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As a former Missionary Kid (MK), missions has played an important role in my life. I now live in the United States, and I want my kids to be exposed to missions, too. But this is hard to accomplish when you don’t live in another country.
I have implemented many of the things that I write about on this blog with my family, but I wanted something that would be very interesting for the kids and that would help me with other ideas of how to teach them. Let me tell you about how Missionary Kid Stories came into existence.
My kids and I tend to read lots of books together, so I started looking for books about missions to read to the kids. I wanted one that had information on different countries and types of ministries, but from a kid’s perspective. In searching for a book like this for my children, I could not find one that talked about different ministry strategies from the missionary child’s point of view. The closest book that I found was: Around the World With Kate and Mack by Melissa Paredes (published by Wycliffe), which has a missionary child traveling around and focusing on different languages, cultures, and people groups. I also found several other books written for children about true missionaries from history, like Amy Carmichael and Hudson Taylor.
So, I set out to write a fun, educational, and informative way for children to learn two main things about missions. The result is Missionary Kid Stories . In it, kids learn:
- What life is like for different missionary kids in other countries (Mexico, Brazil, Zimbabwe, France, Indonesia, and the Philippines)
- where they live
- what languages they speak
- where they go to school
- their favorite foods
- the weather
- local arts and crafts
- important landmarks or interesting topography
- Different types of ministries in which missionaries serve
- printing Biblical literature
- Bible translation
- teaching in a seminary for local pastors
- church planting
- piloting planes to reach remote locations
- teaching in an international school
Each chapter focuses on a different missionary kid, each in a different country, each with a different ministry focus. The characters are fictional (for security reasons in some countries), but are based, largely, on real missionary families serving around the world.
This book is intended to plant ideas into children’s minds that will hopefully grow into a desire to serve God in missions. I know that my kids have enjoyed reading this book (or having it read to them), and it has sparked many conversations about things they read about. I have been able to use this book to teach them about the countries included. For example, you can read about ideas to use when learning about Brazil here.
I the coming months, I plan to include more ideas for activities you can do with your children based on the book. I hope that families will use this to help broaden their children’s horizons. I also hope that it will be useful in homeschooling, Sunday Schools, and Vacation Bible Schools. If you would like to purchase the paper or Ebook version of “Missionary Kid Stories”, click here!
If you have activity ideas that coordinate with the countries or ministries in the book, comment and share! I’d love to know!
