Furlough: It's Not a Vacation!
Furloughs (or home assignment) are a complicated part of mission field life. They are opportunities for connection, renewal, learning, and communication. They are also opportunities for exhaustion, loneliness, and self-doubt. This month, Kevin Linderman, longtime missionary to Tanzania and current Executive Director of African Christian Hospitals, speaks to how missionaries can make the most of their furloughs.
by Kevin Linderman
We’re so happy that you get a two-month vacation!
Oh, the thoughts that run through your mind when a well-wisher tells that to you.
Should I mention the 25 times we have already switched beds during these two months?
Should I describe what it is like flying with 4 small children, with an itinerary that takes up to four days beginning to end?
Is it worth recounting the challenges of squeezing in doctors’ and dentists’ appointments, addressing issues with banks and taxes, trying to shop for clothing, homeschool supplies, etc., all while attending as many church events as possible?
One time, someone actually said, “It must be so nice to have a long vacation!” And in exhaustion I responded, “Yes, it would be nice.”
As I reflect, though, most of my early furlough struggles were not caused by the situation I found back in the USA. Rather, my furlough struggles were actually mission field struggles that had somehow found their way into my carry-on baggage.
Let me explain. In 2006, after several years of preparation and seeking support, I finally moved to Tanzania with my wife and two tiny children. I sincerely believed what I had been telling everyone—that there was a great opportunity for us to further the mission work amongst the Sukuma people. I believed in the training we had received and the mentoring that had shaped us. We had seen God faithfully prepare a way for us to join in His mission. I had great hopes.
I also had naïve expectations.
In spite of our preparation, and in spite of our wonderful sending church and our supportive mission team, our first two-year term was horrific. As a family, we struggled to settle. Our personal struggles strained every relationship that we had: the churches with whom we were sent to work, our mission team, and our stateside mission committee. We weren’t reaching the goals that we had set for ourselves. We were outwardly questioning whether this was the right mission field for us while inwardly questioning whether we were right for the mission field. And we were exhausted.
By the end of our first term, we were counting the days until we could go back to the states.
We wanted to:
shop at a grocery store;
order food at a restaurant and not have the waiter come back an hour later to tell us that the items we had chosen were finished;
sleep without wondering if our dog was barking to alert us of another break-in.
We were also tired of:
making sure that our boys didn’t accidentally drink some of the bath water;
hanging cloth diapers on the line each day;
the constant power cuts and water shortages;
not fitting in, not knowing the language, and always standing out in a crowd.
We knew mission work would be hard, but we didn’t anticipate how hard it would be. Mission work was not living up to our hopes and expectations.
How disappointing it was that coming “home” didn’t live up to our hopes and expectations either! The grocery stores overwhelmed us with choices. Nobody greeted people as they passed by. After months spent pining for my favorite dish at my favorite restaurant, we could only sit with our friends for a few minutes before the food, then bill arrived. We couldn’t really enjoy the time together. And all the while my son just wanted beans and rice, which never seemed to be on the children’s menu!
I remember as my wife and I watched how my son responded when a nice woman asked him about life in Tanzania. He opened up, and he started telling everything… but after about 30 seconds she interrupted to end the conversation. We felt crushed for him. But we knew how he felt. We often dragged our kids from one church event to another, trying to take advantage of every opportunity to reconnect and renew excitement for our mission work; at the end of the day, we wondered if we had made any connections at all.
If you are feeling like you aren’t a very good missionary, there is a good chance that furlough might lead you to feel like an even worse missionary. And when you are feeling inadequate, it is especially hard to risk letting someone down in order to do what is best for you and your family.
But here is the good news (finally!): while furlough obviously isn’t vacation, most people you will meet and interact with truly desire to bless and encourage you and your family. Some are gift-givers, but they just need to know how and what to give. We learned to be better communicators to help such people encourage us. Others are able to more deeply understand what you are going through as a missionary family. We learned how to identify those people, and to carve out time to spend with them. For us, the core of those people was our missions committee. They helped us see how much God had been accomplishing, even if it wasn’t all right on our schedule. We learned from them to be more perceptive of what God was doing throughout all the struggles of missionary life. They could see the big picture, and they helped us to be thankful for God’s faithfulness to us.
Together with our missions committee, we learned many things over our 12 years on the mission field (and our five furloughs together). Here are a few tips that helped us:
Accept that furlough is work, and all work requires boundaries and sabbath-keeping.
Try not to start your furlough completely exhausted. If a stop-over in your journey helps to regain your sanity, then don’t feel guilty about a few less days in the states.
Similarly, try not to return back to the mission field totally exhausted from furlough travels. Our furloughs were very busy at the end, so on our last couple furloughs, we stopped at the beach on the coast of Tanzania before returning to our mission site.
Try to maintain a few of the rituals that will help you maintain a healthy life while on furlough. We blocked off a family night each week, wherever we were, and that helped us greatly.
Take advantage of retreats (like Come Before Winter) that can promote missionary renewal, separate from the hullabaloo of furlough. We could never have scheduled retreats like this into our packed furlough schedule, but they provided significant renewal at other times that was hard to get during furlough.
You can’t do everything or see everyone on every furlough. It is ok to ask friends, family, or supporters to come to where you are, or to communicate when you need to cancel a visit to maintain some rest in your schedule.
Involve the kids in the furlough planning. Let them pick some special things too! In hindsight, our kids have great memories of our furloughs, and we even miss some of the opportunities that furlough provided.
If you are travelling from place to place, always staying in people’s homes, consider booking a hotel room while traveling. We liked hotel rooms with a kitchen where we could cook a meal together. It is refreshing for everyone not to feel the pressure to be “on” all the time.
Let your missions committee know what works best for you, so that they can advocate on your behalf. For example, our missions committee and the missions minister helped us get our own living space during our furloughs; they then sought out people to bring meals to eat with us at that house, so we were not always going from house to house. Things like this made furlough much easier for us.
Finally, while furlough is work, it is a break from your other work. It is an opportunity to turn your eyes back to God, reflect on how he has been faithful since the last time you were in the states, and share this with others. Not only does this recognition refresh us, but it also refreshes those who are by our side, praying for us, and sharing in our hopes and expectations for the kingdom work being accomplished through us.