(with respectful acknowledgements to the AA)

Earlier this year I was at a conference where the speaker tried an icebreaker.  ‘If your organisation were an animal’, he asked, ‘what would sort of animal would it be?’ Everyone around my table was studiously avoiding eye contact, trying hard not to go first.  I was muttering to myself ‘I hate things like this.  I’m just not creative enough for this’ when he asked his second icebreaker: ‘If your organisation were a car, what sort of car would it be?’

And it instantly hit me – Syzygy is an AA van*.  We help broken down mission workers.  We fix the problem.  We get you where you’re going.  And though you might only see one person when you deal with Syzygy, there’s a whole team of experts behind him.

Within a matter of minutes I had refined this image further, to detail the types of services we provide:

Roadside assistance: We’re there for you when you break down.  Advice on stress, debriefing, mentoring and hospitality can help get you back on the road.

Relay: Wherever you’re going, we’ll help get you there!  We provide practical  support, from lending you a car to advice on preparing for re-entry, with online guides to missions on our website.

Homestart: When things start going wrong in the field, we can help by providing pastoral visits, problem solving, crisis management and relief staffing.

As a result of that revelation, we are changing our image.  We think that this imagery fully encapsulates our ethos of help, support and practical problem solving.  In future we’ll be using a photo of a flashing orange light as our logo, and we’ve adopted a new tagline:

THE SUPPORT SERVICE FOR MISSION WORKERS

I did think that ‘rescue service’ or ‘emergency service’ sounded more punchy, but on reflection we decided that this doesn’t accurately reflect the fact that much of what we do is not done in a crisis, but is about preventing a crisis happening.

A new image, but the same service – striving to keep mission workers in good physical, emotional and spiritual condition so that they are able to at carrying out their God-given mandate.  Our new flyer is out this week.  Click on the image to the left to read it.  If you’d like some copies to display at church or in your workplace, please email tim@syzygy.org.uk

*Other breakdown services are available.  Actually I should have chosen RAC because at least they’re orange like Syzygy.

Syzygy is very happy to announce the arrival of a second loan car available to mission workers on HA in Britain.  Thanks to the generosity of one of our friends we’ve been given a Ford Fiesta, an ideal complement to the Toyota Estima we were also given a couple of years ago.

Between them, these vehicles will now be able to help meet the transport needs of single mission workers and couples as well as the large families which we have helped in the past.  We’re very grateful for the donations that make this ministry possible, though insuring and servicing two vehicles will stretch Syzygy’s finances, so we’d really appreciate donations to help us with this expense.  One recent beneficiary of this service commented:

“Sorting a car is probably the biggest worry and hassle of HA.  I can’t express what a blessing this is.”

For more information on the Syzygy cars, click here.

My host for my week-long trip to Ndola was my good friend Lene Pedersen, who many will know following her speaking tour in Britain last year, and it was great to spend time with her, get to know her fiancé Dale, and help them prepare for their wedding next month.  Lene continues to be one of the three directors at Lifeline in Zambia – a ministry which we featured last August which provides home-based care and support for people suffering from AIDS/HIV.  LiZ continues to develop and it was an encouragement to visit premises which I had not been to before and see how well suited they are to managing the work and training the volunteers.  There is also a commitment to take on more highly qualified staff which is already having benefits for the work.

I returned for the first time in seven years to Kaniki Bible College, which trains church leaders for the Apostolic Church in Zambia.  There has been a lot of staff turnover since then, and only the Zambian workers whom I knew remain there.  All the overseas staff have changed, and the college is led by a new Zambian Principal supported by two other African faculty members.  There are currently 55 students and there is also a new BA course.  There are plans to build a new classroom block to meet the increased number of students.

Also on the Kaniki campus is African Quest, a missions training and discipleship programme for young people with which I have been involved since its beginning 15 years ago.  Many fine young people have been through this programme and gone on to be involved in missions in a variety of ways, and AQ is currently led by two of its former students, Tim & Gemma Mills.  This six month gap course is currently recruiting for next year and I will feature it in more detail later this summer.

