A Self Care Guide for Global Workers | Sarita Hartz

One of the most difficult things about being a missionary, global worker, or humanitarian, is we often stop taking care of ourselves.

Self-care is a very important aspect of stress management, and yet when there are so many responsibilities and other people to help, we can let our own care fall by the way side. In fact, some of us hold the erroneous belief that to care for ourselves when other people are suffering would be selfish. We begin to believe that emergency mode and martyrdom are the only ways to live and serve overseas. The tendency is to find more and more meaning in our job, rather than nurturing our identity apart from it.

This booklet was created to help you prevent burnout by creating a self care plan that is tailored to missions and/or humanitarian work and the environment you serve in.

You need suggestions that are specific for your unique harsh conditions.

Missionary Self-Care and Spirituality | Fuller Seminary

I love missionaries because they get the job done. Against all odds. They’re committed to a long obedience in the same direction at any cost as an expression of their love for God. Tell them the climate in their place of ministry will be 120℉ in the shade; they buy sunscreen. Tell them they will be isolated from all that is familiar; they learn about cross-cultural living. Tell them there are life-threatening diseases in their place of ministry; they get vaccinations and take prophylaxis. The people are resistant to Christianity? They amass a prayer team. Tell them they will need to raise their own support; it only doubles their commitment to the task.

But missionaries and their families are human. All these challenges take their toll. I have yet to meet a missionary who was not stretched beyond his or her limits. Bravado gradually gives way over time to humble perseverance, relying on God’s grace. KEEP READING

The Culture Blend

Jerry Jones is a husband, a father, a trainer, a traveler, a culture vulture and an avid people watcher who loves to write about all of those things. His beautiful blended family are globe trekkers who have expatted, repatted and then expatted again. They are slowly discovering that wherever they are — they are home . . . and missing it at the same time.

A Life Overseas

The blog collective ‘A Life Overseas’ provides that place of online connection for Christ-following missionaries and humanitarian aid workers living in foreign countries– from the past, present, or future. As a team of writers who have logged years of overseas experience ourselves, we want to create an online space where expats of many nations come together to interact, encourage, and find a community that ‘gets it’.

At this site, you’ll find honest conversation about the role and realities of international missions, practical advice from others on the foreign field, and faith-based inspiration for the days when you’d just rather go home.

Member Care Media - recorded talks on topics relevant to Cross-Cultural workers

Member Care Media (MCM) is a media ministry of TWR especially prepared for Cross-Cultural Workers around the globe whose obedience to the Great Commission has taken them to difficult places. It is our goal to encourage, enhance and enable these workers in their places of calling so that they will stay effective and fulfilled. It is only recently that the missions community has recognized that the Great Commandment and the Great Commission are inseparable. The mandate to love one another also needs to include the ones that have been sent out. It is a choice to act on behalf of these ones for their good and God's glory. Care is at the center of what we do! With our programs and online services we want to stand alongside Cross-Cultural Workers, who are very much challenged and isolated due to culture, language and religion.

Creative Abroad | Jerry Jones

Here’s the thing. Data is interesting but not inspiring. Facts and figures paint the picture - but creativity changes things. The data goes on for days and I soak it up. It’s powerful. Like any public information it is up for scrutiny but it drives a GREAT conversation doesn’t it? It also gives me golden insight into my family and this journey that we are on together. It helps to be informed. BUT IT DOESN’T CHANGE ANYTHING. Not by itself. I can cram my brain full of golden material, pat myself on the back for knowing it and NEVER ENGAGE MY KIDS. I can learn loads about their demographic and never learn about them. I want to ask the question, “now that I know this stuff, what can I do with it that will actually leverage this wonderful cross-cultural experience to strengthen my family? So let’s jump in. READ MORE

Where is home? - Anecdotal TED talk | Pico Iyer

In today’s talk, Pico Iyer looks at the complexity of the question, “Where do you come from?” If the question is code for, “Where are your family’s roots?” his answer is India — although he has never lived there. If the question means, “Where were you born?” his answer is England — though he left the country as soon as he was able to. If the question is asking, “Where do you live now?” then the answer is the United States. But if the question is, “Where is your heart?” then Iyer’s answer is Japan, a country that has long intrigued him.

Iyer notes that many people have a culture recipe with multiple ingredients. And this, he says, can be a point of commonality. “The typical person I meet today will be, let’s say, a half-Korean, half-German young woman living in Paris. As soon as she meets a half-Thai, half-Canadian guy from Edinburgh, she recognizes him as kin. She realizes that she probably has much more in common with him than anyone entirely of Korea or entirely of Germany,” says Iyer. “The little girl who arises out of their union will be, of course, not Korean nor German nor French or Thai or Scotch or Canadian or even American, but a wonderful and constantly evolving mix of all those places.”

Living Well Abroad: 4 Things to Consider | Jonathan Trotter

My day job here in Cambodia is serving as a pastoral counselor. In a typical week, I meet with clients from Asia, the Americas, Australia, Europe, and occasionally Africa. And whether these clients are missionaries, NGO workers, or international business people, they’re all trying to figure out how to live well here. In Cambodia. I was recently asked to share at an international church on the topic of Living Well abroad. I gave it all I had and presented my compiled thoughts and hopes. This article is an extension of that presentation. It’s not short and it’s not fancy. But it is pretty much all I’ve got. My hope is that this article might serve as a resource, a touch point, for you and your team/org/ministry/family/whatever. If you’d rather listen to the podcast of this material, you’ll find some links at the very end. All right, here goes! READ MORE

Six Tips for Self Care While Living Abroad | James Pearson

When we move abroad we all hope—at least I did—that we will be the kind of people who integrate seamlessly into the local culture. We’ll tell jokes in the local language over ​cassava fries and warm beer (or whatever the local snack happens to be) and move fluidly between our compatriots and our cross-cultural friends. We’ll be perfect expats.

​It turns out I am not one of those people. And during my eight years living mostly in East Africa I never met anyone who was. Some people came closer to it than I did, but no one lived up to this ideal. KEEP READING

Lessons in Cross-Cultural Living | Haley Hoffman

I come from a cross-cultural family. My parents are Persian and Jewish-American, and I grew up in the South. Now I have my own cross-cultural family: I’m a Persian-Jewish-Southern American, and my husband is a Korean-Hawaiian-Canadian New Yorker. As a self-identified expert on cross-cultural families, I offer you with some telltale symptoms you’re in a cross-cultural family. They are...

1. Stammering when people ask where you’re from

2. Inconsistent answers to the same question and trouble remembering what you usually say

3. The above can result in suspicions that you are either lying or a spy

4. A name that simply fails to match your face

5. Contagious disappointment that you don’t speak one or more languages better or, well, at all and

6. Confusion about the prevalence or idiosyncracy of family customs. This last one is the most telling. KEEP READING