Wycliffe Canada's Annual Scripture Celebration

Together, we're celebrating milestones in the global Bible translation movement, and you're invited!

Join us in giving glory to God for the milestones you have helped us achieve, despite a global pandemic.

• Date: Saturday, April 9, 2022
• Time: 10 am MST
• Location: Online or in-person at First Alliance Church
• Register at: wycliffe.ca/celebrate
• Contact: lauren.smith@wycliffe.ca

Supporting our TCKs

 

A friend brought an article to my attention today written by Rebecca Hopkins for Christianity Today. It's about MKs - missionary kids, or more broadly TCKs - third culture kids. As a reminder, a third culture kid is one who did (or is now) grow up in a different culture than their passport or "home culture" but also don't quite belong in their present culture. You can see that this group is actually larger than just missionary kids. 

Please take a few minutes to read it. It's especially helpful for parents, family members, churches, church leaders, mission leaders, youth leaders, Sunday School teachers, teacher teachers but especially those who are Christians. 

If you've followed me and my family for the past 20 years you are aware of some of the challenges our children have faced both abroad and here in Canada. We often made choices with our children's well-being in mind. The impact of a move to here, a trip to there, another flight across the ocean were all considered in our plans and choices. And yet, if you recall, it took a full three years at least, on our return to Canada, before I felt our children had each found their footing. It doesn't mean everything was smooth sailing from there, just that some of the bigger bumps at the time had been dealt with. There were many tears along the way, and hard questions and conversations.

Many, though certainly not all, TCKs return to their passport country during or at the end of high school when a lot of choices and plans for the future are being made. And in the midst of all this they are like any other teenager examining their faith. The article I mentioned above says, 

"The faith piece for MKs makes them unique because God is the instigator of all the greatness and all the painful parts of growing up cross-culturally in ministry,” Phoenix said. “Everything in their life is faith-related."

For any person, the examining of their faith is best done in a gracious, warm, and understanding community. Understanding TCKs is no easy thing, and I've had three to practice on 😊 But it is not just on the parents of TCKs (in fact that might be the last place they are willing to look), it is also on the community of believers, or at least certain people within that community, to seek to learn and understand TCKs and go alongside them as they work out their own faith in a strange place.

So I encourage you today, to pray for the TCKs you know in your church, at your school, among your kid's friends and so on. To be open to their questions and wonderings and wanderings. In Wycliffe Canada we have many families, with kids of all ages. This year alone we have several TCKs returning to Canada. If you would be interested in a resource for praying for our TCKs please email me. We ask a lot of our young people in the missions community. 

I borrow the closing comments in the CT article to leave with you, part of a poem by Abigal de Vuyst:

“How are you doing?”
I sigh; I know I am safe with them.
“It’s been a hard day.”
They help me process,
Cry with me and pray with me.

~~~

Hopkins, R., 2022. The Missionary Kids Are Not Alright. [online] ChristianityToday.com. Available at: <https://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2022/march-web-only/third-culture-missionary-kids-trauma-deconstruction-church.html> [Accessed 29 March 2022].