No One Understood

Philippines MK, Dave McDowell, talks about the challenges he faced when his family returned ‘home’ to the United States. Starting high school in a new culture was tough. Though he missed his friends in the Philippines and felt misunderstood by his American peers, with time he was able to find creative ways of dealing with the change…

Complete story…

 

Schooling options for MKs

A Black Forest Academy teacher talks about MKs’ options for schooling on the field.

 

A white kid in Indonesia

By Papua Girl

In some ways, growing up overseas was not so different. I still went to school with a lot of Americans most of the time. We still celebrated Christmas (at the beach), we still went on summer vacation (to stone-age villages), we still watched Disney movies (because there was no TV) etc.. etc.

I’ve been in the US now for 8 years. Now I know the typical American life that most of my friends grew up in, and it seems normal to me. When I look back on photos from my childhood I’m taken aback to realize just how DIFFERENT so much of life was.

For instance… Read more…

 

A new way to ‘fan’ mkPLANET at Facebook

If haven’t become a fan of our Facebook page yet, there’s a fast new way you can do so:

Text “fan mkPLANET” to FBOOK (32665) from your mobile phone, and you will be added as a fan instantly. (Standard charges may apply.)

See you there!

 

‘Human Sacrifice’ and ‘The Discussion Continues’

Human Sacrifice
By Mark Earley

Mark Earley from BreakPoint

In his November 5th review of the film All God’s Children, a documentary about the abuse of missionary kids (MKs) at a Guinea boarding school, BreakPoint’s Mark Earley says:

It’s never easy for Christians to look at scandal within the Church. But for the sake of truth, healing, and the integrity of the faith, we must… In the new documentary All God’s Children, there’s a lot of talk about sacrifice. (…) The parents and children describe how the mission board undermined family ties. Not only did they insist that children be sent away from their parents, they also made it hard for siblings at the school to interact with each other. Children were expected not to show any homesickness, and family bonds were treated as something that got in the way of the mission.

The parents now say they should have seen this as a warning sign. One mother, looking back on it, says now, “What was I thinking of?” But she concludes, “For me, it was a matter of obedience.”

And that leads to another factor: the demand to obey even extra-biblical commands without question. Obedience to authority is a good and necessary thing, in context, but when the authority goes too far, a discerning Christian has to know where to draw the line…

- Read the full article or download Mark’s podcast: Human Sacrifice

The Discussion Continues
By Luci Westphal

All God's Children DVD Documentary

In her November 9th response, Luci Westphal, one of the producers of All God’s Children writes:

…We especially appreciated [Mark Earley's] report because it focused on the idea of sacrifice, which the film emphasizes but which hasn’t been discussed much in other articles or reviews.

Apparently Mark Earley received responses from listeners that prompted him to add a written comment, pointing out “that the events portrayed in the film occurred 40 to 50 years ago at a single missionary school”…

What strikes me is that this subject continues to be controversial and spark discussion (…) People have strong feelings about what has happened, what they think has happened and what they would like to believe didn’t happen. The abuse of children at the hands of religious leaders and staff is a difficult one to grapple with and in the case of the missionary kids there is still a great lack of communication and information…

- Read the full article: The Discussion Continues

 

Former Missionary Kid Examines Childhood Struggles, Worthiness of Missions

By Hannibal Books

Thousands of children of Christian workers in each generation spend a significant part of their developmental years outside their parents culture of origin—often in more than one location and all in the name of serving as Christian missionaries.

The parents believe they are doing God’s will, but what about the hardships that these missionary kids face? Is the cause really worth the price that these kids pay? In a frank and honest look inside the life of one missionary kid, Mary Anne Phemister tells her unusual story in Lessons from a Broken Chopstick: A memoir of a peculiar childhood…

Mary Anne discusses her interesting life experiences, confusing feelings and difficult circumstances and also talks about her visits as an adult back to China, Vietnam and Hong Kong. With amazing sensitivity, insight, forgiveness and even humor she delves into the various issues she and her siblings encountered in their unusual lives. Amid her stories of playing with pet turkeys, evacuating from the communist regime and getting a new hairdo for the American school, Mary Anne divulges her deeper issues of identity crisis, moments of self-actualization and her struggle to understand why her parents lived as they did. Read more…

 

Religious Culture Shock

Excerpt from chapter in Strangers At Home
By Ruth Van Reken

I knew something was different when I saw the lipstick. “Mommy, is Aunt Susie a Christian?” I asked in a whisper while following my parents down the gangplank from the S.S. Nieuw Amsterdam to the firm cement of the New York pier.

My mother continued smiling and waving at the woman who waved so energetically back at us from that sea of welcoming faces below.

“Of course she is,” mom replied from the side of her mouth. Her eyes remained fixed ahead with the smile still in place. “Why on earth are you asking?”

“But, mom,” I struggled to keep from getting separated as our fellow passengers pushed past us, also trying to hasten reunions with waiting relatives, “look at her. She’s got bright red lipstick on and she’s wearing dangly earrings. She couldn’t be a Christian. Christians don’t do those things.”

And thus, for me as an eight-year-old missionary kid (MK), the religious culture shock of returning “home” had begun.

In addition to the common challenges virtually all third culture kids (TCKs) deal with when they enter, or reenter, their home countries, some TCKs also face additional challenges specifically related to their role as missionary kids. While my particular example of religious culture shock may seem extreme in these waning days of the twentieth century, most MKs can cite a similar moment. It is when they first realize that how they learned to express the principles of their faith as TCKs seems totally different from the way fellow believers in their home country express it.

