The Importance of MK Care

“At Avant, we desire to cultivate an environment where every MK’s identity is firmly rooted in Christ, fostering a deep and growing relationship with God. We envision a community in which each child is recognized as a valuable member of the family and organization, where they are nurtured and empowered to embrace their unique gifts and talents for the advancement of God's kingdom.”  MK Care Vision Statement

In 1986 when I joined Avant and went to South America as a teacher, a focus on Missionary Kids (MKs) was beginning to build. They weren’t just tag-alongs behind their missionary parents; they had needs that merited our attention, challenges in their back-and-forth/highly mobile lives that involved a greater degree of loss and grief, and some beautiful gifts, like being multicultural and multilingual citizens of the world. 

Fast forward to 2025. Statistics show that the well-being of MKs is one of the top three reasons why worker families return to their sending countries (the other two being finances and health concerns). We have great parents who are paying attention to their children’s academics, their emotional well-being, and their spiritual development. And missions are making space for parents to meet those needs as much as possible, while still moving towards the goal of reaching the unreached with God’s truth.

At Avant, we love paying attention to MKs, and we have a growing team doing just that. One thing we do that I particularly value is helping our post-high school students make a return visit to the country where they grew up sometime during their first years back in their passport country (aka their country of citizenship that they’ve usually only visited periodically growing up).

Emma just took her “trip home,” and I loved what she wrote about it: “I hadn’t been back to Spain since we moved [five] years ago, so I was itching to see my old friends and all my favorite places—I called it my Goodbye Tour. I’d had a really hard time settling into life in the US and calling it home, and I missed Spain a lot. I’d hoped to get some closure in going back, but I didn’t expect just how good for me those two months would be! It was wonderful to connect with my friends and see the places I used to call home and feel my Spanish coming back…I came back with a stronger love for Minnesota and a better knowledge of what shaped me growing up and continues to influence my today. It’s really amazing how much I’ve settled into Minnesota life since visiting Spain last summer; it was really what I needed to get that closure.”

Bottom line? We want our MKs to know our awesome God and His great love for them, to thrive as His children, and to love Him with every fiber of their being–their amazing MK being.