Raising Kids Overseas: the Challenges, the Joys, and a Warning

Back in 1979 when Beth and I first flew out of LAX our biggest concern was “What is going to happen to our kids?!” It’s a very common feeling for those heading overseas as long term missionaries and it’s also a concern for their grandparents.

I won’t try and spin out a Pollyanna view of what those years looked like. We nearly lost all three of our sons, one to malaria, one to gunshot, one to a machete accident that nearly took his leg off. The combined 24 years that our 3 older kids spent in a boarding school was a high price tag that was par for the course back then...but not easy to live through. We had to have an unshakeable conviction that nothing will touch our kids outside of His good, sovereign, wise and loving will. We had dedicated all of our kids to the Lord years ago but seeing them fly off for the boarding school in a little Cessna 185 held in the air by one spinning propeller for a 2.5 hour flight over nothing but jungle...well, we rededicated them every time they were in the air.

Let me say that my acquaintance with the missionary kid (MK) experience came from a few levels. We did not “abandon” our kids. I served on the board of the boarding school (flying to the boarding school 3 times a year was expensive but mandatory if I was to know what was going on there) for 13 years and during our last 7 I served on the school disciplinary committee. Yep, MKs do make bad choices at times.

The things we did to stack the deck in favor of our kids growing up to love the Lord Jesus, and see their lifestyle as a privilege, were many.

Keeping home life as normal as possible when they were home was critical. “Guilty parents” who live with a festering attitude of “God is asking too much of my children,” eventually seem to pass that on to them. So, when our kids came home we enjoyed trips to the river, hunting together, times in the Word together (dads can get across more in 30 minutes than a youth pastor can in a year...if dad will do it!), wrestling a lot, and as they got older building a half-court basketball area out of cement in the middle of the jungle where grudge matches were daily events. But mostly our kids worked! With a 2,000 foot long airstrip with a ditch on either side to be maintained and the jungle constantly encroaching, there was always tons of work to be done.

We took their complaints about the boarding school and dorm parents seriously...sort of. We early on learned that between the dorm parents and us, the rule had to be, “Don’t believe everything our kids say about us, and we won’t believe everything they say about you.” High levels of “trust but verify” had to be in place. All four of our kids could exaggerate, but occasionally they did land on something that I had to look into. Carefully.

Teaching our kids how to look at other missionaries whom they got to know well, flaws and all, was always a challenge. To adopt a Pollyanna view of flawed human beings (missionaries) wasn’t ever going to be viable, especially as our kids got older. We felt our job was to acknowledge the flaws our kids noticed, but to remind them also of what Uncle Andrew and Aunt Ruth, Uncle Dean and Aunt Loretta, Uncle Charlie and Aunt Mary had endured to serve the Lord Jesus in the hard situations they were in were many, and they were many! What they had given up so they could bring Christ to the lost people they were serving were many. Rounding out the picture and letting them know these fallen human beings were doing something very few other Christians would ever do. Our respect for our fellow workers was able to be transferred to our kids in a way that allowed our kids to see past the flaws.

MKs who are bitter at the missionaries they saw on the field, the lives they lived while on the field, the sending organizations their parents served with on the field almost always have mom or dad to blame. It’s not necessarily unguarded speech that their children overheard (of course, that will do it for sure) but parents whose hearts truly weren’t seeing and believing their situation came from the hands of a loving, good, sovereign Father. Parents easily pass on what they really believe about God to their kids.

Believe me, my disappointments with my sending agency were many; the boarding school had its share of people who shouldn’t have been on any mission field, especially interacting with kids. The medical situation in PNG at that time (we had two children born in PNG) was abhorrent for those years, especially in the early 1980s.  To watch them draw blood to test you for a variety of diseases was shocking. My hard-core grizzled dad had to turn away when he saw them cutting the cast off his granddaughter’s arm at the “hospital” in Wewak. The enemy gave us plenty to fill our minds with complaints; some we could laugh about later when the shock wore off, some we had to fight to keep our mind in a healthy place. We lived on a diet of Philippians 4:8.

Teaching our kids from the earliest of ages that their mom and dad would be honored and obeyed wasn’t to satisfy our egos. (Of course, that meant we had to live honorable lives.) By doing this we increased the odds that our kids would listen to what we said about gun safety in the jungle, how to see everything when walking in the jungle, when is it time to stop and pick off the leeches, and of course, most of all, we increased the likelihood that we could pass on our values and beliefs about the God we were there to serve.

With our kids being away from us so much of their growing-up years, we could not and did wait for a natural time to bring up topics from the Word. In all my years of parenting, I never once had any of my four kids ask me, “Dad, can we have time together in the Word today?” I had to make sure that happened. I had to prepare well and give truth that was relevant to their lives during my teaching times. I had to know their world at the boarding school as best I could. Early on, Beth and I owned the responsibility for raising our kids. If they weren’t cutting it spiritually at the boarding school, they were coming back to the bush. Our sending agency, the schoolteachers, the dorm parents weren’t going to stand before the Lord as to how our kids turned out...that was on Beth and me. Too often, I heard from missionaries (whose kids weren’t making good choices) that it was the boarding school or the dorm parents who were causing such things.  Parents who threw rocks at others for choices their kids were making could be very blind to what was going on in their own homes.

In the environment our kids were raised, the challenges were many. But as we look back on our years in PNG, the biggest joy was seeing His Word invade the lives of many Iteri people and a church being formed there. Yet a close second was the privilege of raising our kids out there. Every one of those dorm parents contributed, some more than others, to our kids being the men and woman of God they are now. Those flawed missionaries we served with became their aunts and uncles and helped us raise our kids. Say what you will about Hillary Clinton, when she titled her book in 2007 It Takes a Village, she hit on a good point of truth.

The rough and tumble of how our kids grew up gave them a strong constitution today that they are now passing on to our grandkids. The ‘head on a swivel’ (no police, park rangers, lifeguards, EMTs) way of growing up gave them common sense that serves them well today. The work ethic instilled where it was 100-120 degrees every day, of working in the sunshine, and it better be done right, made it such that they’ve been gainfully employed always. Teaching them the necessity of gathering with His people whenever we could has given them a fierce love for their local church. I could go on, but I won’t. The joys and long-term blessings of those very hard years we are reaping today.

You’ll rarely hear me go on about our kids this way, and definitely not in front of them. The Busers live in a tough love bubble that is rarely broached. But I hope that parents serving overseas will avoid some of the pitfalls I’ve mentioned here. I hope churches that see their missionaries’ missing cues in their kids’ lives will help them. “It takes a village” is true. For decades it was truly said that missionary conflict was the largest reason for turnover on the field, and, to a degree, that may still be true. But somewhere in the mid 1990s, parenting teenage kids raised its head to compete with missionary conflict.

We speak much on this topic while students are at Radius, but students are only here for 9 months. Sending churches must be aware and stay involved in this area, or it will likely take your workers off the field when they are arriving at their peak ministry years. I saw it too often.