Tornadoes, Hepatitis, and Mice in the Church Basement: The “Ordinary Hard” of Missionary Life (Part 4)

Part 4 of a six-part series on Suffering, Wisdom, and Staying on the Mission Field - This is a series is taken from a Missions Class at Vision School of Missions led by Missionary Kevin White. The book by Don Mingo, "The Cross-Cultural Worker's Spiritual Survival Guide 14 Tips to Help You Thrive in Your Calling," was used as textbook and resource material for discussion.

When people imagine missionary suffering, they often jump straight to dramatic scenes:

• persecution,
• martyrdom,
• war zones.

Those realities exist, and we shouldn’t downplay them. But often, the things that slowly wear missionaries down are far more ordinary—and piled up over time, they can be just as dangerous.
Here’s a glimpse of the “ordinary hard.”

1. Travel that really could kill you

On deputation, a couple sat in a Tennessee church parking lot, waiting for an evening service. Windows down, nice breeze, end of summer. Sirens sounded in the distance.

“Probably a fire drill,” they thought.

Then the sirens came again. Clouds started turning dark. The wind shifted. The sirens didn’t stop.

It wasn’t a drill. It was a tornado warning.

They called the pastor: “We think there’s a tornado nearby, can we come to your place or the church for shelter?”

His response? “Well brother, the sun’s shining here. You’ll just have to trust the Lord.”

Not exactly comforting.

They drove through hail, hunting for shelter, finally finding an abandoned gas station awning. Later, driving east, they passed small towns—only to hear on the radio a few minutes later that those same towns had just been hit.

Add to that:

• near-miss car accidents at highway speed,
• late-night drives in bad conditions,

and travel itself becomes a continual brush with danger.

2. Lodging that makes you question your life choices

Most churches are generous and kind. Many provide wonderful prophet’s chambers or hotel rooms.

But then there are the other ones.

• The “by-the-hour” motel:

              - Broken TV, strange stains on the walls, suspicious smells.
              - No individual room keys—just a manager with a large key ring who lets you in and out.

• The storage-room prophet’s chamber:

             - You’re shown to a space piled with Christmas decorations and random boxes.

             - There’s a bed in the corner and access to the main church bathrooms.

             - At night, with the lights off: scratch scratch scratch. Mice everywhere. You tell yourself, “You stay down there, I’ll stay up here, and we’ll make it through the night.”

Not exactly Instagram-worthy. But very real.

3. Medical care that feels like a different world

On the field, healthcare can be very good in some places—and frightening in others.

• A pregnant missionary wife gets chickenpox, and doctors warn that the baby may be born with severe birth defects or without a fully developed brain. They spend months searching for medicine, getting frequent check-ups, and carrying the weight of “What if?”
• A baby needs blood drawn, but the nurse can’t get it to flow. Finally, she takes the tube and sucks on it with her mouth to get the blood going.

               - The missionary mom stands there thinking, “Did that really just happen? What diseases could be passing right now?”

• After a trip, the same wife becomes intensely ill with hepatitis. Her skin and eyes turn so yellow that she nearly blends into the mustard-colored wall behind her. She loses the ability to breastfeed. Everything about daily life becomes complicated.

These aren’t martyr stories. They’re just the lived reality of medical care in certain contexts.

4. Everyday danger to your kids

Your children don’t stop being children when you cross a border.

• One small daughter suddenly bolts into a busy street, weaving between parked cars. Her parents expect to find her body under a vehicle. Instead, they find her pressed against a car as traffic whips by inches in front of her.
• In another city, stories of kidnappings multiply. A mom takes a child around the corner to a shop, and the child disappears.

Even if some stories are exaggerated, enough are true that missionary families become hyper-vigilant about where their kids are and who’s around.

5. Crises that hit harder because of where you live

COVID-19 hit the whole world, but not in the same way everywhere.

In one South American country during the first wave:

• Death rates were several times higher than in many parts of the US.
• Hospitals were overwhelmed; many people died in the street trying to find care.
• Morgues couldn’t keep up; burial plots weren’t available; mandatory cremation created backlogs.
• Families wrapped their loved ones in blankets and left bodies on sidewalks because no one—not hospitals, not morgues, not authorities—would take them.

Walking through those streets is a very different experience than just reading about a pandemic on your phone.

None of these things alone might drive someone off the field.

But stack them together:

• constant travel danger,
• unstable lodging,
• medical uncertainty,
• anxiety for your kids,
• large-scale crises,

and you begin to see why missionaries sometimes quietly think:

“I’m tired. I don’t know how much more I can take.”

If we want missionaries to last, we need to:

• Acknowledge these “ordinary” hardships.
• Provide honest preparation, not romanticized brochures.
• Build serious support systems—pastoral care, member care, counseling, rest, and real friendships.

The mission field isn’t always dramatic persecution.
Sometimes, it’s just a slow accumulation of small, sharp stones in your shoes.

And walking on that road for twenty or thirty years takes grace, wisdom, and a lot more support than a one-time send-off service.

If you would like to find out more about VBM's Member Care Plan about how to better care for missionaries, click here.

Listen in as Jeffrey Bush and Travis Snode discuss how to care for missionaries on this episode of Mission Post podcast.