{"id":5892,"date":"2016-01-28T07:00:08","date_gmt":"2016-01-28T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=5892"},"modified":"2016-01-26T07:59:38","modified_gmt":"2016-01-26T13:59:38","slug":"how-churches-have-encouraged-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/?p=5892","title":{"rendered":"How churches have encouraged us"},"content":{"rendered":"

We have had the opportunity to visit many churches\u00a0around the Midwest over the past 1.5 years. We have been blessed\u00a0in ways we never imagined, and each church has been unique. This post\u00a0is a way for us\u00a0to\u00a0praise God for these churches, encourage churches for how they are blessing us, and give ideas for individuals who are looking for ways to be creative in loving disheveled\u00a0wanderers like ourselves.<\/p>\n

________________________<\/p>\n

\"IMG_0878\"<\/p>\n

Best practices to help the missionary wife:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. The week before, pastors have\u00a0shown a photo of the missionary family (us) and shared our\u00a0names, status (are they on deputation, furlough, etc?), country of service, and even prayed for us.<\/li>\n
  2. Having someone to show us around the church has been so helpful! It can be daunting at times when it is a new church. Where are the bathrooms? Where is the nursery or the Sunday School classrooms? The missionary may prefer to have their children (if they have them) sit with them, but it is nice to have the knowledge. This same person can be the one that the missionary can go to if they have any questions throughout their time spent at the church.<\/li>\n
  3. They gave\u00a0us\u00a0an order of service and a bulletin.<\/li>\n
  4. Informed us\u00a0with whom we\u00a0will be eating (if there is a meal involved), introduced\u00a0us\u00a0to that family, and made\u00a0sure we\u00a0have very clear directions as to how to get where we\u00a0needed to go.<\/li>\n
  5. Asked us\u00a0questions, checked out our\u00a0display table. Showed interest and tried to get informed about us\u00a0and the ministry opportunities.<\/li>\n
  6. **Bonus- Missionary cupboards are nice in certain circumstances, but we have found that the most helpful thing (to us) is when the church has a binder full of gift cards and they let us know that we can pick out X amount of cards (or dollar amount). This has been wonderful as it helps with gas, meals out, a drink from a coffee shop, or groceries. Many missionaries don’t want more material things that they have to pack and lug around in their vehicles, but gift cards can be a great help!<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    We have had the opportunity to visit many churches\u00a0around the Midwest over the past 1.5 years. We have been blessed\u00a0in ways we never imagined, and each church has been unique. This post\u00a0is a way for us\u00a0to\u00a0praise God for these churches, … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[56,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-church","category-missions"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p34kFn-1x2","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5892"}],"version-history":[{"count":35,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5892\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5928,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5892\/revisions\/5928"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.scquest.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}