Volume 8.1
Obeying a missionary call usually comes with the necessity of living in and adapting to a different culture. A missionary's success or otherwise may depend on how well he or she is able to make this adaptation. We have featured insightful articles, resources, and stories of African missionaries to illustrate why cross-cultural adaptation matters in missions.
Know their culture
“For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a servant to all, that I might win the more…I have become all things to all men, that I might by all means save some.” (1 Cor. 9:19, 22)
I recently shared my conversion s...
Fridays or Sundays: missions in the Persian Gulf
What does personality have to do with evangelism? I’ve always been a man of the people, easily adaptable and sociable. This has become one of my greatest assets in reaching people in a far land, with a language and a culture I barely unders...
A confluence of cultures
A missionary family once lived among a Muslim people group for some 21 years. When they first arrived, they couldn’t differentiate between the names of people, places, animals, and foods. Everything was strange, yet, they had a mandate to put Go...
Connie’s cultural trials and triumphs
The dead woman had been a member of the church during her life. All seemed well at the burial until a local woman approached the pastor’s wife, Connie. Referring to the dead body, the woman whispered, “Look at our sister; she hasn’t bathed ...
Language 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 und...
Culture 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 spiritua...
The 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 trauma...
People groups: the North Sentinelese
The Sentinelese people live on North Sentinel Island, which is part of India and lies south in the Indian Ocean in the Andaman archipelago. The nearest island is less than 30 km away, but they are over 1200 km from the Indian subcontinent. Th...
