What Missionaries Want Their Friends Back "Home" to Know (Especially before Their Trip to Visit) Part 1

Photo by tookapic


This post has been brewing in the back of my mind all month as Raúl and I have prepared to head northward. While we are incredibly excited, and I don’t think my husband has even started pondering the unique challenges this trip will pose for him as someone who doesn’t speak English, I have started turning over in my head how I can be better about interacting and communicating with people we dearly love who extend so much love and grace to us. When I sat down to write about this subject, pages upon pages poured onto my computer screen, so today’s post will start a small series.

While I go into this a bit further on, I think there can often be a barrier between supporters and passport country friends and the missionaries they support. While it may not be intentional and some of it may be based on living in two very different worlds and cultures, I think it is a shame that interactions can remain so superficial with each party playing only the role they feel expected to play. But, even with saying that, I can readily admit that personally it can be more comfortable or just easier to be what is expected and not push for something deeper. I write this post as a means of preparing the runway for our social landing and purposefully exposing my heart so that when I see these dear ones and look them in the eye, they have perhaps already had a chance to peek into my thoughts (and I have already taken a step forward in being more vulnerable).

In considering this concept, I did do some polling of some fellow missionaries, and I will share some of their unique perspectives in the next part of this series. I will also say that many of these thoughts are specific to a person’s season. You have missionaries who are starting out and getting a feel for their new culture and language and what it means to carry out their mission. You have missionaries who are in a season of growth and harvest and are bursting with all of their goals and testimonies of how God is moving. You have missionaries who are in a season of rest or transition who don’t have their next step figured out or who need to take a breather because they’ve been overwhelmed in some capacity. You have missionaries who have been on the field forever who feel like their sense of home is now in their mission country, and you have missionaries who have been on the field a long time who have a lot of long-term lack of internal care compounding into crisis. I am going to use “we” as I’m speaking, and I will try to cover as many bases as I can, but this won’t be the exhaustive list on the subject, and I most certainly cannot speak for all missionaries. If you are a missionary and have differing opinions or something else to add, please feel free to do so in the comments! Also, if you are someone who supports a missionary or has a missionary friend, please feel free to add any thoughts or questions you may have in the comments as well. Overall, please approach this post with grace. I want to be transparent but also as considerate and honorable as possible.


Some of My Personal Thoughts in This Season:


Photo by Ron Porter

1) The trap of the pedestal.
It is often a trend for those who send to put those who go on some kind of a spiritual pedestal. The comment many of us receive upon returning to our passport countries (in my case, the US) is, “You’re so amazing! I could never do what you do.” While I can recognize that the heart behind that kind of comment is one of wanting to validate our very real sacrifices and extend encouragement, it’s not my favorite kind of comment. Let me explain why: For any of us humans to be fully loved, we have to be fully known (which implicates letting ourselves be vulnerable and honest). When someone puts us on a pedestal, we can feel boxed in to cater to your expectations that we are hyper spiritual. While that kind of comment is sweet and well-meaning, and I’d be lying if I said that it doesn’t occasionally perk up the ego, it actually forms a barrier for us to have real communication and connection as flawed human beings. My friends, we may live in another country, but we are very human. My husband and I fight sometimes. We don’t always remember to pray together. We go through seasons where our Bible reading is not what it should be. We sometimes get frustrated and cuss. We don’t always feel like we know what we’re doing in ministry. We can go through bouts of depression or anger. We don’t always have a great attitude, and we don’t always feel overwhelming love for the people we are dealing with on a regular basis. And, the truth of the matter is that we need you to know that about us in order to love us well. However, the problem is that when we may try to answer your endearing comment with, “No, we’re really human just like you. What you do and who you are is also so important. We really aren’t amazing. We struggle,” is that it can often turn into a cringe-worthy back and forth of who can be more self-deprecating (and in the end, no real connection is made).

