Why write a book about issues in missionary marriages when so many books about marriage are available? The reason is because married couples living in cultures other than their passport one face some issues that make marriage more difficult than it is for people remaining at “home.”
During one year two divorces occurred in missionary families our church supported. The next year another divorce occurred. All three divorces involved people 40-60 years of age, one with empty-nesters and two in families with three children at home in each. A single-mom in her thirties with two children registered for one of Ron’s courses, and it turned out that while in language school her husband had left her for a national woman. We received a call to help a couple in their twenties because the wife was considering divorce to marry a national man. As you read this book, you will see that these issues go clear back to the beginning of the modern protestant missionary movement in the eighteenth century.
This book is written in short, independent chapters, not in any particular order except that “What about Dorothy?” is the introductory chapter and “What about Charlotte?” is the concluding one. Some are issues covered in What Missionaries Ought to Know but covered in more detail here. Some are not faced by people remaining in their passport culture; others are just more likely faced while living in a different culture.
Thanks are due to Bob & Norma Jean Erny who have read each chapter as it was written. They were each married more than 40 years to their first spouses, and after those spouses died, they married each other giving them more than century of marriage in three marriages. Thanks also due to Art Nonneman and Yvonne Moulton who read the entire manuscript.