Missionaries who responded supplied The Chronicle with more material than we can fit into our pages (in some cases, with MUCH more material than we can fit into our pages). A selection of responses appears below. The original questions (including “What difficulties do you face?” “What are the advantages?” and “How do you handle holidays?”) are cut from the responses here, and some responses have been edited slightly. The majority of the comments are intact.

It is our hope that this document will serve our readers, including those considering marriage and those performing academic research into cross-cultural relationships.

Jeff McGlawn, missionary in Hungary
Married Beáta, a native Hungarian, in 2000

“I meet Beáta through an evangelism program that we run here. It is a English Bible School. She came with a friend and we made our acquaintance. This was while I was on campaign in Hungary in 1996. I moved to Hungary in 1997. In actuality, she was not the reason that I moved to Hungary, but is more of one of the reasons that I am still here. We got married in 2000.

“(The marriage) has helped in that I have a lot more chance to practice the language, with her and her family. It also gives me possibilities to meet people through her.

“It is somewhat hard in that we have one family here in Hungary and another in the U.S. At times we have thoughts of going to the States, but we see the fact that we will not be with the family that is here. So it is an interesting situation. Holidays we are usually here in Hungary. I have not been home for Thanksgiving and Christmas since 1996. But it does not bother so much. We have family here and so we are busy with them so we don't think about what we are missing. Plus, God provides and takes care and keeps us from being so homesick as he did with Abraham, who asked to leave his family.

The language also has caused problems in the past since it is easy to misunderstand each other at times.

David Coggin, missionary in Cumbernauld, Scotland, United Kingdom
Married Maria Holder, a native of Scotland, in 2000.

“I came over to work with the church in Scotland in 1998. Originally I am from Murfreesboro, Tenn. Although I might have seen Maria Holder at other church events throughout Great Britain, I first met her at Oxford Bible Camp, located in Oxford, England, in July 1999. She was working with the younger girls. I wasn't going to go to camp Oxford as it was down in the southern part of England, but a group from Lipscomb University (where I went to school) was there, so I decided to go down there after Camp Heather Bell (a Scottish camp).

We quickly became good friends and spent time to talking on the phone and e-mail. We were best friends before we dated. Because I was an American who might return to the States it was hard to start anything because we didn't want a long-distance relationship.

We started to date on March 3, 2000, and got engaged on the 31st of March and married in December 1, 2000. Since we have been married we have worked three years in Scotland. We also have a son, Carl David, born July 18, 2002.

Maria and her family lived all over England. What is interesting is that Maria has a twin sister Heidi who also married an American missionary, Jason Snethan, from Oklahoma. They work in Bristol, England. Heidi and Jason also first met at Camp Loughborough. They were married Oct. 18, 2003. I will also mention that Maria's and Heidi’s other sister Donna didn't marry an American, but she met her fiancée, Leigh Halliday, at camp and they are due to get marry later on this year. Camp is definitely the place to meet your mate.

Being married to a British has help me to understand the culture, although it isn't much different form the U.S. Being a part of Maria's immediate family given me an insight of the typical family life that one may not see or understand. Maria's parents and sibling are also in the church but her other relatives are not. I have enjoyed being in her grandmother and uncle’s home and seeing firsthand the viewpoints of non-believers — shared by millions of British citizens.

It is hard at times being away from family in the United States. Often you can feel isolated from family and friends. We do try to get over to my family one year for Christmas and the next year spend time with my wife’s family. The advantage is that wherever we are, we are able to give our family time and attention during the holidays, instead of trying to visit both families and extended family.

John R. Cannon, of Christ Center Ministries, Cuenca, Ecuador
Married Fernanda Ugalde, a native of Ecuador, in 1995

“(Being married to a native of Ecuador) you automatically have an advantage to insight on culture, slangs, etc. Additionally, it can be an open door to help begin the work — as it was for us. Our first studies were with Fernanda's parents and her cousins, who also were baptized.