To properly understand these and other challenges specific for the reentering missionary TCK, we must first look at the missionary community itself. Paradoxically, many of the religious reentry challenges are the flip side of some of the greatest blessings MKs may experience in that community. Faith wouldn’t seem so shallow at home if they hadn’t seen it so powerfully lived out by missionaries all around them. On the other hand, some challenges arise from the particular idiosyncracies of any given group of missionaries. I wouldn’t have worried about lipstick and earrings if those around me hadn’t condemned them. So what are some of the characteristics of the missionary “third culture?”

For some people, the very word “missionary” is anathema. “How can anyone go try and convince another person what to believe? That’s terrible.” And missions and missionaries are summarily dismissed with no further attempt to understand who they are, what their world is like, or even what drives them to do what they do.

For me, “missionary” is a word and world which are part of my very identity. Its impact on me began years before my birth. “Resht, Iran” completed the space for “Place of Birth” on my father’s passport. Yet his passport proudly proclaimed “The United States of America” across its properly green cover. In that same space for declaring birthplace, my American passport reads “Kano, Nigeria,” while my daughter’s boldly states “Monrovia, Liberia.” I have cousins born in Kuwait, Ethiopia, Nigeria, Iran, and Sudan. A great-aunt spent three years in a Japanese internment camp after forty years as a missionary in China. Whether these members of my family were teachers, doctors, nurses, administrators, or preachers, all have been involved in mission work of some kind. This missionary world is the cocoon from which the very shape of my life has emerged.

I, and countless other adult missionary kids, grew up in perhaps the epitome of what John and Ruth Hill Useem meant when they coined the term “third culture”–the world expatriates develop that is rooted in the home culture, lived out in the host culture, but, in the end, neither fully one nor the other. It has developed a life and system of its own. Drs. Useem called this an “interstitial culture”–a world between worlds.

As a child, my specific third culture community of missionary expatriates defined its physical borders by the trim privet hedges growing in careful rows around the perimeters of our mission station. Within those friendly confines, we lived in houses made from sun-dried mud bricks which had been plastered with cement and covered with galvanized tin roofs. Each house fell into careful conformity with the next one. Yellow walls, dark green trim. One after another these buildings popped up across the entire landscape of our station: yellow and green monuments standing sturdy among the nim, flame-of-the-forest, and frangi-pangi trees scattered across the usually dry, barren, brown earth.

Each path connecting our look-alike houses had white-washed stones lining its sides so we could find our way home even on the darkest, streetlight-less nights. Carefully watered hibiscus bushes, zinnias, and morning-glories bloomed around each house, creating the only distinctively differentiating looks between us all. All non-parental adults in the community were my “aunties” and “uncles” and their children were my friends–closer than the cousins I barely remembered in the States.

Ironically, we weren’t the only mission compound that looked like this. Throughout the country, we knew we’d found “us” when that yellow house with dark green trim began to rise up over the horizon as we drove down a rutty road to the remotest station.

Reflecting on the orderliness of my childhood world now, it seems rather quaint, even a little silly. But that’s one of the paradoxes. Undoubtedly, this much uniformity in our mission stifled the artistically creative side for some of its members and most likely increased our culture shock when returning to a wider world at home. On the other hand, that very uniformity and orderliness gave me a deep sense of security and belonging throughout my childhood. There were some things you could always count on. It felt familiar and safe–like the feeling I had during the short rainy seasons when I curled up under my covers, listening to the staccato of the raindrops beating on our wonderful tin roof as I fell asleep. No matter the storm, I was inside and protected.

Unlike many other TCKs who have moved from pillar to post at least every two years throughout life, I basically lived in one city among the same group of people from birth until I made my permanent return to the States at age thirteen. This gave me a strong sense of “home” even during the two years I went away to boarding school. Each furlough left me anxious to go home–meaning Nigeria. This type of stability in an overseas post is likely much more common for missionary kids than for TCKs from the foreign service or military sponsorships. Historically, missionaries went overseas and settled in a particular place for life. The idea of living in community isn’t something I can only imagine. I’ve done it. The mission system was my extended family in every way. I knew my tribe and where I fit in it.

No culture, however, has external uniformity alone. To be a functioning community, a group must also share deeper values and belief systems. Every culture develops its customs and mores based on that underlying value system. For example, Mary Ellen Wertsch demonstrates clearly in her book, Military Brats, the “warrior mentality” underlying many of the social norms for those in the military subcultures. Contrary to modern opinion, there is no such thing as a value-free culture. Ultimately, the only question among any group of people is, “Whose values or principles will shape this culture’s expression?” Someone’s always does.

A missionary community is no different in this respect than any other. The only difference is that the values and beliefs which drive their community are perhaps more objectively defined than in a secular community. Values which drive the mores of a non-missionary group may be equally powerful, but so poorly defined they go unnoticed. The religious community has its creeds, doctrines, and the principles by which they are to live, clearly laid out. “Thou shalt. . .” “Thou shalt not. . .” All behavior is measured according to those tenets of faith.

Therein lies one of the major reasons for religious culture shock when MKs return to their home countries. Even shared core values will be lived out differently from one culture to another. For example, believers around the world may agree with the Biblical principle of dressing modestly, but the way people define or express “modesty” can differ dramatically. One culture thinks nothing of seeing a woman in the store wearing a halter top and very short shorts. Another culture would throw that woman in jail for indecent exposure. It considers any woman immodest who shows bare skin in public besides her eyes and hands.

How, then, do you figure out what is faith and what is culture? Or how does a group of people from one culture, living in another, decide on the culturally appropriate standards for practicing the principles of their faith?

See remainder of the chapter in Strangers At Home for the answer to this question and other thoughts.

Posted on mkPLANET with permission- with comments by singpolyma, Dana
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