Live Wholistically
Taking a call that requires a move to a new place brings its own set of challenges. Learning to live in a new environment can be difficult and can strain even the most flexible and patient missionaries. At IWM we care about you and your family’s whole beings, and we want to see you adjust and learn to live well among those you have been called to serve. Here you will find resources to help you transition, adjust, and learn to flourish in your host culture. Our goal is that you and your family thrive – not just survive!


Blog
4 Reasons Why Staying in Touch With Missions After Returning Home Is a Good Idea
Have you recently returned home from a mission assignment and now feel a sense of loss and disorientation? You are …
Helping Your Child with Re-entry
After 12 plus years in the mission field, it was time for us to go back — back to a …
8 Tips for Dealing With the Financial Crisis
The Covid-19 pandemic has led to many countries being placed on lockdown in order to stop the spread of the …
From Third Culture Kid to GC President: Life Lessons for Missionary Families
Listening to the IWM podcast episode entitled “From Missionary Kid to GC President,” I was encouraged and inspired by the …
I Am An Island: Can missionary women risk their hearts?
They love to take short-term trips over here…” a former co-worker and neighbor explained. He had moved from Indonesia to …
Confessions of a Trailing Spouse
When Roy heard the call to be a missionary, I heard absolutely nothing — not even the faintest whisper of …
Three Steps Missionaries Can Use to Cope With Challenges
In this video, Dr. Ann Hamel shares three steps to help us cope with the challenges we face in life. …
Homeschool Options for Missionaries
More missionaries are homeschooling today than ever before. The advantages in mobility, flexibility, and individualized parent-supervised instruction allows more time …
7 Effective Ways to Deal With Culture Shock
Would you try running an iOS app on an Android smartphone? This illustrates what people experience who have been enculturated …
How to Prepare to Cross Cultural Boundaries
Most of us remember an experience that made a trip to another country memorable. Often it is some aspect of …
How connected are you?
You are venturing forth as a missionary. The main purpose of your mission is to share Jesus, to be an …
Your Expectation and Its Implication for Mission
Have you ever gone out to eat and not had enough money to cover the bill? Have you taken your …
What’s it Like to be a Missionary of a Worldwide Church? Part 2
In our previous post we talked about the way the Seventh-day Adventist Church is organized around the world. Today I …
What’s it Like to be a Missionary of a Worldwide Church?
While traveling by plane in Asia an Adventist missionary began a conversation with his seatmate, who represented another Christian organization. …
What Keeps a Missionary Going in a Time of Crisis?
In the media today, we observe a wide spectrum of human responses to the current global pandemic. People’s reactions range …
Parenting TCKs
God gave us the blessing of children and the blessing of being called to serve him far away from our …
Missionary Cookbook
Spicy Lentil Pot – Shorbet Addis (Egypt) Sometime before your shipment arrives and shortly after your status as guests-to-be-fed ends, …
Teaching Children About Money
Everyone needs to understand about money: where it comes from, how to spend it wisely, and how to save and …
5 Tips for Long-distance Grandparenting
Many missionary kids are separated from their grandparents by a great distance. Vice versa, many missionaries can feel disconnected from …
My Friend Jesus and Me in Transition
I grew up close to my grandparents, aunts, uncles, and lots of cousins, and I was very happy. I thought …
Podcasts
Webinars
In this video presentation together with Dr. Peter Landless, we sketch the best way forward for Adventist missionaries to be agents of peace and healing.
Third Culture Kids* (TCKs) are children who have spent a significant amount of time away from their parents’ home or passport country. Missionary Kids (MKs) are basically a more specific type of TCK, those whose parents serve as missionaries. With a growing globalized world, the number of TCKs has grown even though they’ve been around since ancient Bible times. In this Live Event, we explored TCKs in the Bible and lessons we can take from them that apply to modern TCKs.
To truly minister as Jesus Christ would, we need to know those we serve. When you’re in a different culture with a different language, different practices and different values, ministering requires diligent seeking and purpose.
In this Live Event, we explore Dr. Chapman’s 5 Love Languages and how they can be used to minister to others in our sphere of influence.
Many people in the world today are Muslim. They make up a significant percentage of unreached people groups. If you are interested in serving, or are serving, in a Muslim context, this live event is for you!
In this webinar, we explore ways to thrive and adapt to missionary family life in a Muslim context.
Life is made up of changes. Some are big, others small. These changes are also called “transitions.” When we decide to serve in a different cultures, or even in our own, we are destined to go through some big transitions.
In this webinar, we explore ways to prepare ourselves for these transitions, especially the difficult ones.
Did you know that East Asians place special value on family and family relationships? The Sigalaka sutra defines six important relationships and describes the ethics that define them. God also places special value on family. Join us as we explore family relationships from an East Asian perspective and discuss how we can use these values to present the Gospel and model the kingdom of God.
Life is a paradox. Joy and suffering, challenges and opportunities. And of course, in the mission field, it isn’t any different.
As we notice our world becoming more unbalanced day by day, how do we maintain our own balance between work demands and quality family time, even while we’re going through suffering and challenges?
Sometimes we think that the mission field is a destination. Instead, let’s look at it as a journey.
Every journey has a beginning. Is your family where that journey begins?
Welcome to our webinar on Homeschooling in the Mission Field. Some of the topics that we will talk about are:
– Choosing a curriculum that works for your child.
– Organization and planning.
– Homeschooling teenagers.
– How to deal with the challenges of homeschooling.
– Measuring your success in homeschooling.
COVID-19 has brought with it many new challenges. One of them is being stuck at home and dealing with tension and stress in our relationships.
In this live event, we discuss how to deal with these tensions, and give you some ways to strengthen your relationships during this crisis.
In this live event, Dr. G. T. Ng shares an inspirational message to inspire you. He also shares some of his trajectory as a Missionary, Pastor and Administrator.
This webinar is a conversation on the importance of staying healthy and practical ways of accomplishing it, specially during the COVID-10 pandemic.
COVID-19 has caught everyone by surprise. With it, there’s a new challenge. How to effectively work from home. This webinar discusses exactly that. How you can effectively work from home, specially during a time of crisis like this pandemic.
Missionaries might encounter multiple safety issues such as robberies, theft, insurrections, natural disasters, and others.
In moments like this, local families have a stronger support network. Extended family, intricate knowledge of the language, a net of connections — all advantages that expatriate missionaries may not have readily available.
The current global crisis can possibly make local situations worse leading to shortages of food or other complications. As a result, you may face unexpected challenges and dangers.
Now, we don’t want to create any unnecessary fear, but we do want to share with you best practices to handle emergencies of various kinds.
According to the World Health Organization, fear, worry, and stress are normal responses to perceived or real threats, and at times when we are faced with uncertainty or the unknown. And so it is normal and understandable that people are experiencing fear in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.
This live event brings topics important to parents raising children in the mission field. Dr. Cheryl Doss is joined by Millie Castillo. Both have vast experience bringing up children up to young adult age in the mission filed.