Okay, so I really do have a whole list of things to catch up blogging on, but I just couldn’t help sharing this article on raising missions-minded kids that my mom sent me today. Fellow parents, please take the time to read it! To me, this is right on. It starts,
Some of the coolest people I’ve ever met told me about their retirement plan: “We hope that our kids (they had six at the time) will live in different places all around the world. We’ll spend our retirement visiting them, spending some weeks with one, then moving on to the next.”
What a challenge! Derek and I can definitely identify with this couple. We hope to have six kids, and we would be thrilled if they all became missionaries. Even if they’re called to different things, we’re planning to have all our kids learn a useful language, graduate a year early (the joys of homeschooling!), and take a mission year between high school and college where they go spend a year with missionaries and explore the possibility that God is calling them to the field. We would also love to do a family mission year, like one family we know, where we all take off to a foreign country for a year, possibly with Derek (and me, depending on the kids’ ages) teaching at a MK school to give the seasoned teachers a well-deserved furlough. Since Derek’s legal work doesn’t really lend itself to full-time foreign missions, this would be a small way to contribute to the work of the Great Commission. But a lot of that is far in the future, so I love Shane Bennett’s suggestions for how to work (right now, at home) on raising global kids who have a passion for the world, not just their own backyard. It’s scary, but isn’t that what we parents ultimately want for our kids–to be used by God in a big way?!?