Every day at lunch, Becky Courson gathers the kids she teaches and gives them a sample of food to try that they’ve never had before. “Their goal is to try it without letting me know they don’t like it and then say, ‘thank you for letting me try that,’” she said.
Becky’s calling these days at the International Mission Board’s training center is to prepare the children of future missionaries to become TCKs, or Third Culture Kids, who thrive in the call that God has placed on their families. “One of the basic things we teach kids is that different isn’t necessarily bad, just different,” she said.
The MK (Missionary Kid) Re-entry Retreat for college freshmen is sponsored each year by a different state’s WMU and with money from the Vision Fund.
They need the skills to be able to evaluate if the “different” they are experiencing is just “different,” or if “different” is something that isn’t appropriate for a child of God. The latter happens less often with food and more often with topics like behavior and beliefs. “We talk about different religions—some of the basics, like what god they worship or who their leader is,” Becky said. “Then we talk about how other religions might teach you to be kind, and that’s a good thing. But they may also teach you to worship another god, and that kind of different we can’t accept.”
Becky herself knows what it’s like to sort through this kind of adjustment—she and her husband, Jim, spent 17 years on the mission field in Taiwan, raised their children there, and helped with TCK education for the region. She got to Taiwan in large part because of WMU, she said—she’s convinced it was the women’s prayers and influence in her and Jim’s lives that reshaped their hearts to follow God to Taiwan.
The fact that Becky has been there comforts parents who are concerned about their children adjusting to life in an unfamiliar culture, both on the way overseas and on the way back. She says the MK (Missionary Kid) Re-entry Retreat for college freshmen—something sponsored each year by a different state’s WMU and with money from the Vision Fund—teaches them how to get ready for “different” again.
Becky Courson and her husband Jim served as missionaries in Taiwan and are pictured above in Nepal.
“Many have been in very remote areas,” Becky said. “It helps so much for them to come back and go to the retreat and be a part of a group who are like-minded in that they see the world differently than a lot of typical Americans do. Yet again, in college they have to face the idea that ‘different’ is not always bad, but sometimes it is and how do I make that judgment call?”
The retreat can help them get ready for that, and Becky said she’s thankful for the support that makes it happen. “WMU has done a really good job of providing that for them,” she concluded.
To help keep that going for future TCKs returning from the field and figuring out life in the United States, you can give to the Vision Fund at https://donate.wmufoundation.com/vision-fund.
Written by Grace Thornton.