Book Review: Parents of Missionaries
“Why is my friend’s face stained with tears now that the worship service is over? The pastor had just announced that her adult child wants to join others overseas in the mission work we have been praying for these past many years. Didn’t we just last month pray for God to call new workers to this field? Here is an answer to our prayers. Yet she’s crying! I don’t understand.”
Such is the experience of many people whose friends’ children have been called to be missionaries overseas. In their book, Parents of Missionaries: How to Thrive and Stay Connected When Your Children and Grandchildren Serve Cross-culturally, Cheryl Savageau and Diane Stortzy give insight into how their friends are feeling. It was written to give suggestions to parents of missionaries (POMs) about how to deal with those feelings, thrive in their situations, and stay connected with their children and grandchildren.
The first part of the book shows how being POMs is not easy. A multitude of life situations exist that can make this role painful. Perhaps the parents are suddenly empty nesters, widowed, divorced, in financial uncertainty, or in poor health. Perhaps their child went to college and heard God’s call to be a missionary but never consulted them about it. Perhaps their adult child’s departure to the field comes on the heels of a wedding or includes grandchildren. Many things can augment the pain of knowing their missionary will be living many time zones away and that their next reunion is years away. Included in this section are stories from parents of missionaries about their pain and uncertainty and about how God guided them through it with grace.
The next section encourages POMs to help their missionary get ready and be part of the team sending them to the field. The third section brainstorms a plethora of ideas about staying connected with their missionary and grandchildren. Finally, the authors have a section with help and resources for POMs. The prayer list in this section includes a request for saying good-bye well.
An important way for POMs to bless their missionary’s household with encouragement is to visit their missionary on the field. This is a good way to gain insights about life on the field and take advantage of opportunities to enter into their work. One story described how a missionary’s father, a WWII veteran, met a Japanese man on the team that was finishing a building for a mission in Tokyo. During the war, the missionary’s father had been “training to be a tail gunner on the B-29; Mr. Narahashi was training to be a Zero fighter pilot. But just as both were due to set out, the war ended. Now, brought together by this project, they were stunned with the awareness of what might have been. They looked into each other’s eyes for a long moment… and then melted into much bowing and hand-shaking.”1
When it comes to grandchildren, the research of one of the authors suggests that POMs feel more negative about separation from grandkids than separation from their missionary.”2
However, the authors encourage POMs to “build bridges” to their missionaries’ children even while they grieve about the separation. Their grandchildren are third-country kids (TCKs), people who don’t fully identify with either their host culture or their passport culture. POMs can help them navigate their passport culture by explaining cultural differences. They can share family stories to help their grandchildren learn who they are and where they come from. They can provide a significant sense of stability by providing a place that belongs to them.
An illustration of how a POM can “build bridges” concerned a grandmother with a six-year-old grandchild. On the mission field, far from her grandmother, the young girl had shed tears of distress at not being able to see her mother following a surgery. When the child’s father used a family video call to let the grandma know the surgery went well, this grandma could see the child’s sadness. She wrote,
I immediately reached for a storybook, one that we enjoyed together when they were here. ... I asked if she would like me to read it to her and she was pleased about that. The other children also came to listen. ... I read the whole book to them, showing them the pictures [by webcam]. ... We chatted about the story in between pages, just like we always did when they were here. ... We had such a great time. I had to marvel that in spite of the fact that we were living two continents apart, we were able to have such a good time together.2
Parents of Missionaries will give real insight into how to encourage POMs as well as provide POMs with resources they need for navigating the experience of having their own child leave for the mission field.
1Savageau, Cheryl, Ed.D, Diane Stortzy, Parents of Missionaries: How to Thrive and Stay Connected When Your Children and Grandchildren Serve Cross-culturally (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2008), 254.
2Savageau, Cheryl, Ed.D, Diane Stortzy, Parents of Missionaries: How to Thrive and Stay Connected When Your Children and Grandchildren Serve Cross-culturally (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2008), 190.
3 Savageau, Cheryl, Ed.D, Diane Stortzy, Parents of Missionaries: How to Thrive and Stay Connected When Your Children and Grandchildren Serve Cross-culturally (Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, 2008), 208 – 209.