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Mission workers have great marriages, don't they?

BY LYDIA NIGH, SIM CANADA MOBILISATION TEAM

Surely this is true! Couples commit themselves to Christ, leave their families, give up jobs and cars and houses, undergo medical and psychological examination, raise support and prayer teams, and present themselves as living sacrifices to God.

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Surely, a couple can’t go through all of this without having overcome all the issues in their marriage. And once they get to their assigned station, whew! The hardest part is over, right?

The stresses of living overseas include culture shock, ministry 24/7, working and living in close quarters, limited finances and team dynamics; add to that the normal stresses of marriage. Surely, because missions workers are super Christians they will also have super marriages.

My husband and I, like every missionary couple, needed to be strong and model Christian family for the sake of Christ, our team, our local church family and our supporters. Our marriage had strong roots but inevitably, the storms would blow through. We overcame by God’s grace and by genuine and supportive community.

As my ministry to children literally grew up into ministry to singles and couples, so began my vision to provide community and support to help people build God-centred relationships.

In 2015, we returned to Canada. In addition to mentoring and mobilising SIM missionaries, I joined FamilyLife, a ministry of Power to Change/CRU. FamilyLife Canada brings help and hope to marriages and families. We are a Christian ministry that creates safe spaces and winsome conversation, welcoming everyone: blended families, single parents, people of any faith and people of no faith.

We used to host Weekend Getaways for couples. Through local churches, we trained marriage mentors and ran parenting workshops. In 2019, our total audience was 1,500 couples across Canada. But in 2020, COVID created an opportunity to transition to online ministry.

Webinars and podcasts impacted more than 2,000 couples with over 6,000 downloads. In October 2020, a marriage conference, Together For Good, brought over 2,400 couples from 35 countries. It’s still accessible at:

www.familylifecanada.com/togetherforgood.

Online, we trained 450 mentor couples and in April 2021, over 1700 families registered for a week-long parenting conference called This Day Forward, again engaging with people all over the world.

The need is great because singles, couples and parents experience serious and universal challenges in their relationships regardless of culture, religion or social status. The biggest challenges to going global are language and culture, but FamilyLife Canada is translating and contextualising materials into Cantonese, Mandarin and French, including a version of Together For Good with Canada’s First Nations/ Indigenous speakers. It’s slow work but our tools are now used in the Caribbean, Central Asia, East Asia, Australia, New Zealand and Africa.

At SIM, can we use these tools to support mission workers to build their marriages and families? Could missionaries use these same tools to bring help and hope to families in their churches and communities?

Imagine missions workers, with healthy marriages and successful parenting, growing healthy communities and empowering missional disciples.

Imagine the powerful testimony of God-centred lives and families, transformed by the gospel and the Holy Spirit, shared not out of strength but weakness, not out of success but failure.

Imagine Christ’s love being lived out in those communities where Christ is least known.

Check out the resources: www.familylifecanada.com

Contact Lydia for resources in other languages: lydia.nigh@sim.org

PLEASE PRAY:

-For SIM marriages and families in every corner of the world.

-For God to work in the lives of not-yet-believers who are in crisis in their closest relationships.

-For Lydia and Gilbert as they present 7 Ways to Strengthen Marriages on the Mission Field in SIM’s Learning Café on June 17, 2021.

Lydia and Gilbert Nigh served with SIM Zambia for 17 years. Gilbert is on leave of absence and Lydia has a dual ministry with FamilyLife Canada and SIM Canada’s Mobilisation Team.

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