The Editor of Mission Frontiers magazine is responsible for leading the vision, strategy, and execution of the Mission Frontiers magazine.

As I write this, there is snow covering the ground and flocking the blue spruces surrounding my home. It is a scene worthy of a Christmas card. But soon the snow will melt, and those blue spruces will be burgeoning with new life and growth. It is the normal change in seasons that I anticipate and rejoice in each year. Likewise, Frontier Ventures and Mission Frontiers are entering a new season in the life of our respective organizations. In recent years, Frontier Ventures has sold off its campus properties in Pasadena, California which Dr. Ralph Winter purchased in 1976. Frontier Ventures has moved to a more decentralized organizational structure, which no longer needs such a large physical footprint in Pasadena.

Fitri's clothes were dirty, her cloth face mask was ginormous, and her nails had black dirt under them. She had some type of ear infection and there was a smelly liquid coming out of her ears. But she was one of our students and we could not cringe or hide away from her. The invitation is always to welcome such children-to welcome them and to view them as lovely children that God has made in His image. Beneath the dirt, behind the smell, and in spite of the apparent ugliness of poverty, these children are beautiful.

Friendship on any given day is a challenge. Throw some cross-cultural borders in there, maybe a few time zones, and any of us may just want to give up. But what a tragedy that would be. Women make up nearly 70% of missionaries on the field and a recent research survey indicates that the number two reason global workers state that they stay on the field is because of friendship.

When that young-or maybe not so young-single woman in your church or family starts taking steps toward serving in mission, what thoughts run through your head? That it's too dangerous? That she'll never fit in? That she'd do better if she had a husband?

Why develop a prayer strategy? While my family served in Asia, my husband and I visited a team on an island a short flight away. They had experienced many setbacks to sharing Jesus with those around them. Their children often had nightmares, as did those who slept in the guest room of their house. The team leader's wife struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts, which she had never experienced before moving to that location. Kingdom work and the team limped along. A prayer calendar had been developed by the team, but it encountered multiple setbacks and delays before it was finally printed. When the team investigated the spiritual history of that area, they discovered (among other things) that human sacrifice had been practiced there until the early 1900s.

Would you like to go to a dentist who graduated in 1999 and then said, "I don't need to update my credentials or take more classes because I already invested six years of my life learning what I needed to know?" How comfortable would you be to have your taxes prepared by someone who said, "I was up to date until 2018 and then life got really busy and I haven't had time to stay up to date on the changes to the laws since then?" No thank you. I'm sorry life's been hectic, but a lot has changed since 2018 and your good intentions are not enough.

The scene was beautiful. The Middle Eastern dad got down on the floor with his six or so children and began to draw stick figures on a piece of paper. He drew a stick figure Jesus asleep in a boat and then stick figure disciples who looked afraid. His next drawing was Jesus speaking to the waves and they grew calm. Dad had learned the story earlier that day from someone else and there he was, immediately bringing the hope of Jesus to his children through his own stick figure drawings.

My journey as a mobilizer started at a very difficult point in my life. A challenging experience had immersed me in an unspeakable pain. I felt like a shaky, fragile leaf that had fallen off a high tree into a river, adrift on cold water. Feeling weak and helpless, I just went with the flow, unaware He was about to take me into unfamiliar waters.

During the early 20th century, several remarkable Chinese women led a revivalist movement in the Chinese church. First, there was Dora Yu (Yu Cidu), who grew up in a Christian family and in 1896 was one of the first graduates of Soochow Women's Hospital. In 1897, Yu became "the first cross-cultural Chinese missionary in modern times." She traveled to Korea, where she served as the mission doctor, helped to establish a girls school, preached, wrote curriculum, and taught girls how to make lace and embroider. Despite all this work, the mission initially refused to call her a "missionary;" instead, she had the lower and less-well-paid position of "Bible woman." As a Bible woman, she visited women in their homes and shared the Gospel with them. During one year alone, Yu visited with 925 women and 211 children.

The Awkward Moment On more than one occasion, I've found myself with brothers and sisters in Christ in a moment that became... awkward. I'm a never-married single woman serving in cross-cultural ministry. My singleness is not the path that I would have chosen, but it is part of God's plan for me (for now) and it comes with many blessings and challenges. One significant challenge is that it has meant being childless, even though years ago one of my high school friends imagined me as the "most likely to be a mom" in our group.

If you dust off those mission history books, you will surely find references somewhere in one of them to E. Stanley Jones. This great statesman was an amazing missionary to India during the early 1900s. If you are not familiar with him, then you've definitely heard of Mahatma Gandhi. What you may not know, however, is that E. Stanley Jones' wife, Mabel Lossing Jones, influenced this history-changing man who was responsible for Indian independence in significant ways, corresponding with this powerful leader in the field of education. They wrote letters back and forth to one another for more than 20 years.

A few years ago, the VP of Global Strategies for Beyond.org turned to me and stated, “We are observing a challenge to see women, as well as men, come to initial trainings in CPM (Church Planting Movements) globally. If we are serious about the fulfillment of the Great Commission, then we need to figure out a way to make sure both men and women are equipped/ coached in making reproducing disciples for the launch of CPMs among all UPGs (Unreached People Groups).”

I'm a practical person. I believe that my faith should be lived out in relationships with others around me. As a teenager, I became a believer in Jesus and wanted to honor Him in my family relationships. In college, I took the Perspectives on the World Christian Movement class, and I learned it was important to live my faith in the context of international students on campus. Life went on and my passion to connect with Muslims, Hindus, and Buddhists grew in my heart and in my daily-life expressions of connection.

For this special issue of Mission Frontiers on Women in Mission, I want to introduce you to my friend, Monica Mitchell (MM), the chair of the board of William Carey International University. Her leadership of the WCIU Board has been a profound service to the university and I personally have learned a lot from her.

The Music in My Soul If you had the chance to ask anyone in Frontier Ventures who my favorite singer is they will probably say "Bob Dylan". And that would be an understandable but incorrect answer! He is someone I quote often, and whose song writing I appreciate. But he is not my favorite singer.

The taxi driver looked at me aghast in the rear-view mirror: "YOU are SINGLE!?? What a WASTE!"

Click on the .pdf icon within this article to read the Unreached of the Day.

As a cross-cultural Christian in a 99.9% Muslim country, I find Ramadan to be filled with stark contrasts. On the one hand, multigenerational families gathering around tables each night eating homemade delicacies and food drives that collect pantry staples for poor families are almost universal. On the other hand, thievery due to pressure to buy gifts at the end of the month along with arguments, fist fights, traffic snarls, and shortened tempers due to nicotine and caffeine withdrawals all increase during the 30 days.

I recently had a conversation with a mission leader and his wife who oversee about 600 churches in an African region where wife-beating is a common, legal practice. When I asked about how they train pastors to address this problem, he responded: (1) their churches didn't have that problem, and (2) they defer issues about how men and women relate to the local culture. This is a good man who loves God and his wife. He honestly didn't see the problem. In that same conversation, his wife added that this practice did indeed go on in their area (to his surprise). This is a good woman who loves God and her husband, who never explored this rampant issue of abuse with him or the pastor. Good men and women like these don't intentionally ignore such things; they're usually horrified by them.