Here’s the take-away:
Missionaries desperately need safe people. We are often giving so much of ourselves emotionally that we hunger for deep connection with other people. That kind of connection and understanding can be really hard to encounter within the culture we are trying to reach. Thus, we often crave it when we return to our home culture. But, in order to truly feel loved, we need you to be safe and trustworthy enough to get to know our ugly. And that starts by not putting us on a pedestal and letting us be real. My missionary friend, Zolla, puts it like this, “More than anything, I want people to really take the time to listen to the stories and celebrate with me all that God is doing, without idolizing the mission or the missionaries.”

2) “What do you do?”
My most dreaded question is “What do you do?” Hear me out—this is a valid question. We recognize that there are people pouring their hard-earned finances into our lives, and they absolutely have a right to expect us to be good stewards and to be accountable. This is also a very common conversation starter for hearing about our ministry. The reason why it trips me up is that I (and many other missionaries) have often struggled with trying to validate myself with what I do in ministry. I often pressure myself with whether I am doing enough, giving enough, am busy enough, have enough to show for my life here, etc. So, when this question gets asked, I often project my own internal pressures onto the expectations of the other person. My brain frantically searches for anything tangible that I can use to justify my existence in Honduras. But, the truth of the matter is that so much of our ministry is actually who we are and in the relationships we develop. We often honestly don’t even pick up on when we’re doing the most important parts of “ministry” because we’re just listening to someone’s problems or counseling a young couple or providing a sense of home for someone whose parents don’t pay them any attention. And, those kinds of things, while I believe them to be the most transformative long-term and the most reflective of genuine discipleship, are not measurable. A lot of the kind of work that produces a real conversion isn’t done in something programmed. These aren’t numbers. They’re people with real doubts and problems and hurts. When I get asked what I do, I feel like I need to be able to quantify with statistics or numbers or talk about programs that fit in nice little compartments we call “ministry.”

In general, while I will always put my heart and soul into being a good steward, I am having to learn that ministry is who I am much more so than what I do. The take-away? I’m not saying not to ask this question though I prefer more so, “What is God doing in your life and ministry lately?” or “What is God showing you about Himself?” or “How do you feel like you’re growing and how is that affecting your ministry?”. I realize that my internal response is related to my own personal insecurities, but I would recommend having grace when what I share is more so about who we have relationship with, the things that God is speaking to us, and how we are growing in learning how to love others like Jesus. In short, I want to believe that if you know who I am, that Christ in me will be worth believing in, praying for, and investing in even more so than because of what I do.


Photo by Greg Rosenke


3) Walking the cultural tightrope.
In the same way that my husband and I genuinely want to connect with you, we also want to be able to connect and have real relationships with Hondurans. In the same way that putting us on a pedestal creates a barrier for us, our lifestyle can create a barrier of inapproachability with Hondurans in some cases if we’re not careful. We are always walking a tightrope of trying to find God’s leading for us personally while juggling the expectations from two very different cultures. As missionaries, we want you to know that we personally aren’t living in a mud hut in the middle of a jungle (though that’s more than awesome if that’s what someone is called to). We do live in the capital city of Honduras, so we actually have more available here in terms of conveniences, malls, restaurants, etc. than my little hometown has in West Virginia. With that said, our personal living situation may look very different than what it would if we lived in the States in some cases. We live in a typical Honduran-style, cinder block house that we rent. We do not have heat or air conditioning. We cook with a gas stove. We wash all of our clothes by hand. We wash dishes in our pila (outdoor cistern with a cement washboard). We don’t have hot water, and we bathe from a bucket every day. Because we live in a somewhat wooded area, we always have three or four species of ants crawling over everything, and we battle mice, ticks, cockroaches, and scorpions on a regular basis. We have neighbors all around us who have some seriously interesting interpretation of boundaries that leave my introvert nerves fried sometimes. I’d be lying if I said I enjoyed all aspects of this kind of living, but when I moved to Honduras, I purposed in my heart that I wanted to live as close to the people as possible.

