Want to be a missionary?

My Top Ten ways to prepare

10. Get on your knees and pray for the nations. Learn what the world map looks like.

9. Linger in the places your world that is cross cultural, relocate and immerse yourself if possible.

8. Share your life and faith every week. Think about others, interests, fears, humor, language, culture, and how to explain the gospel to others more clearly and winsomely.

7. Fight your corruptions with the gospel of grace, and wrestle with God as if sin could completely derail your life, marriage and ministry.

6. Go camping, as rough as you can. Incrementally start learning to conserving water. food and power at home.

5. Live in community, not just your best friends exactly like you, just to help with rent, but see if you can handle a cross cultural living in your own home, have certain times you eat meals together and worship together.

4. Cultivate a lifestyle of generosity, don't worry so much about how you'll 'treat' yourself on the weekends, but take some of "your" extra time and money and give it away. Imagine you're going to heaven one day and that it will be unimaginably worth it to live life for others now.

3. Cultivate a lifestyle of risk, pray for the courage to take heat for Christ from others walk into situations with people cross culturally that make you look foolish out of love, Ask God what is it that He would want you to risk each day. Be willing to have others problems totally screw up your day. Take the Jericho road, robber's are there, but also people made in the image of God.

2. Cultivate a lifestyle of service, be ready to say yes to Jesus, to love and serve others, especially those in the Church. Especially if you're young going to the East, work on how you relate to those who are older, find ways to serve them.

1. Spend time with others that share the dream of missionary service and spur each other on.

These are written in no order, just as they came to mind, its a culmination of advice I've heard in the past, things we've done and found really helpful, and thing's we are looking to keep working on. Me and my wife have both served in hispanic kensington,phila. , Kristy has been to Mexico 10 times, and I have been to Kenya twice, once for almost a year. We are hoping to go to help a pastoral / church planting coaching team that works with the east african presbyterian church, as I work for my master's in divinity. (4-5 years?)