What are the Challenges and Opportunities for Single Missionaries?

What are the challenges and opportunities for single missionaries?

Being a single missionary is filled with both challenges and opportunities. Some of the challenges are pretty obvious. Most of us will deal with a lot of isolation and a lot of loneliness. As usually we are surrounded by unbelievers. We are surrounded by people who know nothing of God. And that can be exhausting and that can be tiring, especially when you add on the stress of language learning and living in a culture that's not familiar to you.

A lot of the times I feel like I'm constantly making decisions but without any background information or context. So discerning what is the right thing to do or what is the right thing to say or where to go or where to sit is just a constant struggle, I think, for me. And not having a partner who's alongside me and being able to speak into those things, as well as just the emotional support and love of someone who's there at the end of the day, who cares for you and is willing to listen to you and communicate with you on the issues that you face every day.

Having said that, I think the opportunities for single workers are also huge. There are things that I can do that my married co-workers cannot do. So, for example, building the kinds of friendships where we stay up all night talking. Those are things that my co-workers who have husbands and children just realistically and practically cannot do—and maybe should not do in wisdom and spending their time. But because my priority is purely the unreached people, it's purely the people who are my neighbors and my friends, I have the privilege of building friendships with them that are extremely deep. And the quality and the quantity of time that I get with them is usually greater because I'm single.

In that, I'm also very flexible in my schedule. I'm not thinking about what meal to feed my kids at the end of the day or needing to be home by a certain time. And in that, I think God uses that to connect me more deeply with people, to give me more opportunities in learning language and adjusting to the culture.