Every person and mission will be different, and I’ll be the first to say that when I’m considering having kids, I’m already asking God if some aspects of this time-consuming maintenance of life needs to change. But, I am keenly aware even with how we live now as to how much of a barrier to real community having a lavish lifestyle (even by Honduran standards) can be. It all depends on the type of population you want to reach. Paul talks about being all things to all people so that the message of Jesus can be best received. It is wildly stressful to gracefully address the cultural expectations of both sides of our lives or even both of our families. We come from different socioeconomic backgrounds, my husband and I. I struggle often with wanting to stray too far to one end or the other because of not being able to deal with disappointing someone or not being able to hear God’s voice because all of the other contradicting voices are constantly in my face.

Let me give you a practical example: For many North Americans, even missionaries, it’s outrageous that we don’t have heated water for showers much less running water in our shower. For many people, that is the bare minimum of human necessity for sanity (dudes, I totally get it, and this girl is counting down the days to getting a hot shower in the US). But, when my husband heats water up on the stove to put into a bucket to bathe with, his friends (and sometimes family members) come over and make fun of him like he’s less of a man because he’s using warm water to bathe instead of just bathing with cold water. Can you see how our life is a constant contradiction? If we drive a 2004 SUV, for many North Americans, our car is too old and is an unsafe breakdown waiting to happen (aka we should be better at raising funds). But, for many Hondurans, all of the sudden we must think we’re better than everyone else if we’re driving such a vehicle. We. Never. Please. Everyone. The other aspect of this on a godly, humble level is—who am I to say that I cannot live like my Honduran brother or sister can? Who am I to say that I have to have a higher standard of living? What makes me somehow more deserving or entitled to such a lifestyle? At the same time, how can we best identify with our Honduran brothers and sisters while not perpetuating neither a poverty mindset nor a prosperity gospel? It’s a complicated place to be, and I know it will only be a million times more compounded when we have kids.

The take-way I want to give you is this: We so adore your desire for us to be safe and healthy. That is so loving on your part. But, please give us the space and freedom to discern with the Holy Spirit how our lifestyle needs to look. I am a problem solver by nature, so I understand the desire to try to find ways for us to get rid of our ants and to heat up hot water to bathe. It’s your way of participating in the day-to-day of our lives, so I sincerely applaud that. The heart behind wanting to solve some of the unique challenges we live with is one of empathy. But, what we’d really like for you to understand is that we’ve learned that if our Honduran brothers and sisters can do it, we can learn to do it too. And, before jumping in to give us all of the suggestions, the best posture of the heart I can recommend is seeking to learn and ask questions. Within the missionary community, we often talk about how much of a *facepalm* it can be when a supporter or a team decides that we need something that fits into the North American lifestyle and sends money for that one specific thing (when we know that we can live without that thing but really truly need something else). If you really feel like God is leading you to give us money for something specific, feel free to talk through it with us. I recognize that God may be wanting to love us extravagantly with something that we have trouble receiving or would never seek for ourselves. Just know that sometimes we know the situation on the field more intimately than someone who doesn’t live here, and we are always conscious in the backs of our minds what our lifestyle says to our supporters in terms of our being good or bad stewards, to our Honduran brothers and sisters here who often struggle with feeling like Jesus loves us more because it supposedly shows in our comparable wealth, and even to our families who perhaps didn’t raise us expecting or demanding the same things. If you pray for us, also know that praying that we would have the strength to be true to God’s leading in the face of so much contradictory pressures is so so valuable.


Photo by Neonbrand


4) Ministerial hurt.
Many of us missionaries have experienced some measure of church or ministerial hurt, and that hurt can often put us on guard when we go back to our church communities in the States. Whether it’s due to cross-cultural misunderstandings or a lack maturity or the ever-shameful elbowing for position and hierarchical competition in ministry, many of us have been through the ringer in ministerial environments. Speaking for myself, I have felt defensive mostly because I have been in situations where I haven’t been well-received when I’ve shared my whole self, or I have felt like the Body of Christ as used me and discarded me. So, as much as I want to steer away from defining myself by what I do and toward sharing more of who I am and what I’m passionate about, there is also a fierce, coursing fear that who I am even within the communities of people who have already believed in me or supported me at some point in time won’t be enough and will be rejected.

