Q: Can a couple with small children make it to the field?

I wouldn't exchange my growing up for the world. My kids have also moved around a lot, but they feel the same. Although your two small children will need care, and one of you will likely have to devote a good bit of time to childcare, it's widely accepted to have an ayah or amah in some cultures. This can help free Mom for quality time with the kids and also help their adjustment to the new culture.

Younger is better in terms of family adjustment. The earlier your kids accept the host culture as their own home, learn the language, etc. the easier their adjustment, in my opinion.

As wonderful as it is to visit the U.S. and grandparents, I'd encourage grandparents to visit you during the first two or three years. A minimum three-year commitment makes the new home "real." Refer to the U.S. as the U.S. and the host country as "home.

We took our two kids to the mission field of West Africa when they were very young. It is very possible to be effective missionaries with a growing family! My parents did it with five kids! (Two was enough for us.)

Often kids are an in-road to another culture. The most resistant people to the Gospel can be very open to interacting with missionary families. So often families have advantages over single missionaries in this respect. Stay focused on the high calling of missions. The needs are great and the stakes are high, but the rewards are limitless.

There is such a broad spectrum of missionary kids it is hard to make generalizations. Like with any family, much depends on your job as parents as well as the specific place you end up ministering. There are many benefits to going now:

1. Your family is young and adaptable.
2. It's easier for all of you to learn a foreign language.
3. As you seem to anticipate, the more comfortable you get and the more your family patterns get set, the harder it is to make a major move.
4.Having babies is a world-wide experience! In most countries, there are adequate facilities unless there are complications. I was born in Pyong Yang, Korea.

You need to examine the various missions agencies, and balance them against your values. Come to Urbana to meet them all! Some consider the parents' missionary work to be the priority - so they have the parents send the kids to a boarding school when they turn six. Others let the parents decide. Some common choices include home school, or the local school. My assistant, Paul, grew up overseas, and went to the neighborhood school. He said he doesn't know how to answer the question "how was going to school overseas?" He said it's just growing up. Some things are fun, and some aren't. To get an idea of how missionary kids live visit mukappa.org.

The answer is a big “yes.” Not only can a couple with two small children make it to the field, I am sure you can survive and thrive there. Please allow me to explain. I went to the mission field in 1981 with a wife, a two-month-old baby and an 18 month old. We had two in diapers and a lot of concern, but I have learned that God calls families and uses families. The children opened doors for us. Everyone likes a baby. All true ministry to others flows out of what is happening at home.

Let me close with a few fun facts. I have heard and read that 1 out of every 8 missionary children make it in the Who's Who in America. This is compared with about 1 out of 100,000 regular American children. I can say that all three of my children were blessed growing up on the mission field. They are bicultural, multilingual, have people skills and are musicians. And all three are in the Who's Who in America.

You are wise to wait if God is really telling you that you are not ready. So I can't pressure you to go now. I'm with Wycliffe Bible Translators and we left for the Philippines with one child on the way. There were many great advantages in starting out with young kids. By the end of first term we had two boys and on furlough we added a third son. Smaller kids are so much more adjustable. Some teens can adjust in leaving to go overseas for the first time but often it is harder to go through adolescence at the same time. Hundreds of Wycliffe families have successfully gone to the field with small children.

You get so much expert help if you link up with an agency or your church denomination. Most have candidate categories that allow you to be one of their "missionaries in training." You might consider this. You could apply for an agency and have two years to get ready to go, BUT with the agencies wonderful help!

When my wife and I first went to the mission field, we had a one-year-old son. We went back five years later with three children ages 6, 4 and 1. And we’d do it all over again. Children open doors to people's hearts. Families are the backbone of every culture, and are especially important in non-Western ones. Kids are everywhere, all the time, and yours will grow up loving and being loved by the people you work with, both the other missionaries and the nationals. Children are a definite advantage on the mission field!

The younger they are, the easier it is to take them into another culture. Our children learned to speak the language much quicker, easier and better than their parents. And when they're young, they don't undergo as much culture shock as when they're older. The longer you stay in your home culture and the more possessions you acquire, the more difficult it is to let go and go. Get some training and then go! Don't stay until you think you know everything and then you'll be "ready." The only way to learn to be a missionary is to go be a missionary. You won't learn it in books. You won't learn it in Bible college. You'll learn it by doing it!

Yes, you can make it. We came to Japan as missionaries in 1993. At that time our oldest was 2 and our youngest 5 months. We spent the first two years in language school. We made it, but we did not come completely "ready." Both my wife and I come from divorced Christian parents. We were not ready to cope with the struggles of adjusting to a new environment. We needed more than anything else to learn to communicate--with each other and with others. After two and a half years on the field, we returned to the States for three months of counseling at what was called at that time "Tuscarora Resource Center" in Pennsylvania. I think it is called "Alongside" now. We were able to learn to communicate. Now after about eight years on the field (with 10 and 8 year old boys and a 3 year old girl), our marriage, family and ministry are solid and growing. We don't go too many days (hours) without struggle, but now with a strong relationship with each other and with our heavenly Father, those struggles are not devastating.

