How do you serve as a missionary wife?  I get this question a lot or similar questions.   Questions like:  What does a missionary wife do all day anyway?  Why don’t you lead a Bible study?  How are you helping?  I try to just smile at these questions, knowing that most people don’t really understand what being a wife (and a mom) really entails on the mission field.

I also asked myself these very same questions when we were in the missionary application process.  I had lofty dreams for my service as a missionary wife.  I was going to help moms, work with the schools, make such a big difference.  It was obviously a blow to my ego when I was gently persuaded not to take an official role in the mission field and to focus on being a wife and mom instead.  Oh, how I cried at the thought of just serving as a wife and mom. “They don’t want me… I have nothing to offer.”  It took me awhile living down here to understand that wasn’t true.  It wasn’t that I wasn’t wanted or couldn’t serve others.  They just understood something I didn’t.  Missionary life isn’t easy.  Normal tasks take more time and more work than they do in the states.  I understand now that the home is where I am called to serve in the mission field, and it is where I am needed.

Missionary wives absolutely serve in the mission field.  Yes, they serve their husbands (and children), but they also serve in the mission work behind the scenes.  This is often a thankless and unrecognized job.  Missionary wives take care of different logistics, they host visitors, they event-plan, they take care of children (their own and often others), they contact supporters, they run the household, they serve at the church, they organize, they plan, they help, they do what is needed.

I have learned a few things being a missionary wife.  I have learned to live without certain modern conveniences. Tasks that make the household run take longer here than they do in the states and that is when everything is working properly.  Many times ovens, pumps, refrigerators, showers, and windows don’t work properly.  We lose power, appliances break, rooms flood, clothes lines fall.  I have learned to be comfortable with a different level of dirt, and I have learned that life here is different – not wrong or bad – but different.  But most importantly, I have learned that those who serve behind the scenes are extremely important.  I say this not because I think I have brought a lot to the table (this past year especially), but because I have gotten to know an incredible group of women who help run different mission fields in our region.  

In homeschool right now we are reading through the story of Abraham.  We have learned that Abraham made a lot of mistakes in his life, but he also made some very good decisions, too.  He is the father of many nations.  God established his covenant with Abraham.  Abraham gets a lot of glory.  As we read through Abraham, I noticed Sarah.  Sarah doesn’t get a lot of glory.  Sarah is often only remembered for laughing when she was told she would have a baby at 90 years of age.  Do you know what happened right before this?  Abraham saw the visitors walking toward him.  He ran to Sarah and told her to make a lot bread for just three men.  Do you know what we don’t hear?  We don’t hear her complain, suggest an alternative, or gently argue that they could get by serving their visitors less.  We don’t hear what her response is at all.  We are left to simply assume that Sarah did as Abraham asked, and she stayed in the tent.  She served her God from behind the scenes.    

God doesn’t NEED any of us in the mission field.  He is extremely capable of accomplishing everything without any of us, but He chooses to use us.  He chooses to use each missionary wife to serve behind the scenes.  These women all serve in a variety of capacities.  They are rarely recognized, seldom receive breaks, and are not thanked nearly often enough for all that they do.  In fact, I am not sure that anyone truly knows how much most of these amazing women do in the mission field.  I am humbled to be their friend, to be amongst them, and to learn from them.

So the life of a missionary wife is not easy, is seldom boring, and is really not glamorous, but it is rewarding — rewarding even for those of us serving our families in our homes and behind the scenes.