On missions and missionaries..........
Recently we had a missions conference at our church. I've heard a lot of missionaries speak, fed a lot of them and housed many. (I was going to say 'put up with...' but 'housed' them sounded better!) I've never been part of a missions conference though. There were 3 families of missionaries coming to be involved with our conference. One, a family of five whose children didn't speak English! That is the family Mike told me we were housing one Sunday when I stayed home because of a migraine!
The children were approximately ages 2, 5 & 6. They were delightful children, very well-mannered and eager to learn English. The 6 yr. old loves horses and thought our home to be just about the best place to end up. Lianna faithfully gave rides to all. Both L & A played many games learning how to express thoughts with hand signals and demonstrations. They got a little taste of what we did in Russia and Ukraine! "Mr. Missionary" had that special glint in his eye and I recognized him as a prankster from the word go...er.... 'hi' ! Mrs. Missionary was a very sweet fun loving and delightful lady. The week went well and we really enjoyed the time together. I would be amiss however, to let the blog entry end there. Having had become familiar with other families that were a blessing in the past this family really stood out in their dedication not only to their Lord and ministry but to their children. Although all we have met love their children some try to 'cover-up' a child's fallen behavior rather than deal with it immediately.
Not that I'm comparing children and dogs but back when I was showing dogs in obedience we used a term called 'ring-wise'. It was against the rules to correct your dog while competing in the ring. Dogs are rather quick to learn this and will be perfect during training when they can be corrected but be little animals when in the ring and they know you can't do anything about it. How I appreciated the judge who would acknowledge the disobedience and then tell me to correct it! Later, is to late.
This couple would speak to their child then if the infraction continued they would remove the child and deal. When they returned to the meal or group they would apologize. I had mixed emotions over their apology and 'commenced to think' about why. After a couple of days I responded to Mr. Missionaries' apology by saying, ' Please don't apologize to me for training your child in a God honoring way, only apologize to me if you don't train them and they become beasts and then apologize to God who has entrusted you with these children." He grinned and told me that he has discovered that a lot of folks feel that because they are christians and children of missionaries that they are immune to the curse of the fallen nature we all have.
We need to hold our leaders and each other accountable for God given standards but do we inadvertantly put different standards on them that we ourselves are not following? Just a thought!