There are so many areas of concern. Will you be able to adjust to the culture you are going to? What language and other skills will you need? What about your children's education? How does your church feel? How about your parents? Sure, they will miss seeing their grandchildren, but are they willing to send you with their blessing. (You can still make it, but it becomes even more difficult.) How will you be supported?

The more you settle into the American lifestyle, the more difficult it will be to move on. (When we spent a year in the States for our first home assignment, our boys were not excited about returning to Japan.) Buying a house (and all the furniture), a car, etc. are potential obstacles to leaving. Some cultures won't have lots of organized activities for children or family-friendly programs at the church (assuming you don't go as a church planter where your family will start out as the church). Any medical concerns?

As a missionary, we can sometimes be treated as spiritual giants when we are in the States, and receive lots of attention even before going on the field (just for having "the call"). But once you are on the field, you may find yourself feeling very much "out of sight, out of mind." The letters that pour in the first few months slow to a trickle after a year or so. Will you be able to survive and make it? Make sure your relationship with God is strong and growing (and not dependent on the Christian sub-culture of America). And make sure that as a family (especially as a couple) you are ready to be, many times, each other’s main and perhaps only close friend on the field. Are you able to work through disagreements? Do you know how to express love to each other? Do you know how to deal with and talk about all sorts of feelings?

If I had been confronted with those questions before coming to Japan, I may have delayed and better prepared myself for life and ministry overseas. Having gotten that help, I know that it is possible to make it overseas as a young family. And children are often a terrific means of making contact with strangers.

It is very simple to successfully go into the mission field with a growing family -- you just go! But, you're going to have to make many changes in your thinking and expectations of life. You'll have to step right out of your own culture, adopt a new culture, drastically change your life-style and standard of living and most likely, learn a new language. The good thing is that your children will get a far better education than ever they would at home, will learn a new language and, most likely, never want to return to the States (if they remember the place!).

By the way, you also asked whether you should buy a home now. In all the biblical examples I can think of, when God called someone, it was always for an immediate start. I cannot think of an example where God called someone to start work at a future date. Therefore, buying a house right now would seem to be in disobedience to a call.

I remember thinking "I must be crazy to take two babies, bottles, and all of our stuff and leave the country I know and love for the rest of my life." But my husband’s calling was to Columbia, which meant I was also called there, so I trusted the Lord above and beyond those immediate circumstances. That first year was especially challenging with the inconvenience of taking two babies to a foreign country where I would be in language school. God gave me the physical and emotional ability to do that, because these are not the comfortable things in life.

Another challenge was living in constant upset until we were finally able to put down roots. After arriving in Columbia we were able to rent a house after looking, on foot and by taxi, for a couple of weeks. Our sparsely furnished apartment made me think of the beautiful couch I had just sold in the States. You soon learn that materialism is not important when you find you can live with very little.

Excerpted from pp. 81ff in the book Scaling the Wall: overcoming obstacles to missions involvement by Kathy Hicks of Operation Mobilization http://www.usa.om.org , published by Authentic Media. Order the book online http://tinyurl.com/uc9d

I knew in my head when we moved that Jesus loved my children more than me and that they would be OK growing up in another country -- however, it's harder to tell your heart, so I grieved a lot the first year about all the things I couldn't give them-woods to fight dragons in, making bows and arrows with their Grandfather, green grass to run barefoot in, friends they could relate to-the list went on. After being here for two years however, I think less and less about "all the things they are missing" and think instead of "all the things they are gaining." I see so many blessings in their lives each day. Although I sometimes still grieve for some of those things for them, I am truly grateful for the opportunity to raise my children here, and for the fact that they now call Asia "home."

You know your children are growing up in a foreign country when: (all of these are actual things that have happened recently)
1. The littlest children think chickens only live in the zoo.
2. When one of them sees a picture of someone on a horse she exclaims in disbelief, "You don't ride horses-that's silly-you ride elephants."
3. As we went through the airport on our only trip out of the city our daughter saw the carpeted floor and said, "Wow, look at this big blanket. Can I sit on it?"
4. Our son thinks electric locks on the car door are amazing.
5. Upon seeing a big wooly dog on a leash, our daughter exclaims: "Mom! Look at that lady walking that lion!"
6. They naturally play "outdoor market", turning the whole living room into individual stalls with cheap goods for sale.
7. They choose fried dumplings over McDonald's.