Supporting & Encouraging Our CBC Missionary Family

Ways You Can Help Support and Encourage Our CBC Missionaries

Your Missionary on the Field

Regular, intelligent, heart-felt prayer is your missionary's number one need. Nothing else is as important; perhaps nothing else is harder to give on a consistent basis.
Read your missionary's prayer letters thoughtfully. Is he lonely? Is she discouraged? Then send your missionary an encouraging note and refer to items mentioned in prayer letters.
Communicate with your missionary. A five-minute telephone conversation may not be as expensive as you think. But check the time difference - don't get them out of bed for a chat at 3 a.m.! Send them emails without an obligation to respond to every one.
Send your missionary something to help celebrate the holidays: for instance, Thanksgiving napkins, Christmas placemats, or Easter egg dye.
Visit your first-termer, or send your pastor or missions chairperson. Always give advance notice and don't stay too long. Remember that your missionary is busy and can't always drop everything to act as your tour guide. And do leave a monetary gift to cover the cost of your stay.
Send money at Christmas for that something "extra" or for your missionary's vacation. A few days away at a quiet spot will do wonders for his outlook and ministry!)
Write to one of the missionary families; tell them about yourself and family and find out more about them.
Ask them if there is any way you can help them or if there is anything that they miss from America that you could send them.
Send them American foods that they cannot buy where they are. Some ideas would be: Jell-O, M&M's, Oreos, cake mixes, macaroni & cheese, peanut butter .....
Send them a new box of greeting cards. Imagine trying to send a birthday card to a parent when all of the cards in the store have happy birthday written in Russian or Japanese!
Recipes are a nice thing to get from America. Just make sure that they can buy all the ingredients they need in the country they are in.
Get a missionary families picture and pray for them as a family. Use the Miss-O-Gram to get their prayer requests.
Have a map put in the kids; bedroom and put little tags where each of the missionary families from our church is serving the Lord.
Find out more about the country of the missionaries and have your kids do the same. For homeschooled kids, this would be a wonderful Geography lesson.
Find out when each of the missionaries' birthdays and wedding anniversaries are and send them a card.
Find out some of their favorite comics from the papers and cut them out. After a few weeks send the comic strips to them. Even sending them a few whole Sunday comics sections can be fun.
Cut out Editorial cartoons, if it's an issue they know or should know about. Also editorial essays and important local artists from newspapers.
Ask if they have an American VCR, and if they would like certain kinds of shows you could tape: PBS specials, sporting events (NBA, NFL playoffs), etc... Don't overdue this; too many videos to watch might become a burden.

Your Missionary at Home

Invite the missionary families that live here in the Phoenix area or are back on furlough over to dinner and spend time with them. Don't expect or be upset though, if they are not able to reciprocate.
When missionary families are here and they have kids, have a party for the kids. Invite a group of the children from CBC so that the MK's can make friends here and not feel left out. Encourage your children to stay in touch with them when the missionaries return to the field.
During home assignment/furlough give your missionary your friendship. Share what God has done in your life and what you are doing in service for Him. Take steps toward building spiritually into your missionary's life.
Help them with their transition back into North America. Offer to sign up children for school. Offer your name as the "secondary emergency contact" person for school or events. Suggest good places to shop, or explain optional activities for children such as library reading hours and Little League.
Take them shopping. After four or more years your missionaries may need to update their wardrobe. Why not treat them to a new outfit?
Provide some R&R. Do you have a "get-away" spot ( cabin, cottage, trailer, extra room) that you could make available for a few days for your missionary? Traveling from place to place while on home assignment can be stressful.
Provide them with a list of area resources such as reputable doctors, good places to eat, fun places to take the kids, babysitters, and beauty salons or barbers. It's taken you years to build up a pool of places where you transact business. Why not share that resource with your missionary?
Can you make your car available for your missionary? A reliable car that will take your missionary through their home assignment is a gift of peace of mind.
Reorient them to their local church. Lots of faces have changed since they were last there. Also, connect with your missionary not only in church, but also in informal gatherings outside of church. Having a party? Invite your missionary!

Things to Remember

There are some things to remember when we are serving our missionaries.

One of them is to find out about customs duties. These can be very expensive and your package might be more of a burden than a blessing to them. Just make sure you are sending them something that would be worth it. Remember as well, that packages may be opened and searched as it goes through customs. It is possible that items in your package may be taken out of it and not make it to the missionaries.

Above all - We must remember to be constantly keeping them in prayer.