I also spent some time with the new leaders of School Mission for Christ International This fantastic ministry employs Zambian pastors to go into schools and preach the gospel.  Thousands of students have met Jesus in this way, and teachers testify to the return of stolen property, decline in the use of drugs, and falling pregnancy rates as a result.  This powerful witness leads many teachers also to give their lives to Christ.  SMFCI is looking to expand both within Zambia and to neighbouring countries.

Near to Kaniki is Jabulani Children’s Village, where Tom & Ruth Dufke took over an abandoned farm 13 years ago with a view to developing a home for needy children.  There are currently 18 children living at the site, in small, ‘family’-type cottages.  With a view to maintaining financial independence, the village is partly funded by a huge sawmill operation, which now employs 65 local people, thereby keeping them out of poverty and providing food and education for their children.  There are also training facilities for the community on site, such as a sewing college, and there is a clinic to meet the needs of the local community.

While visiting these various ministries and catching up with old friends, I was able to spend a lot of time encouraging mission workers, helping them understand the causes of stress in their lives, and planning how Syzygy can help to support them.  Like many overseas mission workers, they have a number of challenges to face, and it was a joy to be able to help them find ways of dealing with them.

Language is what we use to describe the world.  The philosopher Wittgenstein said, “The limits of my language define the limits of my world,” and speaking two languages, as MKs often do, expands those limits.

In Portuguese the word that means you miss someone or something is saudades.  Saudades is such an expressive word that the Wikipedia article for it is over 3,000 words long.  It expresses a longing that gnaws; it is the sense that a part of you is gone and has left a gaping chasm where your breastbone should be.  I’m glad to know the word; without it I would still have the feeling, but not be able to express it.

Being an MK isn’t all mangos and cream.  Difficulty and loss are frequent companions on what can be a lonely road.  By the time I was 13 my home had moved 13 times.  Twice I moved back to a place I had already lived in, but the problem is that those who say ‘you can never go home’ are right.  Once you’ve left, even if you do go back it won’t be the same.  The people have changed, you have changed, the place has changed.  You can rebuild, but not from where you left off.  Weeds will have grown in between the cracks, rain will have swept the earth from beneath your feet.

And things are different in every new place.  Always different.  Rules are different everywhere.  Should I call my teacher by her first name (and title), or her surname?  Why does that lady from church call me ‘filha!’ (daughter) when she tells me off?  I’m NOT her daughter!

New school, new church, new ‘home’.  God and family were the only constants.  So my identity was change; I was the exotic one who was new, the one who always knew she would soon be leaving.

Gill Gouthwaite grew up as an MK in Brazil with her four sisters and English-speaking parents from different countries.

We believe that prayer is the number one need of every mission worker.  A regular feature of St Paul’s letters was a request for prayer that the gospel would spread through his ministry.  If he needed prayer as part of his missionary endeavours, how much more do we!  As J O Fraser observed when he realised that the breakthroughs in his ministry to the Lisu people of China were directly linked to the prayer of his supporters in the UK:

Solid, lasting missionary work is done on our knees.

So we’re committed to praying, and helping others to pray, for our mission partners worldwide.

For this reason, we’ve set up the Syzygy prayer network for mission workers with prayer needs.  If this is you, just email prayerrequests@syzygy.org.uk and your message will be automatically forwarded to everyone who’s in our prayer network.  Please don’t send us your regular prayer letters – just a short paragraph to cover your emergency needs.  Remember that we’ve got no control over what people do with it, so you might need to be discreet in what you say.  Those in CANs who are concerned about the security risk of being overtly linked to Syzygy might like to email our colleague Chris who will pass messages on to us.

If you’d like to join our prayer network and pray for world mission needs, just email pray@syzygy.org.uk and we’ll add you to the circulation list.  Please don’t forward emails or pin them on noticeboards as there may be security implications for the sender.  You can also find specific prayer needs on our homepage, particularly on the Featured Ministry entries.

