by Paul Nielsen

How much can you know before going overseas full-time? How much Bible, first aid or culture should a person master? The following are a few iotas other full-time missionaries wish they’d known before heading overseas*:

• I would have gotten more cross-cultural training, especially focusing on the culture to which I was going.
• I wish I had known more about my relationship with God and about spiritual warfare.
• Language learning is a long process!
• My standard of living is drastically lower in a developing country.
• Their customs are not wrong, just different.
• In their language, is it what you imply with your words or what you say with your words what they hear?
• More nuts and bolts skills in: church planting, opening a business and obtaining visas in a creative access country, shipping of goods, obtaining housing and transportation during furlough, and so on.

It is impossible to be completely prepared, but you can learn a lot before leaving on your assigment. A people’s or region’s history, their language and customs, their diet: In today’s internet age, all of this can be researched to some degree, even for a lot of unreached peoples.

A lot of things are best learned by being immersed in the culture. The apostle Paul, for instance, while in Athens noticed an altar to an unknown god. He used that as a stepping stone for the Gospel among the Athenians. There will always be things that we can only learn by being a part of the culture - in particular among unreached peoples.

That said, a good rule of thumb is to know as much as you can. As soon as you sense the nudge to go, begin to consider where you will serve: continent, region, country and right down to people group. Begin learning the region’s languages and customs. Read up on their history and politics. Cook their food and listen to their music. If possible, befriend someone from the region or people group, someone who might be a student or refugee.

My wife and I have a heart for China. So, for Christmas, she asked for a book, a book intricately linked to Chinese culture. Not only was this translation difficult to find (the 5 part epic goes by three titles), it will likely be a thick read. Thus far, she is through the introduction, which is 40 pages in length. By no means can we know everything about China. But my wife’s book (The Story of the Stone by Cao Xueqin), the stir fry we cook and the Chinese movies we watch all prepare our hearts and minds for the opportunity to serve God among the Chinese.

Study hard!

* See more at AskAMissionary.com.

This article is part of the January 2006 issue. It is filed under Preparing to go. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.  Share this post on Facebook.