Deprived or Privileged?

By Marilyn Schlitt
OMF International

Many of us have heard stories about missionary kids (MKs as Marilyn refers to them) who have rebelled against parents or Christians or God and there is always a nagging worry that choosing to be a missionary means depriving your children in some way. Taking them from their family to an alien culture is bad enough but then there is their schooling to worry about. Should we even consider missionary work if we have children?

Marilyn was an MK and is now the mother of MKs so it is no surprise that this is not a horror story. However it is honest. Marilyn tells how she thrived on boarding school life but admits that others, including her sister, did not find it so easy. She explains how her parents dealt with the realities of bringing up children on the mission field and were sensitive to the needs of each individual child.

As I read the book it struck me that we accept the familiar problems of sending our children to schools where God is not honoured by many teachers and peers but we baulk at the idea of sending children to a Christian boarding school. We worry about foreign cultures but forget that many of the values around us ought to be just as alien.

Deprived or Privileged? is well worth a read for anyone interested in missionary work, and particularly for teachers!

Deprived or Privileged? is available free from OMF and can be downloaded from their web site.

OMF - http://www.omf.org.uk/resources/links.htm