“You also have an added advantage in that you have contacts not only to begin in evangelism, but to also help you in the logistics of getting started — finding apartments, where to shop, how to exchange money, what areas of the city are the lower, middle and upper classes. (You have) insight into the receptive areas of the hearts of your target group.

“In our case, when we arrived in Ecuador we found ourselves going in two different directions — suffering from two different forms of culture shock. Mine was the shock of a new culture and hers was the shock of returning to her home culture to live for the first time in eight years. Additionally we found ourselves in a war, at times, of cultural values and who's was more correct. As time has gone by and we have grown, we have learned to compromise and accept the weaknesses of each culture and try to acquire the best of the both.

“For me, I became more aware of how much we are missing as a family. I began to value my family more as I saw the emphasis of how important family is in the Ecuadorian culture. It also was more difficult to go home for Christmas as I wanted to have what Fernanda's family has, but my family is not that way and that is hard to accept still. The logistics of it is hard, too. We have to decide one or the other for the entire season.

(On cultural barriers) Disciplining children is a big one. Importance of time is another. For example, we would just say hello to someone on the street as we are headed to a meeting, sometimes just waving as we rush to be punctual. My wife would stop and ask them how they are, their family, what's new, do they need anything, etc. Her culture puts the greater importance on relationship and people rather than on reputation and punctuality.

“On a team that is made up of North American families — ours being the only bicultural — we found ourselves constantly combating hurt feelings. My wife was hurt over and over again as our teammates went through culture shock and criticizing the country. It was also a battle in that she was belittled — well, her culture was, but that is something taken very personally. Our North American pride in how we do things hurt her as it sent a message that how they do things is wrong or second-rate. It can create some very difficult situations with teammates.

“We have also had to deal with some issues that normal couples don't. For example, not only did I need a visa to get into Ecuador, but she needed a visa to go to the U.S. and both of us have to renew them from time to time. Just being married to an American doesn't automatically make her an American, nor does it give her an automatic visa. It is a difficult process. Additionally we have had a harder time reporting the birth of our children to the U.S. consulate. If it had not been for a letter from my eldership stating we were missionaries, they would not have reported the birth of our first daughter.

“Many times what happens in your bicultural marriage is that my North American family forgets that she is Latina and will make discriminating remarks, and sometimes her family forgets that I am from the U.S. and does the same to me.

“We have two daughters, Megan, 4, and Brianna, 2, and we are expecting our third child about the fourteenth of February. We have been married eight and a half years.”

Read more about the Cannons here.

Keith Gafner, missionary in Eldoret, Kenya
Married Grace Muriithi, a native of Kenya, in 1996

“The seven years while I was single in Kenya, I … learned a good bit about the culture of the Luyha and Kalenjin tribes. Then in 1995, I met Grace Muriithi (a Kikuyu by tribe) who was teaching at Moi University and operating her own computer training business in town. I met her while learning to use the computer. She was also involved in leading a Bible study among women and being part of another Bible study.

“We have been married now for more than seven years. Grace loves to teach and serve. She is a Very Special Valentine. Let me just give you one example of this. Christmas Day, we went to the Navillus Church of Christ. We arrived early, and I observed that Grace was helping bathe the children of one family. After church, we went to the same house for lunch. While the men sat by themselves and ate and talked, Grace was sitting on the grass talking with the ladies. She told me later that they talked about their husbands and finances in the families.

“She helps me to be a better missionary, as I don't only hear the male side of stories, I also get to hear, through Grace, what their wives think about the subject.

“The beauty of the scriptures are that they apply to all peoples of the world, because the nature of people is basically the same. The people of different tribal groups do have some things in their cultures that are different. But if you are a person who is willing to study and, with the help of your mate, understand why certain things are done in that cultural way, it is not difficult to be in a cross-cultural marriage.

“True, all families are different. Even this is true in the USA, where each family has its own characteristics. That is the same here as well. You just have to understand those and you adapt and as we say here, ‘hakuna matata’ (no problem). In one way, I think it is easier, because subconsciously you try harder to understand and try not to make cultural mistakes.

