July 26, 2026

The SEND U Blog

Reflections and Resources for Lifelong Learning for Missionaries

Tag: resilience

Resilience: the need
Photo by Khamkéo Vilaysing on Unsplash
Cross-Cultural Living, Hardship, Stress Management, Resilience

Resilience: the need

This entry is part 1 of 7 in the series Missionary resilience Resilience is a critical topic How do Christian global workers become resilient? This is the question that Geoff Whiteman posed to over 1000 missionaries.1 See ResilientGlobalWorker.org for information about this survey. It is a question that concerns anyone involved with member care for global workers. To illustrate, the title of Laura Mae Gardner’s highly-recommended book on member care is “Healthy, Resilient, & Effective in Cross-Cultural Ministry.” From the title itself, one can see the central and crucial role of resilience in productive mission workers. Kelly O’Donnell, CEO of Member Care Associates also highlights the importance of resilience in his book on global member care. Member care, I have learned over and over again, is not about creating a comfortable lifestyle. Nor is it about trusting people instead of trusting God. Rather, it is about further developing the resiliency… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
Can I stop asking “what’s wrong?”
Photo by Nathan Cowley from Pexels
Hardship, Stress Management

Can I stop asking “what’s wrong?”

Note: This blog post was first published on the Grow2Serve blog and is used with permission. Our guest author regularly facilitates a 2-week online course entitled “Sustainable Resilience“.  This course is for cross-cultural workers who have lived at least 3 months in a new culture.  Finding meaning and purpose During “Sustainable Resilience”, we spend significant time talking about #10. We are referring to Southwick and Charney’s list of ten factors that were almost always present in those who demonstrated high resilience in adversity. Here’s #10: Meaning and Purpose – were active problem solvers who looked for meaning and opportunity in the midst of adversity and sometimes even found humor in the darkness; used their traumatic experiences as a platform for personal growth.Southwick, Steven; Charney, Dennis. Resilience: The Science of Mastering Life’s Greatest Challenges, p. 16.… Read the whole post
Mark Morgenstern1 min read
Tanks and Training for Missions
Books, Hardship, Training, Book Reviews, Pre-field Training

Tanks and Training for Missions

God can transform the most painful experiences of our childhood into preparation to bless others.  Joseph told his brothers many years after they sold him into slavery, “You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives.” (Gen 50:20). I just finished listening to a similar story. In The Tank Man’s Son: A Memoir, Mark Bouman shares his gut-wrenching account of pain and misery, while growing up in rural Michigan. He was the son of an abusive man who owned a tank and ran a gun range near his home where military weapons of various kinds were regularly (and illegally) fired. His memories are terrifying – and at times comical – but always highly unusual. As a young boy, he suffered shrapnel wounds while helping his dad with the shooting range.  He found a huge tree root… Read the whole post
Ken Guenther2 mins read
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