July 29, 2016

You May Be a Missionary Kid If … (Part 5)

Editor’s note: This is the fifth in a series about life as a Seventh-day Adventist missionary child. Read Part 1 and Part 2 and Part 3 and Part 4.

As a missionary kid, you had amazing experiences that showed you God is real.

You know in reality and not just theory that God can do anything!

You may be a missionary kid if …

(Pixabay)

1. Your garden is amazing even though you truly don’t know what you are doing.

You are growing vegetables and selling them to neighbors for investment, so God blesses it in a special way.


(Pixabay)

2. Choosing to turn the nonproducing mango tree into an investment project doesn’t seem like a good idea to some adults.

Aren’t you supposed to give Jesus your best and not your worst? Well if Jesus could curse a fig tree in Mark 11:12-25, couldn’t He do the opposite with a mango tree?

End result: a bumper crop of mangoes for investment!


(Pixabay)

3. A teacher on your campus is struck by lightning but miraculously lives.


(Pixabay)

4. Lightning strikes the electricity transformer outside your brother’s window, sending a ball of fire rolling down the wire.

But the fire drops off before it got to the house and instead burns a round hole in the grass.


(Pixabay)

5. Your brother steps on a nail.

The nail goes deep into his foot and the missionary doctor, your grandpa, rushes to save his life from the severe infection he develops. The boy not only lives but continues to work for God to this day.


(Hans Hillewaert / Wikipedia)

6. The local devil worshipper stops threatening you and flees when you sing a song about Jesus.


(Pixabay)

7. Sabbath afternoons are never boring as a missionary kid. 

You pile as many academy kids as you could into the back camper shell of your dad’s pickup truck. Many teens hold tightly to felts, picture rolls, guitars, and magazines as you bounce along a dirt road, singing at the top of your lungs. Every 10 minutes or so another group gets out to be picked up some two hours later when their branch Sabbath Schools are finished.

Squealing children with brown legs flying greet your vehicle, talking all at once in their excitement that their program is about to start.

You decide you should be useful to God’s work, so you start your own branch Sabbath School just 10 minutes’ walk up the road from your parents.

Soon you have 25 to 40 children and adults who come every week to sing songs and hear Bible stories, even though you are only 10 years old.


(Pixabay)

8. Hardened lives are changed by the power of the gospel all around you. 

This moves you to tears and convinces you that the biggest privilege in the world is telling people about a God who transforms lives.


Karen Taylor Glassford was born to U.S. missionary parents in Puerto Rico and grew up in the Dominican Republic, Costa Rica, and Honduras. As an adult she has lived in South Korea and Guatemala and gone on many short-term mission trips, most recently to Rwanda in May 2016. She currently works at Institute of World Mission at the General Conference.


Read also:

You May Be a Missionary Kid If … Food keeps you talking for hours

You May Be a Missionary Kid If … Traveling thrills you

You May Be a Missionary Kid If … You can’t say where you are from

You May Be a Missionary Kid If … You have an unusual knowledge about medical matters

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