“Asking Grace to proofread this before sending it, she noted that we do have some differences, normal male/female differences and also, being from
Michigan, I enjoy cool or cold and she, being from tropical Kenya, enjoys warm or hot conditions.

“As for holidays and visits to family, we have never spent a major holiday with the family. Mainly because they are (a long drive) away, we have elected to spend that special time with the Christians in the Churches that we have by the grace of the Lord been a part in establishing. When we do go to Nairobi, we do go to church with Grace's mother (the church that we were married in) and spend at least one day visiting with the family.”

Mike Roberts, missionary in Guyana
Married Sandy Narine, a native Guyanese, in 1998

“In 1996, I came to Guyana on a short-term campaign. It was on that trip, I met Sandy Narine, in the village we were working. She was amazing! We began a friendship and wrote back and forth for nearly two years before we were married. During that time, I would visit Guyana as often as I was able. I also did mission work in Indonesia, and the determining factor to move to Guyana was Sandy.

“We were married after several volumes of correspondence and immediately began working in the interior regions. That was five years ago. Now we work on the Essequibo Coast and have a great marriage and great team as Sandy and I continue spreading the Word in her home country.

“It has been very beneficial to have a wife who is a national of the country I am working in. It has helped with governmental legalities a good bit, but it has helped the ministry immeasurably as I am treated as a local since one-half of my family is around here.

“On the down side, Sandy's USA visas have been extremely difficult and costly to get. More than once, we have been stuck in the USA trying to make sure we do everything ‘by the book.’ I assume this will all work out in time, but I never expected it to be so difficult, time-consuming and costly.

“There are a lot of cultural differences one does not pick up on at first. I thought I had them pretty much figured out but little did I know. We have been married for five years and I am still finding them.”

Kim Solis, missionary in Toluca, Mexico
Married Raúl Solis, a native Mexican, in 1994

“I came to Toluca, Mexico as an AIM student (Adventures in Missions, a program of Sunset International Bible Institute, Lubbock, Texas) determined to serve God for two years and not to even think about a boyfriend or the like. I had been to college for two years before entering AIM and saw many relationships between my friends — many that led to marriage and I was tired of wondering if it would ever be my chance. About threa-and-half months after arriving in Mexico, Raúl started coming to church. It was after his baptism in December of 1992 that we started to get to know each other and his dedication to God and his enthusiasm were contagious. We were engaged the following December and married in May of 1994 — two years to the date of the day I entered Mexico for the first time.

“My spouse didn't inspire me to enter the mission field, but rather to continue in it. This May I will have been in Mexico for 12 years, and we will have our 10-year anniversary.

“I think it is a fabulous thing to be married to someone from another country! Our common culture is our Christian one, so I feel that we are solid on the things that truly bind us together — our love for God and our desire to serve Him actively with our lives. But then with our two different sub-cultures, we enjoy the best of both countries. We enjoy Mexican and American holidays; we take what we love from each culture and integrate it into our home lives, leaving behind what we dislike from each.

“I feel we truly live what Paul was saying in Galatians, that we are no longer Jew nor Greek, slave nor free … we are all one in Christ!

“In ministry I feel it also has been a great blessing. I feel I have been able to get very close to the Mexican women, perhaps more than some of the American missionaries, because the culture and language are now an intimate part of my life. Also, when we travel to the U.S. I think hearing reports from a national, someone converted by the missionaries and now serving and working full-time for the church, is encouraging to the congregations we visit.

“As far as hardships, I think they are few. We have had very few cultural barriers, perhaps because we were both raised in very open families who are not so firmly tied to cultural traditions, and also because, as I mentioned before, our first culture is that of a Christian and that is the focus that we try to hold most dear.