The take-away here is just to be lovingly patient and seek to be a safe person. Many missionaries struggle with sharing their problems with their home church environments because they may be afraid of being yanked from the mission field for being flawed or having needs, or they fear being judged (because they’ve been put on a pedestal and had unrealistic expectations placed upon them). In order to be a safe person who we can learn to trust, we need to see that you’re a real person with real flaws who receives God’s grace for yourself and extends God’s grace to us. We need to see that you can own your own struggles and can respond without even an expression of shock or dismay when we reveal ours.

One of the things I have learned from Alvin Anderson is that if a young person here is talking to you and sharing about how they brutally murdered someone, you cannot dare flinch or have a facial expression of fear or disgust because if you do, you will convey to that person that his or her sin is greater than God’s capacity to forgive. The same works for us missionaries. If we entrust you with the knowledge that our finances are in shambles or we feel like horrible parents because our child was sexually abused and we never saw it coming, that our marriage is in need of counseling, or our compassion fatigue is eating us alive, we desperately need to see the love and acceptance of Jesus in your reaction. And the basis of even getting to that point of being that honest is tearing down the barriers in connection and understanding each other as the flawed human beings we are. We need to know we walk on the same road together of needing God’s unfailing grace and mercy. And, we need restoration and reconciliation to be at the forefront of how you deal with us.

5) The most lacking resource is often relationships.
A lot of times the assumption is that the greatest resource that is lacking is money, and while money undoubtedly has its place, I have found personally that what has often most lacked for me is relationship. Before moving to Honduras, I truly expected to have deep friendships with Hondurans. While I do have Honduran friends who I love dearly, I have encountered that there is definite difficulty in navigating many cultural aspects. In the same way that we don’t want you to avoid us because you may think we’ll ask you for money (at least on my end, I won’t), our Honduran friends often avoid us because they’re afraid that we’ll interpret their sharing of problems as an insinuation that we need to rescue them financially. Or, on the flipside, we end up avoiding people or having to be direct in a way that isn’t always received well when we start to feel like people stop treating us like friends and start treating us like a bank.

Another aspect that is a challenge is the difference in culture. In the US, we often make plans with people days before, and take turns mutually inviting each other over or to spend time together. In Honduras, they are not planners for the most part. They are much more spontaneous about socialization. They expect people to just drop by out of the blue with no warning. That, personally, drives me nuts, so I have a hard time doing that to others. But, that’s how most people socialize here.

We also live in a country that has a huge population of young people. There is a lot of cyclical babies raising babies, and many many families are broken. So, many people didn’t grow up learning to trust anyone—even their own family members. And, for that and many other reasons, they haven’t always learned what it means to be a dependable friend. If you’re always on the defensive, expecting everyone to hurt you, you are more likely to look out for #1 instead of seeking to be loyal to someone else even in the midst of hard conversations and possible misunderstandings. On the contrary, I grew up in a home with a family who was always stable and were always my most constant friends and allies in everything (still are). My immediate family has such a sense of loyalty, responsibility, and consideration of others ingrained in us that it is has been very hard for me to not want to expect that of others. This makes it terribly hard for me deal on a constant basis with the looseness of a sense of commitment here.

The Honduran culture is much slower than US culture and less based on productivity and efficiency. It also has some similarities to the US culture of the South in that keeping up appearances, fulfilling familial and religious obligations, and living as a social village are all important although that manifests in ways that are very different than they would in the South, I think. There is a very different interpretation of what commitment is in some cases, and that is across the board. That shows in the sense of time—nothing starts on time here and being late is often part of the social norm. That shows in dependability even in business—someone will say that your car will be fixed by Tuesday or that your accountant reports will be done by Friday or that they’ll have your shelf built by Monday, and you might as well assume that it will be done by the next day if not a week later so as not to be constantly angry and disappointed. And, this has presented some serious challenges within ministry because you can start out counting on someone because they’ve given their word and then feel at a loss when there is no follow through. You can have all the vision in the world, but if you don’t have dependable people to come alongside you to carry out that vision, it doesn’t amount to much.

