Maintaining Friendships While Living Abroad

Christine Elizabeth • Jul 28, 2020

Long distance friendships are hard. In the last year, whether we live far away or not, we’ve all had to find new and creative ways to maintain relationships while being physically distant from each other. For those of us who live a plane ride away from close friends and family, this is nothing new. Here are some of the ideas and truths I’ve learned over years of maintaining friendships while living abroad .

Choose What Apps Work for You

What a blessing it is to live in an age with such great technology available to us! While Facebook and Instagram are great for getting significant life updates from those you know and love, other apps can be used for more intentional, deeper conversations.

Love seeing the faces of your nieces and nephews? Jump on MarcoPolo and record videos to send back and forth. (The kiddos in your life may request watching your face over and over again.) Process verbally? Download Voxer , and send voice messages with your best friend across the world . Want to have dozens of pictures a week available for you children’s grandparents? Consider getting TinyBeans to distribute photos to a select few family members who want to watch your child grow.

Get Creative

Digital connection can be a place for meaningful conversation. However, sometimes we need something a little more tangible to maintain friendships while living abroad. Consider ordering a book for a friend oceans away with Book Depository (they have free worldwide shipping!) or sending a card with a photo of you on it through Postable. Remember birthdays and anniversaries and graduations, making sure to plan well enough ahead for shipping. Send “just because” cards and packages — one time I sent a friend a “Congratulations on your new couch!” card, telling her that I wished I could join her on it for a cup of coffee .

Do you have, or are you, a grandparent far away from grandkids? The Long Distance Grandparent sends monthly emails with creative ideas for grandparents to connect with their grandchildren.

Facebook isn’t the only way to stay in touch long-distance. Sending books, writing cards and celebrate the small things can all help in maintaining friendships while living abroad.

Know Your Capacity and Know Your People

We have limited capacities for how many people we can stay in touch with, and everyone’s capacity varies. Between learning a new language , making new friends in your host culture and the demands of daily life, we only have so much energy to devote to maintaining friendships while living abroad. This is true no matter how life-giving those friendships may be.

Give yourself a limit for time spent on your phone, if that’s helpful for you. Plan to connect with one or two friends each day, if that is what you need. Also, know which people you want to invest the most time into. I won’t pick up an unexpected phone call from just anyone, but when my brother calls from California, I’ll drop pretty much anything.

Grieve the Loss

Long-distance friendships look different than ones in close proximity. We can’t run over for a quick lunch date or even get creative with “socially distant” hangouts, like a coffee date from the comfort of our cars. I miss weekly dinners with my parents, and it makes me sad that they have to watch my daughter grow up while on video calls. As much as technology allows us to connect, it is still not the same.

Take time to grieve this in your own heart and also talk about it with the relationships where you feel it the most . Write a text or email that says, “I miss you.” Send the recipe you made for dinner, telling your friend that you wish they could join you. Give thanks for the good, and grieve the hard.

Remember That It’s Normal

Cross-cultural Christians are not the only demographic with the challenge of long-distance friendship. My friend’s job moved her to the other side of the country from her parents and friends, and she struggles to keep her family connected. In many countries, families will send one or two members abroad to work and send money back to them.

When my husband and I lived in the Philippines , a common question for getting to know someone was, “Oh, who in your family works abroad?” The struggle of long-distance friendships and family is a common one in the community where we lived. This allowed us to connect with people, since it’s something we were experiencing too.

So, whether you’re preparing to move abroad or you’ve been living long distance for a while, I hope you continue to stay connected in whatever ways you can as you celebrate the possibilities and grieve the losses. What other helpful ideas have you found for maintaining friendships while living abroad?

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Bridging Dissonance: Finding Connection in Music and the Gospel

