Find the balance
Family is central to Africans, who we are and how we exist. Remove family, and we are not a people. Our nuclear and extended families are interconnected, and this web often determines many decisions we make. Family in Africa exists to support indi...
Read MoreCalled: Ralambo Tiffanie – no longer lonely
I faced a lot of suspicion when I first arrived as a missionary on the Island. Unknown to me, some Malagasy single women who arrived before me were involved in prostitution. It was tough to settle as a single Malagasy girl on an Island tha...
Read MoreMissionary call and family – an “Ubuntu” option
Must a missionary abandon his family to truly answer God’s call to reach the lost? Across the continent, a new generation of African missionaries is going out, and their families do not always understand the reasons. It can appear se...
Read MoreA turnaround for Reagan
Reagan had never left the town of Kumasi in his entire life. So the day he boarded a bus for the mission field far away from home was a big day. Upon arriving in Tamale, he discovered that the bus to Gbintre moved once a day. He didn’t m...
Read MoreMissionary calling and family concerns
You have been called to serve as a missionary, but family concerns threaten to pull you the other way. How do you resolve the dilemma? We have compiled advice from mission leaders to address some common family issues that arise when you de...
Read MoreThe support mothers: standing in the gap for missionary kids
In February 1996, the EMS children’s hostel opened in Jos, Nigeria, to provide a home for the children of EMS missionaries who were serving in the mission field. The idea was motivated by a finding that 25 per cent of missionaries left t...
Read MorePeople Groups: the Beja of Eritrea, Sudan and Egypt
The Beja people are nomads who have occupied their homelands across the Sudan, Eritrea and Egypt for more than 4,000 years. Some scholars believe they are related to the ancient Egyptians. In the course of their history, they accepted Isla...
Read MoreLanguage learning and culture
When a group of Kenyans and Malagasies were sent to a third country to serve as missionaries, it was a lot harder to communicate than they imagined. One team member already knew the trade language, and most had five or six other languages ...
Read MoreCulture shock
Can an African experience culture shock? Absolutely. Culture shock is when a person is unable to cope well in unfamiliar surroundings. Reactions vary from anger with the host culture, to withdrawal, grief and loneliness and sometimes spiri...
Read MoreThe doors a business can open
When Lucy Pius Mwiru decided to go to Oman as a housemaid, the goal was to eventually become economically stable and serve others, but things didn’t go as planned. The wages weren’t as much as she had been promised, and the job was tra...
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