“It is harder to visit my family during the holidays and perhaps that has been the hardest thing. I love Mexico, the country and the people. I love the church here in Toluca and truly feel that it is home. But after 12 years, I do miss my family. Now that I have children of my own (three, all born in Mexico) I have a deep desire to get back to my roots; to spend more time with my mom and dad and to share all of what I have learned about the greatness of God during these last 12 years.”

Malcolm Parsley, missionary in South Korea
He and his wife, Kwihwa, have been married 29 years

“I met my wife as a student here at the Christian university where I teach. Even though I did not know her as an individual student, as she was about to graduate I was in need of a female worker to go around to the churches and teach the local churches’ teachers here in the mission field how to teach children. It was going to be a hard job requiring her to stay five days in the villages and come back to the city for the weekends. I asked all of the other missionaries here at that time and they all recommended the same person.

“I interviewed her and stressed the difficulty of the job but she still wanted to do it for she too felt that this was a great need of the church. As we worked together we learned to appreciate each other more and more and though we never had a real date per se we were together on group trips in starting new churches and around the office. I had convinced her to cut her trips down a little and send out a newsletter to all of the churches teaching them how to teach the different age groups. This proved very successful. The marriage just evolved for which we are both very thankful to the Father.

“There are definitely some advantages and disadvantages. The personality of each person naturally makes an enormous amount of difference. Some fit into the American church culture and some don’t or I should say some do a better job of it than others for all do to some degree. If they fit in then when the missionary returns home to visit the churches then all goes well. If not, then this becomes an additional burden on the missionary and his already difficult trip becomes even more troublesome. So this is kind of a yes and no answer to your question. It greatly depends upon whether they stay in the mission field or not.

“Another neutral factor is whether the national mate is inclined to be a missionaries wife or just a wife. I distinguish the two for I have seen missionary wives who, as a main reason for marring him, did so, so they could do a better job of serving the Lord by together serving the church and I have seen others that married only to marry the missionary with little or no intentions of getting involved with helping him (or her) do church work. Their value here is self-explanatory.

Positive benefits:

One learns more quickly to eat the food for the national partner and by doing so will continue to eat their foods and thereby learn to like them in a shorter period of time.

One will learn the language faster for the mate (national) can correct them, use the language around them and by hearing more will learn it more rapidly.

The national mate can take care of the culture related, time consuming items of the home such as paying taxes, bills, straightening out problems etc much faster and more smoothly which leaves the missionary with more time and not looking bad where there were problem areas.

The society’s unethical nationals will not try to deceive the missionary as readily if they are married to a national.

The friends of the national mate will become the friends of the missionary and therefore he/she will be accepted more rapidly and readily having a national as a mate.

The mate will know how to get things done in churches, dealing with the government, wedding, funerals etc and in such a way that the missionary may never learn

The missionary will not make near as many faux pas as if they would if not married to the national.

The mate from the local area is a lot more apt at picking up on innuendoes in culture and speech that the missionary would possibly never see.

Overall, the missionary will more quickly adapt to the culture, customs, food and language and therefore be able to accomplish more in a shorter period of time.

Negative factors (beside those mentioned above)

Some foreign-born wives may not fit in the churches back home. I have been asked many a time over the past 43 years what I felt about missionaries marring nationals. So far, all requests except two have referred to the male missionary marring a female national. I have told them all the same thing and have not changed my mind as of yet. To me it is clear that as long as she is an asset to the church work (not wanting more and more material things, wanting to move to the U.S., not nagging or constantly complaining and keeping him distracted from the work (any wife could fall into some of these categories), does not try Old Testament keep him from standing up for the Biblical practices and doctrines that he feels have to be defended or corrected and is not a liability to his service to the Lord, then the answer is yes it is good to marry a national. However one needs to keep in mind that although we would love to think differently there are still many churches in the States that have members that do not want their preachers to have foreign wives. Some just because they are prejudice but some because they justly feel that a foreigner could not adjust as well or reach out into the community as well as a home born girl. Point at stake is, as long as he has a good supportive wife while overseas that is great but if he ever plans on preaching in the Unite States then he needs to think deeply for there will be places to preach that he will loose out to just because he has a foreign wife. This is not true just in America—there are plenty of churches overseas that also would prefer and make decisions along that line to have a preacher who and a local born wife. There are many, like the birds, which like fellowship with those of the same plumage.

