Get the answer to this question from a series of people with long-term cross-cultural experience: What do I wish my church had known about me, my family, or my work during my time on the field? In this blog, you’ll get the perspective of Alan Howell, who served in Mozambique with his family for 15 years.

Get the answer to this question from a series of people with long-term cross-cultural experience: What do I wish my church had known about me, my family, or my work during my time on the field? Mark Hooper, who spent 5 years in India with his young family, shares from his experiences.

Get the answer to this question from a series of people with long-term cross-cultural experience: What do I wish my church had known about me, my family, or my work during my time on the field? This month, David is sharing from his 25 years of serving in Thailand.

Get the answer to this question from a series of people with long-term cross-cultural experience: What do I wish my church had known about me, my family, or my work during my time on the field? First up is Andy Johnson, who lived and served in Burkina Faso.

There is another significant shape among workers that needs our attention.

This month and next I would like to share with you my favorite story that helps explain why workers seem so, well, different.

Is all “fun” created equal? And is it okay for workers to have fun?!

What value does worker assessment bring?

As we continue the conversation about effective debriefings, let’s look at one helpful model.

Last month, we started our talk about debriefing: what it is, when to use each type, and what to keep in mind if you are caring for workers. This month, we are going to talk about some considerations for planning a debrief.

I’m a big believer that stories deserve to be told. That the act of telling a story can be in and of itself beneficial and powerful. That the storyteller benefits from having space to set their story between us on the table where we are drinking coffee together (or the Zoom screen where we meet), so we can both look at it and laugh, or cry, or talk about why it matters.

Let’s revisit the ideas that Andy’s stories pointed toward last month, and talk about some helpful principles.

What are important considerations when you’re planning a visit to your workers?! Get some thoughts on this.

Let’s look for a moment at each cause for an electrical system to break down and consider how this might look in the life of a global worker.

As we together kick off a new year of learning about and serving cross-cultural workers, I invite you to learn with me about cultural humility. Developing this mindset in serving workers can be a powerful way of caring for the people we serve.

Missionaries are people. That may sound like an all-too-simple statement, but more often than not churches, care providers, and mission committees can treat or, at the very least, conceive of their missionaries as caricatures, not people.

Friends and former teammates Archie Chankin and Andy Johnson share about the ways that teammates can provide soul care for one another.

Our guest writer shares thoughts on how workers and churches can understand each other better.

This conversation takes a look at anxiety and the worker, and offers some important perspectives on how to help your worker stay healthy.

This conversation is focused on the impact of trauma on cross-cultural workers, and how to provide a safe and non-anxious presence to those you support when they face it.

This is the first of a three-month series on mental health issues in worker care. Missy Gray from MRN and Jeff Holland from Pioneer Bible Institute will be talking about burnout, trauma, and anxiety, and how we can be a supportive, non-anxious presence to the cross-cultural workers we support.

As we wrap up six months of getting to know cross-cultural servants better through the Messenger, Andy Johnson, MRN’s director of care, helps us consider some of the unique stressors facing global workers as well as offers brief counsel on how to begin addressing them.

In recent years we have been fortunate to be exposed to a growing wealth of information concerning Third Culture Kids (TCKs – what we formerly called ‘missionary kids’) and the blessings and challenges that arise from living and working abroad for the sake of the gospel.

Often those who are dedicating their lives to global sharing of the gospel are family units with children. So, the children also say their goodbyes, pack their belongings, and as they hold their parents’ hands their beautiful little feet scamper, skip, hop, and run across unknown and confusing countries. With wide eyes and laughter, which can frequently dissolve to tears, these young hearts deal with loss, grief, and identity confusion, just as their parents do, as they learn to adapt to cultures, people, values, and unique ways of living.