Missionary Care/PrepHi everyone! Here are some good sites for missionary care: Evangelical Missions Quarterly (you have to subscribe) MissionaryCare.com Missionary Care also has a database with links to lots of articles/books. Luckily, I work in a Bible college above the library, so I searched for the articles and then checked out these books: Collins, Marjorie. Manual for Accepted Missionary Candidates Foyle, Marjory. Honourably Wounded: Stress among Christian Workers. Lockerbie, Jeannie. By Ones and By Twos: Single and Double Missionaries. O'Donnell, Kelly and Michele, Eds. Helping Missionaries Grow: Readings in Mental Health and Missions. I've been craving to talk to people I trust who have been missionaries themselves. However, most of my friends are not missionaries (although many are ministers) and most of the missionaries I'm acquainted with I am still getting to know. I do have one dear friend Ginny who I've known for 8 years. We met in Fiji as high schoolers and since then she's been to visit me in Waynesboro, I've stayed with her family for Thanksgiving, she's stayed in my dorm rooms in college, I've stayed at her homeless mission in the Tenderloin District of San Fran. But for the last 3 years she's been living in Asia as a missionary. She sent me this email: "i know what it's like having to leave everybody and everything. and it's not going to be easy to live in the thai slums...and life will be harder than it's ever been and you'll cry more than you ever imagined...but it makes life so much sweet, so much deeper...i can't explain it. but i know you'll love the adventure-(although some days it will feel like torture) and the waking up in a strange place with strange friends and speaking a strange language...and a lot of days it will feel like you're doing nothing and that you should just give up and go home...but then one day something will happen and you'll feel such peace and you'll feel like you're changing the world. it'll be hard and you'll have to give up so much...but it's worth it in ways you'll never imagine. and it'll make you come alive in ways you never imagined...
and lexie...i know it's hard going over there single...and you think it would be so much easier perhaps to go if youre married. but i am so grateful for my time over here single....there is so much i could do-i could be gone for days at a time, i had all the time in the world to study the language...i could hang out with young single people-and they saw me eye to eye...and i miss those times. i am so grateful that i got to know the place and the language while i was single...i guess i'm just excited for you because you sieze life and every opportunity and i sincerely believe you are going to change the slums of bangkok! " I don't know about me changing anything. But it was great to hear this encouragement from someone I know and love who has gone ahead of me. It's true-- before we make sacrifices for God it seems too painful, almost impossible, but after every sacrifice we say, "Wow, that was WORTH IT." | 