Some of the nationals are jealous because they felt she/he should have married someone local.

Some are very nationalistic and resent some foreigner coming in and (as they see it) taking away one of their women even though the wife may never leave the country.

She(?) has her food she wants to cook and eat and he has his. He will have to teach her to cook his and they both will have to learn to like or at least tolerate the differences in smell, sight and taste of what is cooked as well as what remains on ones breath. Remember the nationals have western smells they dislike as much as we westerners have of those we have not yet learned to like or accept or at least tolerable.

When nationals visit your national mate in your home they will carry on conversations and greatly leave the American out (this is true whether he knows the language or not. This is not always true of every culture nor is it true about every American but I have seen it true in nearly all countries I have visited in. This is also true when the two visit the States. The national is greatly left out and a lot more conversation is directed to the American missionary. This does seem to diminish with time as the missionary family gets to know more personally the families they visit or that visit them both in the foreign country as well as in the states.

Emphasis on housekeeping is different in every culture. The more one studies culture (sociology) the more one understands the basic principles of people and therefore the problems of marriage. One of the factors is the more varied the culture of the two people the more problems they will have in their marriage. This is true even if a deep southerner marries a Yankee. The kinds of gravy, turkey stuffing, deserts etc they like are quiet different. Cultural expressions may have opposite meanings. Some times one has to go through a list of items like tow sack, gunnysack, gunny, gunny bag, Crocker sack, crocus bag, grass sack, barley sack, tote, potato sack, burlap bag to find the word that they finally recognize. Well it is worse in cross-cultural relations between two who have vast different cultures, languages, expectations, ethics, response reactions etc. One can see that the list goes on.

In-laws are virtually world-claimed problems but when one adds cross culture to that then they are heightened. In many cultures they do not like their daughters or sons to marry one of another race, if there has been cross-cultural conflicts even those of a similar race, then the problem is even enhanced that much more. In the poorer countries the problems arise when the parents don’t want the young lady to marry the foreigner but she insists on it. Then problems also arise when they marry and she then wants to bring the in-laws, especially those of the immediate family, to the States to live and this is intensified even more when they all want to live under the same roof as they did back at home where the extended family all lived together. Many times this means that the husband’s income has to support all of them or sometimes the younger of them while they go to school in the U.S. As an illustration, one American serviceman I know asked my opinion of marrying a national. I advised him against it not because of the young lady, for she was very nice, but I just told him … to remember that in her society if he married her he was marrying the whole family and that some may ask to come and live with him in the States. I met him several years later and he asked if I recalled telling him what I said and I told him yes. He said that it had all come true with even siblings, mother and relatives came and where their with them in their house. He loves his wife dearly and accepts it as part of the package of helping the whole family but to those that may not approve of this, it could become a serious problem.

Sometimes the support of the family becomes the responsibility of the missionary for in the poor country he has the most money and now he is a member of the family. Sometimes it is not money that he is expected to become responsible for but rather to the giving or obtaining of jobs for the relatives for he is a person of position and influence.

“Holidays are made as difficult as one decides to make them. One can conclude that the difficulties in holidays are in proportion to how dear one holds them and how determined they are to celebrate them. As an example if one comes from a home in the states where Christmas is not really important and they have quit giving presents years ago, well not having Christmas overseas won’t mean much. But the same person may hold Thanksgiving as the most important time of the year where the family always gets together and to miss this is devastating to the emotions.

…

“My wife's name is Kwihwa and we have been married for 29 years. She has been a blessing to me more and more as the years have passed. I definitely would marry her again. Mind you, I have always been planning on spending my life here in the mission field.”