A Far Green Country

Here are some easy-to-do suggestions for helping your children become world Christians:

• Read National Geographic.
  
  
• Check out library books about countries or regions of the U.S. where you have friends or special interest.
  
  
• Take and make opportunities to hear and learn different languages.
  
  
• Read aloud together missionary biographies and stories with foreign settings.
  
  
• Keep a globe or large world map handy for easy reference.
  
  
• Mark the locations of friends on the map-Detroit, Almaty, Madison, Bangkok.
  
  
• Notice aloud newscasts or articles about distant countries.
  
  
• Read together the Global Prayer Digest and pray for the day's unreached people group. Your minds will be sent daily to a different part of the world. Your children will learn what kinds of words to use when they hear you praying for God's will to be done in the world.
  
  
• Include children in conversations with foreign students, missionaries, world travelers and emigrants to this country.
  
  
• In conversation, assume a future anywhere in the world for your children, not just the U.S.
  
  
• Read letters from missionaries as personal letters, not as mass mailings-children love to get mail.
  
  
• Put missionary pictures on the bulletin board alongside your other favorite friends. Your child will grow up knowing, "Some friends live far away in Nebraska, some live far away in Cote d'Ivoire. It's all in the same world that's on my map. Who knows where I might live when I grow up?"
  
  
• Go to the airport to send off missionary friends. When you gather in a circle for one last song and prayer together, you give older children a sense of the importance of aligning with God's purposes in the world. A younger child will grasp that it's great fun to go to the airport, and this must be something special because we don't usually sing and cry at the airport!
  
  
• Most of all, help your children learn that the U.S. is not the only country God made, our ways are not necessarily the best ways, and English is not the only language.

Lord, cause us and our children to anticipate and yearn for that glorious scene of Revelation 7:9-10 - of "a great multitude which no one could count, from every nation and all tribes and peoples and tongues, standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes . . . [crying] out with a loud voice, saying, 'Salvation to our God who sits on the throne, and to the Lamb.'" Lord, cause the vision of your glory to burn so strongly in us, that our children ignite for you.

- Noel Piper | Home Grown World Christians