A HOME FROM HOME

by Mark Detzler

Bringing up children on the mission field is just like bringing up children anywhere else - really scary! Like all Christian parents, our number one priority is to communicate our experience of the Lord Jesus to our children in a loving and natural way.

Missionary children face unique challenges and pressures, but there are also advantages to growing up in a cross-cultural setting. They understand that their personal experience of the world is not all there is and that there are many different ways of doing things. Many people who spend their whole lives in one culture sometimes never make this discovery.

We want our children to feel at home in Italian and Anglo-American culture. They attend Italian schools, but speak English at home. We encourage them to have Italian friends but we find that their deepest friendships are with other expat children. We would not want to take our children out of school for a year-long furlough, but we aim to return briefly to England or the US every year.

We know that God could lead us elsewhere at short notice, but we do our best to create a secure environment for our children. We want to show them that Christians are distinctive, but we also try to minimize the unneccessary differences between them and others. They watch cartoons, wear the same clothes and support the same football teams.

Our call is to do God's will, whether in Italy or in England, as missionaries or in secular work. Whatever God calls us to do, we want our children to know that eternal security is only to be found as citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven.

Mark and Cathy live in Rome, Italy, with their three children: Matthew, Samuel and Sara.