Are you waiting until your children are teenagers before you think about going on a short-term mission trip with them? DON’T!
I know what the popular wisdom is here:
- Young children won’t understand or appreciate the experience, so wait until they will get more out of it.
- Young children are a pain to travel with.
- Young children are not really useful, so it is hard to justify the expense.
- Young children are impossible to fund raise for, so you can’t afford to take them.
EVERYTHING ABOVE, I BELIEVE TO BE TOTALLY WRONG!
- The best time for children to experience missions first is when their young minds and hearts are still soft and impressionable–not after their hormones create havoc in them for a few years. We have 8 grandkids under the age of 8. Only the two born this year and the 3 yr old have not been on a foreign LST project, and most of them have been multiple times. They have friends in Japan. They are not afraid of foreign languages. They know what the grown-ups are talking about when they tell of teaching others about Jesus. They are very disappointed in the years they can’t go.
- There are challenges to traveling with young kids–but they make little kids suitcases and backpacks. They will sleep in the airplane seats. Travel is quite a fun game if the parents will invest just a little time to make it so!
- Children are magnets on the mission field. No matter whether it is Germany or Africa or China or Turkey, adults accompanied by small children find it much more common to get into conversations with people. I know of 6-8 year olds who have “helped” other children with their English, while their parents read the Bible in English with LST workers. Children may be the best missionaries ever!!
- Unfortunately, the previously mentioned misconceptions do make it difficult sometimes to raise money for children to go. We faced this even more strongly back in the 80s, when the Woodwards were starting LST, towing 3 small children behind them. I just dug in my heels and said, we don’t go without them–and tried to educate people on the good a whole family does who goes together. God provided.
Many, many mission churches do not have whole families. Often only the mother and children come, or only the father, or only the children. To see a whole family–parents and kids–being Christians together is inspiring to onlookers, no matter what country you are in.
Your decision to take your children on a short-term mission trip will be one of the best decisions you have ever made! And when you do it the second time, you will thank God for removing the doubts that you had.
And your children, when they are young adults, will put their arms around you and thank you for doing something wonderful that dramatically changed their lives and helped them know God!
And is there anything in this world you want more than that?
Don’t wait!
Mark's Blog 
You guys inspired me!
My wife Gina and I have taken our children with us on 5 LST projects of 6 weeks, starting when our daughter was 13 months (to Thailand in 2002) and our son was 21 months (to Thailand in 2008). We’ve been in developing countries every time (Fiji and Malaysia were the others).
We can affirm from experience everything you say!
When people ask in disbelief, “Are you taking the kids with you?” We answer, “Well, we’re not leaving them behind for 6 weeks!” And our 9-year-old (after being a magnet for many years) is now an active participant in our parties, in our devotionals, and even helping with a couple of readers in cooperation with adult workers.
Our experience has certainly been that if we had waited until the kids were teenagers, we all would have missed out and a lot of people who know about Jesus now wouldn’t have heard.
We took our almost-two-year-old to LST in Beijing with us in the past year. Not only was he an attention magnet but he provided a great deal of companionship and social interaction for the local missionary’s toddler.
You couldn’t exactly say that he knew it, or that the other kid would have been able to articulate it, but our son provided a valuable ministry to him and we were all blessed to have him on the trip.
Mark, I couldn’t agree more! Cathy and I took our kids (ages 7 and 11) to China this year for a two-week mission trip. This was such an eye-opener for my kids in so many ways, not the least was having them share stories of their lives with the readers. And as you mentioned, we (well, actually our kids) were treated as celebrities when out in public. We even had some readers stay after their appointments just to spend time playing with our kids! We will definitely do it again as a whole family!
Thanks, Bruce, for your testimony. You and the others who have commented are great examples for the many!
Mark — Thank you so much for this encouragement. I will be taking a nearly two year old with me to Ghana West Africa next summer to help with the Village of Hope. I think it will be a fantastic experience for her (even if she doesn’t remember it). Thank you for helping to educate our churches about the importance of modeling missionary work from the time they are young.
Amen Mark! We’re taking both boys (they’ll be 4 and 1) in 2011. It will be challenging, but well worth it. Amanda and I agree completely agree with your points – thanks for encouraging us to go with our kids.