For those of you who’d like to pray for particular countries or issues, we recommend the World Prayer Map.  It is updated regularly by a variety of mission partners across the world, and can be accessed by country or by topic.  Go to www.worldprayermap.co.uk to access it.

Many tired missionaries working in East Asia are delighted to have discovered Bethany.  This is a rest and retreat complex on Cheung Chau Island off Hong Kong. It is specifically funded and staffed to offer member care to those working cross-culturally in Asia and beyond offering good quality, inexpensive accommodation. Bethany is set in gardens of trees and flowers on the quiet, traffic free island of Cheung Chau with good beaches and scenic walks, so is an ideal place to relax and recuperate from a demanding ministry.

Despite feeling remote, it is conveniently accessible from Hong Kong, so it’s not hard to get to despite feeling away from it all.  Set on a hill in attractive grounds overlooking the South China Sea, Bethany’s location is idyllic – five minutes to sandy beaches, peaceful walks around rocky coves and yet the town with its restaurants and shops is just nearby. The Bethany team includes those who have understanding and long experience of the demands on people, for example adjusting to new cultures, difficulties with co-workers, frustrations with sponsors, parenting and educational decision-making, family and marriage needs cross-culturally.

The Bethany mission is to keep people resilient, working in their God-given field for longer. At a basic level, they provide a home from home with familiar food, language and culture allowing people to recover in holiday mode from tiredness and stress. In association with this they have experienced pastoral couples available for prayer and with a listening and sympathetic ear.

More information is available on the Bethany website: www.bethanyministries.com

A friend of mine recently suggested that we should use missionarysavingexpert.com as our web address.  Not a bad idea: it’s witty, nobody else is using it, and it does what it says on the tin.

That’s what we’re about.  Good member care can mean the difference between missionaries continuing being effective in their calling for years, or giving up and going home.  We’re resolved to do all we can to prevent them doing the latter.  Our three stage strategy is:

1) where we find missionaries who have critical needs, use our network of contacts to try and meet them;

2) work together with their churches and sending organisations to try and help them develop a vision and strategy for meeting those needs themselves;

3) work within the missions community to help raise standards of member care across the sector.

And in the longer term, we’re hoping to build this website into a complete web-based resource for providing people in the field with tools to do the job, so keep coming back for updates and new pages.

In recent weeks I’ve talked to a lot of people who are really excited about what we’re doing.  We’ve got a growing number of Facebook fans.  I’ve received a lot of positive response to our new website.  But mainly not from the people we’re aiming to help – struggling missionaries.

That’s why we need your help.  If you know any missionaries, please send them a link to this site.  If you know anyone who is active in the world of overseas missions, let them know about us.  The more people who know, the more chance we have of finding the people we’re here to serve.

And then maybe we really can be missionarysavingexpert.com!

Welcome to the revamped Syzygy website and blog!  I’m Tim, and I’m one of the directors of Syzygy.  One way or another, I’ve been involved in supporting missionaries for 15 years, since I realised that too many of them are either coming home for entirely avoidable reasons, or heroically labouring on under difficult circumstances.  Syzygy is resolved to do what we can to  support such people, help them continue in their mission, and become more effective.  And more importantly, we hope to encourage their sending churches and organisations to get behind them to do in the long term what Syzygy’s doing in the short term.

I hope that through this blog we will be able to stimulate discussion around various issues concerning cross-cultural workers, and draw more people into our ever-expanding network of volunteer supporters.  Whether you go, pray, encourage, finance, or support, I hope you’ll find something here for you.

Syzygy’s directors all have first-hand missions experience, between us having served short-, medium- and long-term in four continents, and although we’re all now based in England, we all continue to be involved in our own ministries to support missions overseas.  Our mission draws its name from our belief that global mission is a task whose burden should not fall exclusively on those who go, but should be shared by the whole church.  The word Syzygy – Greek for “yoked together” – conveys the image of oxen ploughing together, and the more oxen there are in a team, the easier it gets.

Join us!

For information on how to get involved with us, go to the CONTACT US page.