Missionary Marriage Issues: You Spent It on WHAT?

Article
  • Approximate Time Commitment: 20 minutes

Why write a book about issues in missionary marriages when so many books about marriage are available? The reason is because married couples living in cultures other than their passport one face some issues that make marriage more difficult than it is for people remaining at “home.”

The booklets found in this series cover many issues that married couples struggle with in the mission field. Each booklet has been read and edited by Bob & Norma Jean Erny who have read each chapter as it was written. They were each married more than 40 years to their first spouses, and after those spouses died, they married each other giving them more than century of marriage in three marriages.

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Resource Description

Article

Imagine these two plausible vignettes. Which one would occur is a matter of timing.

Vignette 1:

Following a devastating flood in a nearby slum he often drove through, John went to the bank to get money from their account to provide relief for flood victims. He was shocked to find that nearly all the money had been withdrawn a few days before.

When he asked Mary what had happened to the money, she told him she had used it to buy a prom dress for their daughter Julie. He said, “You spent it on WHAT? It could have helped many flood victims. Now it will just be worn once and then packed away.”

Vignette 2: (You can see this coming)

Near the end of the school year Mary went to the bank to get money from their account to buy Julie a prom dress. She was shocked to find that nearly all of the money had been withdrawn a few days before.

When she asked John what had happened to the money, he told her he had used it to provide relief for the flood victims. She said, “You spent it on WHAT? We had been saving that for months for Julie. Now she will have nothing new to wear to her last big social event at school.”

The use of money is a major source of disagreement in many marriages. This may occur even more in missionary marriages, especially if poverty is more noticeable than in a couple’s passport culture.

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