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Dear Friend,
I am working at my desk planning the training schedule for our upcoming two-week Member Care and Counseling Seminar that will be offered in Chiang Mai, Thailand this October.
This intensive seminar is for missionaries who have responsibilities for the care and support of other missionaries in their missionary agency. Week by week these member care workers help missionaries who are struggling with:
- trauma and stress from accidents, attacks, robbery at gunpoint, and sudden forced evacuations
- burnout and stress
- discouragement and depression
- marital problems and conflicts
- children with academic, social or emotional difficulties including eating disorders, cutting themselves, loneliness and even suicidal depression
- relational problems or conflicts with other missionaries or national Christian leaders
- not finding a good fit for their gifts and abilities within their mission agency.
But there is just one problem. Most of these missionary member care workers are mature individuals who have spent a number of years on the mission field. They love the Lord, have a good pastoral heart and are well respected and appreciated by others in their mission. Yet they generally have little if any training in how to counsel others and how to deal with many of the serious problems their colleagues are facing.
That's why the Narramore Christian Foundation offers this intensive, two-week training program for missionary member care workers. We give them ways of understanding their colleagues' struggles and how to help them.
As I was putting together our daily schedule of lectures and other learning experience for this year's seminar, I re-read the evaluations that participants wrote of last year's seminar. One wrote, "I wish it could go an extra week, but I probably couldn't have gotten away for that long." Several wished they had more time to absorb and discuss some of the lecture material. But the vast majority had only incredibly positive comments about the impact of the training on their lives and ministries. Here are just a few:
"I greatly appreciated the candid way that the counselors and lecturers talked about some of their own struggles right from the beginning. That helped us to feel safe and to know that the Lord can use all of us to reach others through our own brokenness."
"Our counseling instructor gave us such helpful 'on-the-job' training as we practiced counseling one another. We all shared real issues, so this time often became intense and emotional for the 'counselee', but this was the most fruitful part of the entire seminar."
"I have close missionary friends who had to leave the field with personal issues and others that I have been 'walking thru' some difficult things. This seminar has helped me make sense of their struggles and identify and understand issues I have seen in their tears and long talks. I will be able to be more effective in the future. This has been a providential experience for me."
"I came thinking I would learn how to help others but I learned more about me!"
"I understand my husband much better. We began really talking and connecting and accepting our different perspectives, feelings and backgrounds."
Reading comments like these reminded me of why we go to all of the effort and expense to offer this seminar. It literally changes lives and prepares the participants to help change the lives of many others.
Because of deflation of the U.S. dollar in relationship to the Thai currency, this year it will cost us more. Although our staff of Christian counselors and psychologists donate their time, we must pay for their roundtrip airfare from the United States to Thailand, and their room and meals during the conference. We also supplement other costs of the seminar. Instead of charging the approximately $2,000 that it costs us to offer this training to each missionary we only ask them to pay approximately $800 for the entire two weeks. That barely covers the cost of their room and meals at the facility where we hold the conference. We must raise the additional $1,200 per person for each member care worker taking this life-changing training.
Friend, would it be possible for you to provide an entire scholarship of $1,200 to enable one missionary to receive this critically-needed training and personal growth? Or perhaps you could make an even larger gift to enable several of God's servants to attend. If you can't do that, we will gratefully combine whatever you can contribute with the gifts of others to make this training possible. And if you aren't able to give financially, God may be giving you the vital role of praying for the missionaries who will be taking this training and for our staff who are sacrificially donating their time and talents to serve God's servants overseas.
Thank you for partnering with us in these ministries. Only God knows the many thousands who will eventually be touched by the missionaries taking this life-changing training.
Serving God's servants,
Bruce Narramore, Ph.D.
President
Donations can be sent on our secure website at: https://www.ncfliving.com/donate.php, phoned in at 1-800-477-5893, or mailed to the address below.
“Bear one another’s burdens and so fulfill the law of Christ”
(Galatians 6:2).
Narramore Christian Foundation
P.O. Box 661900
Arcadia, California 91066-1900
U.S.A.
NOTE for U.S.A. residents: Narramore Christian Foundation is registered in the State of California as a non-profit 501 (c) (3) tax deductible organization. |