Overall, we want to love people well here, and we also need to receive love. There is a learning curve in learning how the people of another culture best receive love, and there is also some discernment involved in knowing when it’s appropriate to accept and assimilate to cultural expectations, and when it’s appropriate to challenge the locals to consider their customs with more of a Kingdom of Heaven mindset. It’s a whole other tightrope to walk, fraught with many potential misunderstandings. I have never wanted to have an us and them mentality with Hondurans. I have always hoped to have a community as equals who both give and receive, who both teach and learn. But, Hondurans often don’t know what to do with that hope because they are used to hierarchy within church and because a lot of missions and missionaries have maintained themselves as the perpetual sole givers and teachers. Like I said, to each his own according to God’s leading, but developing those real relationships often means hurdling some of these expectations.

My take-away from this for you is just to be aware of how the culture is often its own character in the story of your missionary friends. When you’re asking us why some program hasn’t started or what happened to the vision we had in mind a year ago, please also ask us how the culture and our relationships within the culture are contributing to what is or isn’t moving forward. Some things are so nuanced, and life and the cultural mentalities we encounter really don’t look the same as they necessarily do in our passport countries. Also, please know that we may be coming to you with hearts that are empty, bones that are dry, and the great emotional need to be loved back to life by you because of the difficulties we face in cultivating true relationships within our mission country. Not everyone has had that experience, so I’ll be the first to say that this one has been personal to me, but in general, it’s good to ask your missionaries how their relationships are going with their own families, with their fellow missionaries, and with the local people with whom they are building community.



Photo by Gerd Altmann

6) Compassion fatigue is real.
I don’t know how else to say it. After reading all of the above, I feel like it should be obvious some of the reasons why. The needs are constant and very present every day. Relationships here are hard to develop. Safe people can sometimes be few. Learning to have boundaries and how to guard your heart doesn’t always come easily. So, my message here is just that your love and generosity and kindness and understanding when we are Stateside is overwhelming and healing in the best way. Just know that we may end up as a puddle at your feet because it’s been a while since someone cooked for us or worried about the desires of our heart. Please don’t ever underestimate the power your love has to restore us and re-equip us to go back and minister to others.

7) Sharing with honor.
It’s very hard to know how to find a balance in what we share with you. We love the country where we live. We’re aware that it presents some unique challenges, but we don’t live a miserable life. We also don’t feel unsafe despite what press surrounding our mission nation may report. We want to be honest about our lives here, but we also don’t want to perpetuate a feeling that our passport country is better than our mission country or to perpetuate the idea that the nation where we live is only a place of hardship and not one of joy. Life is life no matter where we are, and souls are souls of value regardless of nationality. In order to feel like we can share the most transparent stories with you—good or hard—we need to be secure that you are someone who can listen without judgment or constant comparison and can help us honor the nation and people we so love.

8) We have heart’s desires.
A lot of times people assume that since we made the hard decision to leave our passport country to be missionaries that we just continue being so saintly that we don’t ever think about what we want in life as humans. That simply just isn’t true. Just like you, we wrestle with our heart’s desires. Sometimes, those are desires that God will say yes to and will lead us to have at some point in time, but not always. Just like you, we have to surrender on a regular basis the desires we have and let God have the last word. It’s not that we’re superhuman and don’t have the desire to get married or own a home or be financially secure or start a small business or get our doctorate. It’s just that we decide to place those desires in God’s hands and to walk the road of obedience to His will above our own desires. And, that is something that any Christian can do, not just a missionary. (As a side note, it is the biggest blessing in the world to encounter someone who cares about our heart’s desires.)


