an extremely difficult two years. This young man had been a bright spot, and
when that blew up, we were completely demoralized and totally
disillusioned.

By the grace of God, a couple years later we were back in
Tanzania, older, wiser, and a lot more wary.
Yet even the loss of our naiveté didn’t really prepare us for everything
we would see and experience over the next ten years. Like the ugly split of the indigenous church
we attended. Or the married missionary
of multiple children who ran off with a woman from the village where he was
church planting. Or that time when the national
leader who was raised up and supported by missionaries ended up being a
narcissist who abused his team. And the
worst? A local pastor—discipled, installed,
and supported by missionaries for over ten years—was discovered to have an
incestuous relationship with his adult daughter.

Boom. And just like that,
everything worked for, everything believed in, goes up in flames.

Though we weren’t intimately involved in any of those
situations, we were close enough to feel the shockwaves. And
they shook us to our core.

Disbelief.
Despair. Disillusionment. We can handle the loneliness, the
inconveniences, and the bugs that come with missionary life, but not this. Not this. Many missionaries would say that
they would rather be persecuted or deported than have their ministry blow up. How
could this have happened? Where we did
go wrong? Why are we even here? What are we possibly going to tell our
supporters?

Read the rest of this post over atA Life Overseas. Don’t worry–there’s hope at the end!

Missionaries are supposed to suffer….So am I allowed to buy an air conditioner?

By Amy Medina

On July 1, 2016

In Other

It was a very exciting email. The editor of A Life Overseas had contacted me, asking me to be a monthly contributor to their missions website. I had previously had two guest posts published on this site, but I didn’t see myself as an equal to the other writers, many of whom have published books. So it was indeed an honor to be asked. And now my name is there–listed with all those other wonderful missions writers.

So, of course, I’ll be sharing my “A Life Overseas” posts with you, my favorite readers, since it is your encouragement that keeps me writing. The posts for this site are aimed at overseas Christian workers, but there’s often a lot there for anyone. So….[drum roll]….Presenting my first official post as a monthly contributor to “A Life Overseas!”

Missionaries are supposed to suffer….So am I allowed to buy an air conditioner?

“When you’re standing there on the center of that church stage, surrounded by hundreds of people praying for you, plane tickets in hand, earthly possessions packed into bags exactly 49.9 pounds each, you feel ready to suffer. Yes! I am ready to abandon it all!

And then you arrive in your long-awaited country and you realize that in order to host the youth group, you’re going to need a big living room. And in order to get the translation work done, you need electricity, which means you need a generator. And in order to learn the language, you’ll need to hire someone to wash your dishes and help with childcare.

Suddenly, you find yourself living in a bigger house than you lived in your home country, but you are ashamed to put pictures of it on Facebook. You don’t want to admit to your supporters that you spent $1000 on a generator, and heaven forbid people find out that you aren’t doing your own ironing.

Apparently, if you suffer more, you are a better missionary. Or more godly. Probably both.”

Click hereto read the whole article.