I Am A POM

I am a POM.  My hubby Kerry is a POM.  What is a POM?  Parent of Missionary.

When Carolyn was little she attended a class called Mission Minded Kids at our church.  She learned about the missionaries our church supported and was encouraged to pray for them and write to them.  In hindsight, we are so grateful for this wonderful start for our future missionary (although we didn’t know it at the time!).  As a family, we attended evening services where missionaries shared what they do. God put it on our hearts to pray that our daughters would love the LORD with all their hearts for all their lives, and if they would get married someday that their spouses would love God with all their hearts too.

When Carolyn was 13 we moved from eastern PA to western PA.  Valerie, our oldest who was then 17, was sad to move but being more of a nomadic personality and loving to meet new people, she accepted the news well.  Carolyn, on the other hand, was more shy and seemed to be more of a settler by nature.  She was settled into a wonderful community with lots of friends in the neighborhood, at church, and was involved in a home school co-op and ballet school.  It was hard to tell her about our move to Pittsburgh area.  She was brave about it, but clearly devastated.  A move in my childhood was very traumatic for me, so I was concerned.  But since God promises to work trials into triumphs for His children, and we knew He was guiding us to Pittsburgh, I knew He would help Carolyn. That summer just before our move, we went to a family camp and we had some guest missionaries, who shared, with great excitement, what God was doing.  As a 12-year-old, Carolyn decided that she’d be willing to be a missionary since she’d lost everything that mattered to her anyway.  Might as well go live across the world. 

Zoom ahead about 10 years and she and her husband Dan, just out of college, were thinking about their futures.  Both loving God, they were ready to do whatever He said. She and Dan were both interested in ministering in their communities, and they were peaceful about staying local.  And so were Mom and Dad, believe me!

For years we imagined Carolyn going across the world as soon as she got thru college and we accepted that and prepared our hearts for that.  Having her leave for college was hard enough.  And when she found a wonderful Christian servant hearted hubby, we were overjoyed.  Dan had never seriously considered being a missionary, and Carolyn had been willing to set that overseas mission dream aside. We were thrilled when we found of that she was not moving overseas as soon as she graduated! They even moved nearby and started attending our church!

But then Dan caught the “bug” (the overseas missions bug, that is) while visiting Carolyn at a language school she was attending to further her degree, he met some Wycliffe missionaries and got chatting and thinking and chatting and praying.  Soon he was realizing that what they do is what he could really see himself doing… what he could see them doing.  And then Dan got really excited about a particular overseas mission opportunity of working with the Deaf and helping them get the Bible into their language.  Carolyn did, too.  And so it began!

So, all that said… Please pray for us parents.  Dan’s parents’ too.  We could really use your prayers for this uncharted territory in all our lives.  Imagining saying goodbye for several years?  Christmas apart?  Not seeing each other’s faces (live in-person ones, that is).  And what about hugs?  It’s more than we can bear. We will need your prayers.  It says in the Bible that if we give up our parents, our spouses, our kids for Christ’s sake we will receive back a hundred fold.  We’re trusting God for that!!!  Dan & Carolyn gave all us parents a wonderful gift – a book.  It’s called Parents of Missionaries - how to thrive and stay connected when your children and grandchildren serve cross-culturally.  This has been and will be a great resource.  We hope to find some other POMs for support.  But most of all we’re counting on all of you to hold up all of us in prayer.  We are all on this mission field! Thanks in advance.  To God be the Glory!!! Great things He had done and will do.

-Mindy