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My Christian life
As a child of a missionary and now as a missionary myself, Joshua 1:9 is my beacon: “Be strong and courageous. Do not be afraid; do not be discouraged, for the LORD your God will be with you wherever you go.”
In 1987, WELS called my dad straight out of Wisconsin Lutheran Seminary to serve in Antigua. Looking back at my parents’ pictures from call day, I am as shocked by my dad’s mustache as I am by my mom’s pregnant belly. I grew up hearing the story of how they had ten minutes to deliberate the call—and then after accepting it, how they headed to the library to look up Antigua in an atlas.
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I remember my mom telling me that she gave birth to my sister and later to me while listening to cows moo outside her window. I remember turning off all the lights in the house so there was enough power for my dad to write a sermon on his dinosaur of a computer. The God-given strength and courage my parents possessed to leave their norm and develop a new one created a life that would later become my own culture and passion.
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To me, the island of Antigua was not a foreign land. It was home. The foreign land was that place called the Midwest where everything sat in perfect rows, streets had no bumps, and markets had entire aisles dedicated to cereal. In the Midwest, I looked like everyone around me, but I did not feel like them. In Antigua, even though I was often the only white girl and didn’t look like I belonged, I felt like I belonged—at least more than anywhere else.
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Being a missionary kid is hard and beautiful. Society calls you a “third-culture kid” because you don’t match up perfectly with your parents’ culture or the one that you live in. Rather, you become a unique member of a “third” or in-between reality where you don’t fit in anywhere. This can be challenging. But to me, this unique reality became my safe place. I feel the most comfortable in the uncomfortable.
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Now as an adult, I see how the life my parents gifted me shaped me not only culturally but also spiritually.
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Mark and Lynne Henrich raised their young family, including Elise (third from the right in the family photo), on the island of Antigua from 1987–2003 while Mark served as a WELS missionary there.
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Need to catch up on FIC's online Bible study? Watch now!
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Recording of Lesson 1 from Oct. 3:
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Recording of Lesson 2 from Oct. 10:
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Jesus didn’t need a key on Easter Sunday to get into that locked room where his disciples were cowering in fear. His risen and glorified body that was able to pass through rock and stone earlier that morning was able to pass through clay walls and wooden doors just . . .
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Context is important when examining passages in the Bible. Where was Jesus when he spoke the words, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God” (Mark 10:25)? Matthew, Mark, and . . .
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“Dad, you smell like people.” This is what I overhear our six-year-old daughter telling my husband after he gets home from a busy Sunday of being pastor to our congregation. My children and I are blessed to have him not only as our family’s spiritual leader but also . . .
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