By Emily Sheddan • 18 Jul, 2024

TEAM worker Luke Standridge and his fellow musicians use music to build connections to faith in Japan. In music terms, dissonance creates movement or even suspense in a song. It invites tension. That tension is what helps grab our ear’s attention and the interchanging of these notes with pleasant melodious parts is what makes music such a delight. In a similar way, God is using music to grab people’s attention and catalyze Gospel impact in the largely unreached nation of Japan. TEAM Global Worker, Luke Standridge moved to Japan in 2019 with no clear direction on how he was going to use his passion for composing music while doing ministry. However, after Luke got involved with a local church and began developing deep friendships, the Lord opened unimaginable doors for Luke that in time, coordinating his creative skills with sharing the Word. “People Need to Come to Japan!” Growing up as one of ten kids in a family that was heavily involved in ministry and missions, Luke never considered that it would one day be a part of his own journey. In 2016, via a Japanese language learning class in Indiana, Luke and his brother had the opportunity to travel to Japan. Hearing, learning, and using the language in the context of Japanese culture was the goal. While it was Luke’s first international trip – even his first trip on a plane - it was also his first time hearing about the spiritual condition of the Japanese people. “And just through that, God did a huge 180 change on my heart,” says Luke. “More people should come here as global workers. People need to come to Japan!” The call God was laying on Luke’s heart is echoed when looking at the spiritual landscape of Japan. The nation is home to the second largest unreached people group in the world. It is one of the most difficult places for the Gospel to take hold and grow. Japan is also home to a deep and rich culture that prizes creative arts from pottery to ink to music to anime – a fact that would help Luke find his niche in life and ministry. God’s Guiding Hand In the short three-month timespan of that first trip, Luke found that opportunities came naturally to share about life, and people’s curiosity for Christianity grew. “I left Japan knowing I just had to come back,” Luke shares. “Even if I didn’t get back to the same area, I knew Japan was where God wanted me to be.” The Lord is good all the time and all the time the Lord is good. His plans do not fail. Luke returned to Japan in 2019, and less than a week after arriving, he was put in touch with a renowned composer in Japan. The composer saw some of Luke’s music and invited him to help write the music for a beloved in-country animated show. But God wasn’t finished yet! Fast forward a year, and more connections and opportunities allowed Luke to help with music for Pokémon - a franchise that has brand recognition around the world and was being developed into a TV series in Japan. Luke recalls how the Lord began using these connections in the production world to open doors for Gospel conversations. One night while having dinner in downtown Tokyo with famous artists and composers from all around the country, Luke was asked about his ministry-focused visa. This was a rare opportunity in a setting with people otherwise uninterested in Christianity. Luke shares, “The whole time I could see God’s hand in guiding the entire thing.”

Connecting in a New Kind of “Neighborhood”

By Lorena de la Rosa and Suzanne Pearson • 13 Jun, 2024

Through creative arts and other forms of innovative outreach, “The Neighborhood” is creating connections to the Gospel and the love of Jesus. CONNECTION. It’s a common word with powerful implications. Dictionary.com defines connection as a joining or linking together; a relationship between people or objects that unites or binds them together. God has created each of us with a deep need for connection with Him as well as connection with others. Hebrews 10:24-25 speaks to this, as the writer exhorts, “Let us consider how to stir up one another to love and good works, not neglecting to meet together, as is the habit of some, but encouraging one another, and all the more as you see the Day drawing near.” This God-given need for connection lies at the heart of a creative and innovative ministry in Japan known as “The Neighborhood.” TEAM Japan global worker, Kelly and her family created The Neighborhood as a place where connections are formed through creative arts, educational opportunities, and simply just providing a space for people to be together. A Family Calling The journey to the creation of The Neighborhood began over 5,000 miles away from Tokyo, in California where Kelly, her husband Jeff, and their five children were living. The kids were the first to sense God’s calling to missions, and asked why their family wasn’t serving in this way. How Kelly and her family came to TEAM is a God-story in and of itself. “God placed a TEAM Japan worker at our lunch table the same week that the kids posed that question to us,” Kelly recalls. “We had never heard of TEAM and so we thought, ‘let’s check this out.’ After that, God just kept confirming that we were supposed to be here.” After a period of fundraising and with much excitement, the family of seven moved to Japan in 2014. For the first five years, Kelly and Jeff served as a part of other TEAM ministry initiatives, but they began to sense a stirring for something new. Creating The Neighborhood Kelly and her family truly have a deep gift for hospitality, and regularly opened up their home to others they met in Tokyo. They saw a great need for people to have a place to gather and connect, and they wondered what doors the Lord might be opening for them to meet that need. “About a year before we were to return the States on home assignment, we were just really thinking about our future in Japan,” Kelly says. “We saw a need for people to have a ‘third place’ – a place that’s not home and it’s not work. They didn’t have a church community or any other place where they could meet people and just connect.” Kelly goes on to explain that in Japan, the culture is such that people don’t generally invite each other into their homes, but as her family did so, people embraced that opportunity. “This idea formed in all of our hearts of a student ministry center – a place where we can create community and learning,” says Kelly. “It was born out of what we were already doing in our home, but seeing how we could expand it and have better space.” God’s Provision What happened next is a true testament to God’s provision. Kelly, Jeff, and the kids returned to the States and began sharing their vision for The Neighborhood with their supporters and churches who responded generously. Upon returning to Japan, the search was on for the right space. “We had a Christian realtor that we told our dream to, and he just went looking for it,” Kelly recalls. When the realtor found a 5-story apartment building, he said, “It’s kind of out of your budget but it has what you need and want.” The Lord provided the funds and the family moved into the space in November 2019. They now occupy all but the ground floor, with living space for their family as well as classrooms, areas to study or hang out, and guest rooms for exchange students or others who need a place to stay overnight. The first floor is occupied by a pizza shop – a welcome amenity for the many groups and students who visit The Neighborhood. “It’s very convenient!” Kelly says with a laugh. The Neighborhood began to see lots of activity right away until the pandemic hit in early 2020. During the height of the quarantine, Kelly and Jeff used the time to redecorate the space and plant gardens outside the building. Then as the restrictions eased, they invited individual students or families over for meals and fellowship. It wasn’t until March 2023 that The Neighborhood was able to fully open again as intended. Kelly shares that despite the setbacks of COVID, the Lord continued to provide the funds to pay the rent.