For the Joy: 21 Missionary Mother Stories of Real Life and Faith - BOOK REVIEW

What’s it like to take children to far-away lands? How about having a baby in a place where not very many people speak your language? The book For the Joy (Edited by Miriam Chan and Sophia Russell) answers questions like these and many others that women might ask as they contemplate global missions. These are also questions we should be asking as we mobilize to support and send families into God’s harvest fields.

The women who wrote the 21 stories in this book are all from Australia, but they each have much in common with any Christian woman from the West. They have fears, worries, and struggles with their neighbors. They like to put on make-up and go shopping. They like to have stability in their households so they can nurture their children and train them to seek the Lord with all their hearts. The cultural contexts in which God sent them taught each one to trust in God in exceptional ways, and we can learn from them.

The first story has to do with a woman who has a love/hate relationship with flying in small planes. She went with her husband (an M.A.F. pilot) and children to a remote island of Australia to live among Aborigines. There she went on a hunting expedition with the women of her village who taught her which bird’s call means that the tide is coming in, an important thing to know in a place where tides bring crocodiles. She and her husband hope that “living with Yolngu will help our three kids be both more tolerant and at the same time, less tolerant. More tolerant of the differences between cultures; less tolerant of racism, jumping to conclusions and a tiny bit cynical about our own culture. I hope we can model to them that sharing God’s love is more important than comfort; that sharing Christ with others is a huge joy of eternal worth.”

Another story comes from a woman named Dorcas. Her story demonstrates how we must lean upon God for His protection in frightful situations as a lamb, back in Australia, had leaned upon her in its fright. Dorcas had many fearful circumstances while living in Pakistan, but none more frightening than the day her son’s boarding school was attacked by extremists. She and her son memorized Ps. 124 in the days after that event:

If the Lord had not been on our side when people attacked us, 
they would have swallowed us alive when their anger flared against us,
the flood would have engulfed us,
the torrent would have swept over us,
the raging waters would have swept us away. 
Praise be to the Lord, who has not let us be torn by their teeth. 
We have escaped like a bird from the fowler’s snare;
the snare has been broken, and we have escaped. 
Our help is in the name of the Lord, the Maker of heaven and earth. 

She learned, “that in the midst of everything, He is utterly trustworthy.”

Several of the women wrote about the concerns about the potentially negative influences of the cultures they lived in. One lived in a city where she walked regularly with her children past brothels. Others had their children in secular schools that seemed to undermine their faith. 

The child of one of the authors got a massive burn. She watched the child suffer because of poor treatment from local health care providers. Other women wrote about the grief they endured through losing loved ones on the mission field. A couple of the women wrote about how their depression sent them into mental illness that required they seek care back in Australia. Following counseling, they were each able to return to serve in God’s kingdom once again. 

Several of the women gave good advice about homeschooling that any parent could use. Especially interesting was Liling’s story in which the family traveled around Bolivia offering medical services. On one occasion they narrowly saved a child’s science experiment from a llama interested in eating it. 

Each of these women found God’s help in times of need and found joy in serving the Lord in the places He sent them. As Naomi Reed wrote in the forward, 

“He’s working out His purposes to the ends of the earth, through His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ, and we are marvelously invited into His plan for the nations. That’s amazing! And as we do that, as we quietly obey and trust Him, and serve Him in every corner of Australia and the world, we discover that He’s clinging to us. He’ll never leave us, or our children. And it’s in that incredible truth, that we find our deepest joy and security.”