Photo by Jon Tyson



9) We love good questions.
We really don’t mind sharing, and we do feel like we have a unique perspective to offer in anything from cooking to politics, from education to entertainment. It can be really refreshing to answer questions that are either emotionally deeper or that have nothing at all to do with our life and work as a missionary.

10) Our life is weird, but we love it.
Although we may struggle with the balance of which stories to tell or how to best portray both the good and the hard, the bottom line is that we do really love who we get to be where we live. I moved to Honduras when I was 22. I have never known what independent (after college) adulthood is in the States. I’ve never bought a home or had a normal 8-5 job or had a car payment. And, part of me loves that. I’ve always wanted to have a unique life and to find special experiences to live and stories to tell. As a missionary, there is so much flexibility in what I get to do and learn and tackle, and it can be a joy to live in a country where the pace is not a breakneck speed. There are times when I may be tired and try to convince myself that living in the US would be better, but the truth is that visiting the US and living in the US are two very different things. And, there are definite things that I enjoy about living in Honduras that I would miss if I lived in the States.

11) Sometimes, the sacrifices don’t feel worth it, but we stay because we know we’re called, and we choose obedience.
This concept can be likened to a marriage. There will be seasons that are just hard or full of hurt or are a battle to walk through, but if you give up too quickly, you miss the beauty of emerging on the other side and seeing God’s faithfulness and how His plans come to fruition. I’m not knocking people that feel like God is calling them to leave the mission field. Obedience is always the best path to walk. But, for those of us who are called to stay, we do so with the hope and faith that whatever season we are in, God is working for the good of His Kingdom and the good of our growth.

12) The administrative aspect of immigration and managing taxes for two countries is a job in and of itself.
Ya’ll, this stuff is the WORST. My husband is technically an immigrant to the US. I am an immigrant to Honduras. We both pay taxes to the appropriate country where we receive the income, and we’re constantly navigating international immigration and tax law along with non-profit obligations in Honduras. I never thought I’d need two lawyers and two accountants, one for each country, but here we are. It is overwhelming, and I constantly feel like I’m going to drop the ball on something. So, on your end, if you’re praying for us, keeping these little details present before the Father is priceless.



Photo by Jordan Rowland

13) Giving to those around us in Honduras isn’t always the right answer.
Truly, this concept is a post in and of itself. We have had to learn (and are still learning) that as much as we want to fulfill physical needs and expect that to be the only solution to solve, it never is. Poverty starts as a mentality, and all the money in the world can’t transform minds. We are always asking God when it’s the right thing to give and share in our brother’s or sister’s burden as the Body of Christ or to show the love of the Father to someone who doesn’t yet know Him or when it will actually be harmful and will cause a dependency on us or will perpetuate bad administrative habits. Guys, let’s be honest, we don’t always get it right, and we are constantly wrestling with ourselves in this area. We love your generosity and desire to solve problems for our Honduran friends, but we also ask that you love our discernment and that we both seek God together as to how to help without hurting or perpetuating a poverty mindset.

Stay tuned for the second part of this series. In conclusion, I just want to say that we genuinely love you all, and we so desire to steward our relationship with you well not because of anything we hope to gain but rather because you are a soul created by a God who loves you so much. We enjoy hearing your stories and receiving your prayer requests and being a part of your life even if from afar. We don’t feel like we’re better than you just because we’re missionaries, and we so don’t want you to feel like we can’t share life together just because our paths of serving Jesus look different. Who you are is a gift much more so than anything that you can do for us or give to us. We long to be safe people for you and to be trustworthy vessels of your heartaches and struggles. We care about your heart’s desires, your health, and your calling. We seek to understand your unique position in life and to walk this road together. Honoring you and serving you well in relationship is just as much ministry for us as anything we do in our country of mission. Thank you for believing in us, extending us grace, and maintaining relationship with us despite the distance.

Photo by June Laves