Saturday, September 12, 1998

Counselors on a mission to help missionaries

By LORETTA FULTON

Senior Staff Writer

Learning three languages in three years, working with people who have no running water or electricity, and driving in congested areas "where a stop sign is just a suggestion" can be stressful.

Even people who are quite familiar with the patience of Job can burn out if they don't get some help. For about 30 Baptist missionaries working in West Africa that help came recently in the form of Mary and Mike Stedham of Abilene.

At the request of the International Board of the Southern Baptist Convention, the Stedhams, both licensed professional counselors, spent July 30-Aug. 17 trying to keep the missionaries from hitting a premature burnout.

"They all at times find it stressful to live in a different culture," said Mike Stedham, director of the Ministry of Counseling and Enrichment Center for First Baptist Church.

The Stedhams got their first taste of foreign mission life in February 1997 when they were invited to West Africa by a missionary couple who furloughed to First Baptist.

This time they worked with missionaries in Togo and Benin, accompanied by Hardin-Simmons University students Brant Bird and Keri Sivage.

The Stedhams spent their days conducting seminars and counseling one-on-one with the missionaries, all of whom were in their first three years of international mission work.

"Anybody who wanted our personal counseling time, we would make time for them," Mike said.

A main source of stress for the missionaries was learning how to live in the midst of dire poverty with few of what Americans would consider necessities.

'It takes a lot more energy over there just to survive," Mike said.

The Stedhams' main mission was to help the missionaries learn how to balance their lives between the calling they are fulfilling and the needs of their families in the states.

"They know they're called to a foreign field," Mike said, "but there are still needs back home."

As stressful as the work sometimes is, the missionaries are experiencing success. In the Togo capital city of Lome, about 30 Baptist churches have been established over the years.

"The Baptist work is well established in West Africa," Mary said.

Christianity is not the dominant religion in the region, although the Roman Catholic Church has made headway. Animism, a tribal religion, and Islam are more often the religions followed by the local people.

And keeping up with all the languages the missionaries must learn can take its toll. Until this year, all missionaries serving in West Africa were required to learn French before going. Then they had to learn the local language in a area with 60 different dialects in one country.

"That is a constant frustration for them," Mary said, and cited one woman who had to learn three languages in three years because of being transferred from one village to another.

Although the Stedhams are glad to be back in a land of abundance and stability, their experience had an effect on them like no other.

"What amazes me is how happy they seem," Mary said, even in the midst of the worst conditions imaginable. "They live in abject poverty and yet they have great joy."

For Mike, the experience made him focus on commitment, although he does not have the same calling as the missionaries.

"It convicts me about commitment," he said. "I came away with a great sense of admiration."

Mary said the experience for her was one that would be valuable for all Americans, most of whom are insulated by their abundance. Just as the missionaries serving in Africa were called to leave the comforts of home to travel to a foreign land, so all Christians are called in some way.

"It's so easy to find the comfort zone and live there, but that's not what we're called to do," she said.