Latest / 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids. / How to Get Children Involved with Missions w/ Founder and President of Beautiful Feet International

Transcript

How to Get Children Involved with Missions w/ Founder and President of Beautiful Feet International · 5–Minute Parenting: Tips to Help You Raise Competent, Godly Kids.

• 0:01
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome to another episode of the Five Minute Parenting Podcast.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_00: I'm your host, Karen Ferguson, wife, mom, grandmom, and children's book author with a background in K-8 education and a passion for equipping parents to raise confident and God-confident kids.
• 0:17
  SPEAKER_00: In this podcast, we'll cover parenting practices for both a practical view and a biblical view.
• 0:23
  SPEAKER_00: Our goal is to help you raise kids with a positive, godly self-image so they can become all they were created to be.
• 0:30
  SPEAKER_00: I know you're busy, so we'll keep it short.
• 0:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's take just five minutes and dive in.
• 0:39
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back, listeners.
• 0:41
  SPEAKER_00: Today we're talking with Melissa Highland about how to get our children involved with missions.
• 0:46
  SPEAKER_00: Melissa is a wife, mother of six, and grandmother of 12.
• 0:50
  SPEAKER_00: She's an author, speaker, and missionary and holds degrees from Wake Forest University and the University of Central Missouri with specialties in education and curriculum and instruction.
• 1:02
  SPEAKER_00: Melissa is the founder and president of Beautiful Feet International, a mission organization that starts international pregnancy centers.
• 1:11
  SPEAKER_00: Beautiful Feet has over 100 pregnancy ministries in over 30 nations.
• 1:16
  SPEAKER_00: Melissa has led missions teams since 2000 and is the recipient of the 2014 Evan Tell Matthew 419 Award and the 2022 Heartbeat International Servant Leader Award.
• 1:29
  SPEAKER_00: Her passion is teaching others to share the gospel and to protect life.
• 1:34
  SPEAKER_00: Melissa, thank you so much for being here today.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: I'm excited about this topic, and I know that you are a fantastic resource for parents with all of your years of missions experience.
• 1:46
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm excited to hear what you have to share with our listeners.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Please jump right in.
• 1:51
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you so much for inviting me to be here today.
• 1:54
  SPEAKER_01: Yes, I'm I'm passionate about missions.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_01: And as a mom and a grandmother, I'm really passionate about us teaching our children about missions.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_01: And so I'm just going to share with you a bunch of different things that I have done as a parent and hoping that you'll find some things in here that you will uh want to share with your kids or grandkids.
• 2:16
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that is, and they're most of them very simple.
• 2:19
  SPEAKER_01: One of the things that's really simple is to get a world map.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_01: And so that when you have missionaries that come to church or you hear about missionaries, that you can show your kids on the map, okay, this is where they are, because it makes it uh more real to them.
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: And I think you're going to find that as I have, a lot of times I don't even know where these places are.
• 2:38
  SPEAKER_01: But kids love to do that and they love to look.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And it's something that you can even get a map that you can put on the floor for young kids that they can kind of crawl around on and point to and have it become more real for them.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing that I think is a great thing, and it's something that I did as a child, is I read so many missionary stories, and there are so many fabulous stories about missionaries, missionary um biographies and autobiographies, and to for you to read those to your children, even and read aloud with your kids and talk about them, and also buy them books like that, you know, as gifts for them to read.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that that's going to really increase and improve their heart to missions.
• 3:24
  SPEAKER_01: And doing mission stuff, doing local mission stuff, like taking your kids to feed the homeless, serve at a soup kitchen.
• 3:32
  SPEAKER_01: Um, Angel Tree is a great um program, you know, at Christmas time where children and their parents are incarcerated, that you can buy gifts for the children that come from the parents.
• 3:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um, most of us know about Samaritan's purse shoe boxes at Christmas time.
• 3:51
  SPEAKER_01: It's something you can do with the kids, right?
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: You can go to the dollar store and fill up those boxes and the kids can do it.
• 3:57
  SPEAKER_01: You know, you can pick um a child that is the same gender and age as your child.
• 4:03
  SPEAKER_01: And then together, you know, you have fun and they're picking out the stuff that they're gonna send overseas.
• 4:09
