When Missionaries Come Home
When Missionaries Come Home
By Steve Concepcion
We all hear the inspiring stories of brave men and women who give up possessions, homes, careers, and the comfort of the United States to move to an underdeveloped country. They go to serve the poor, the marginalized and the disenfranchised. Missionaries sacrifice much, and sometimes all, to spread the Gospel of Jesus; but what happens when the mission is over? When these courageous men and women come back to what was once called their“ home”, do they acclimate back into their own culture with ease? Culture Shock is defined by Segen’ s Medical Dictionary © as“ a constellation of emotions including a sense of isolation, rejection and alienation which is experienced by a person or group when transplanted from a familiar to an unfamiliar culture— e. g., from one country to another; disorientation and confusion when visiting or relocating to [ a ] culture different from one’ s own”. Reverse Culture Shock( RCS) is when you experience these emotions returning to your passport country after being on assignment that is over a long period of time.[ 1 ]
Studies show that most missionaries return home and find that through it all looks very familiar, nothing is quite right; but they are not alone in their experience of RCS. The US State Department, the US Military, Multi-national corporations and the United Nations all struggle with this issue. The effects of RCS impact their staff and employees that work outside their home country and return home to experience RCS at every age. These organizations experience high levels of attrition from their repatriated personnel. As a result, these large organizations have dedicated significant resources to mitigate the effects of RCS in forms of pre-deployment training, pre-return and post return debriefing, free access to professional mental health counselors when needed at home, mentor / life coaching programs, and the like. The reality of RCS is that across all nationalities, gender, generation and religion, no one is immune.
My wife and I with our two young girls moved to the mountains of southeast Haiti for an agriculture-based mission. After three years we had begun to see substantial benefits and successes of all our hard work. We focused our efforts on agriculture per the community’ s request. Some of our programs included cooking classes, farming techniques, scholarships for children in the local schools, we had brought the local churches( Protestant and Catholic) together to begin cooperating in the mission of community development which included bible distribution to churches that never had the book in their own language. We were making some amazing in-roads.
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22 Latin Times Magazine www. latintimesmedia. com Abraza el calor de tu cultura!