When the short-term team came, we made a Thai meal for their first night at Frontier Ventures (FV). My boys helped make the green papaya salad (tam som). Josiah is squeezing the limes for the salad.
We have long seen the need for homeschool helpers for families on the field. Besides our own needs, I have often had conversations with other families both here and in our last country about this situation. Before we left for the field my idea of a missionary family was a Type A family with their only struggles coming from the challenges on the field. Yes, little did I know… The first time we had significant health struggles in our last country, I was shocked that we were going through it. We were missionaries and had sacrificed to go, didn’t that mean we’d get immunity from other struggles? (Read that with all the appropriate outrage.) Apparently not. The second time we had significant struggles, I was shocked again. Lots of life later, I’m no longer shocked, but am shocked when life goes smoothly or to plan. (Read that with all the appropriate irony.)
What we’ve seen is that the missionary families here on the field have many of the same struggles as any family in the States, plus also experiencing field-specific struggles (which would, in themselves, be enough). The majority of the missionary families that we know or have met also have struggles concerning one or more serious issues such as major health or dietary needs, adopted kids struggles, kids with special needs or educational handicaps, and the list goes on. Serious needs that would be stressful anywhere grow to a whole new level on the field, being compounded by having less emotional support and availability of professional help than would be available in their home country. That’s the real world of missions as we’ve experienced it, and that leads to the real need for homeschool helpers to help mitigate some of the stress of an already stressful life, again with the goal of keeping missionaries (in all their real-life lives) on the field and better able to minister.
Micah pounded the papaya and carrot shreds to release their juices with a mortar and pestle while O’B gave them their next ingredients.
We have been abundantly blessed this past year to have a homeschool helper here with us. She (Amanda) focuses on working with our kids with the day-to-day school, which gives us more time and space to focus on ministry. It has been a huge blessing in many ways and we can’t even enumerate all the benefits we’ve experienced from this arrangement. When other families have heard about her role here, their next quick question is “How did you get her?” Which basically translates to “How can we do that?!?” One family jokingly, (I’m hoping!) even tried to steal her away from us when she first arrived by asking how much we were paying her. (Um, that would be approximately nothing…) As our time with Amanda has progressed, and others here have heard about our arrangement, we began to realize that although they’ve seen the need and would also love to have a homeschool helper, they didn’t feel they had the wherewithal to solve all the logistics and details that come with bringing someone here. Whereas in our case, having, one, set up our own support system without the assistance of an organization and two, having also done so with Amanda, we were uniquely suited, and not at all intimidated, to do that work. Our distinctive situation, along with our experience of working with an org called TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission) through Frontier Ventures (FV) and their short-term team this summer, has led us to pray about establishing a program whereby short-term workers could come to help long-term missionaries on the field, while also giving the short-term helper exposure to missionary life, either as a one-time experience or as they pursue a long-term calling.
The greatest value of a short-term team is often found through aiding established long-term missionaries to be more effective in their ministry. We feel this program would be an exceptional way to accomplish that. The young people who came through TEAM this past summer had the main goal of being exposed to mission opportunities in Asia. As we saw the process they went through while here, we couldn’t help but think how practical it would be to align that goal with the above mentioned need for homeschool helpers. Helping long-term missionary families in this way would give the shorter-term people a real experience of what life on the field entails and the ministry opportunities that exist, while being immediately beneficial to the work on the field.
Getting ready to eat at the FV facility with multiple missionaries from multiple orgs and the short-term team from the States.
As we start to further develop this program and how it will work, we are praying with and pursuing partnerships with FV, TEAM, and other organizations who may be interested in being involved. Please pray for us as we start down this path of possibilities and logistics.
Also, if you know of someone who would be interested in serving as a homeschool helper, we know many families who are interested in having one. As we have already brought Amanda here to help us, even without an “official” program yet, we would be able to work with them and connect them to a family immediately for this January or the 2022-’23 school term.
Thank you for your prayers in this and your continued support in prayer and financially,
– Ruth, for the Baker family.