  SPEAKER_01: Um, something that I think is great is to have missionary pen pals.
• 4:13
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if they're called pen pals anymore, because you don't use a pen, but you know, where there are missionary kids, right, that are serving overseas that are maybe the same gender and age, roughly as your child.
• 4:24
  SPEAKER_01: And then they can write back and forth email, right?
• 4:27
  SPEAKER_01: They can email back and forth with this child, maybe even, you know, FaceTime or WhatsApp or, you know, any of those kinds of ways that they can be communicating and seeing how missionary kids are living overseas, what that life is like.
• 4:41
  SPEAKER_01: I think that's a great way.
• 4:43
  SPEAKER_01: Also giving to missionaries, that your kids see you giving to missionaries, but also that they can do that.
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Encourage kids to, when they, you know, get their birthday money or their Christmas money, or you know, they make money by doing jobs around the house or for other people, that they can take a portion of what they earn or what they are given and send it to missionaries, or maybe even do something specifically for that reason.
• 5:12
  SPEAKER_01: You know, little kids with their lemonade stand or whatever, you know, that they are raising money to send to missionaries.
• 5:20
  SPEAKER_01: Also going on mission trips.
• 5:22
  SPEAKER_01: Let your kids see that you're going on mission trips, but take them too.
• 5:25
  SPEAKER_01: I started taking all of my children on mission trips when they were pretty young, um, probably like, you know, dependent on the kid, but probably like eight or nine years old.
• 5:35
  SPEAKER_01: So um, our kids went on short-term mission trips with us around the world.
• 5:41
  SPEAKER_01: All of them did.
• 5:42
  SPEAKER_01: Post missionaries in your home.
• 5:44
  SPEAKER_01: When you have missionaries that you know that are coming to visit your church, offer to have them stay in your home so that your kids can get to know missionaries.
• 5:52
  SPEAKER_01: They are sitting around the breakfast table and around the dinner table talking to these missionaries and learning what it's like to serve as a missionary around the world.
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Um, when you go on vacation, if you vacation outside of the United States, look and see if there are missionaries serving near where you're going to go on vacation and take a day or a half a day out of your vacation to go and visit missionaries and visit the ministry and see what it is they're they're doing, maybe even offer to bring them some things that that they need from the United States.
• 6:24
  SPEAKER_01: Um praying for missionaries.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: I would I would encourage you to make that a part of your regular prayer time with your kids every day, that you're praying not just for missionaries in general, but for missionaries by name.
• 6:38
  SPEAKER_01: Um, there are some movies that are about missionaries that you can see with your kids.
• 6:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I bought for my son um this book, and it's called WWQT by Jim Cook, which stands for Worldwide Quiet Time Journal.
• 6:59
  SPEAKER_01: And it is it is a great book because it goes through every day.
• 7:04
  SPEAKER_01: My son does it with the kids at dinner time, and it highlights a different missionary every day, but it's written for children.
• 7:11
  SPEAKER_01: And so it's just a like he's he shares it with them and they have a little short prayer time.
• 7:16
  SPEAKER_01: It's not this big long involved thing, it's just like a few minutes at dinner at night.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_01: So those are just a few ideas.
• 7:23
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, that I have those are fantastic ideas, and we're gonna list um most of those, if not all of them, in the show notes for listeners to be able to refer back to because those are some great ideas to get the family working together uh towards that mission's heart.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_00: I love that.
• 7:41
  SPEAKER_00: Thank you.
• 7:42
  SPEAKER_00: Before we close, I do want to encourage our listeners to visit your website where they can find more inspiration, resources, support your ministry, and then get links to your books.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_00: I noticed you have quite a few books on there.
• 7:54
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, where is the best place to find you online?
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: It's beautifulfeet international.com.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_00: Okay, great.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_00: And we'll have that link in the show notes as well.
• 8:05
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I I know God has raised up many young people to serve as missionaries.
• 8:11
  SPEAKER_00: And I I pray God would use this very episode to ignite a passion in families for missions because that's so important.
• 8:18
  SPEAKER_00: So thank you again for being here, Melissa, and sharing.
• 8:21
  SPEAKER_00: And listeners, that's it for today.
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, be sure to check out the show notes again for links to Melissa's website, books, and other resources.
• 8:30
  SPEAKER_00: And until next time, have a blessed week.