Join Brandi and James as they sit down with Dr. Tasha Mitchell to discuss her research on missionary burnout, exploring how leadership, emotional intelligence, and resilience play a role in preventing and predicting burnout among missionaries.

Dr. Tasha Mitchell currently serves as the Clinical Director at Willow Creek Counseling Center. She received an M.A. in mental health counseling from Asbury Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. in counseling education and supervision from Regent University. In addition, she is a Licensed Professional Clinical Counselor- Supervisor (LPCC-S) in the state of Kentucky. Along with her role at Willow Creek, Mitchell served as a clinical supervisor at the Van Tatenhove Center for Counseling at Asbury Theological Seminary overseeing clinical interns from the seminary’s counseling program. Mitchell has also worked as adjunct faculty at Montreat College in Asheville, North Carolina.

Prior to her work at Willow Creek Counseling Center, she held clinical positions in both in-patient and out-patient settings helping serve those struggling with addiction and substance use related issues. She is also certified in Prepare Enrich and Gottman Level 1 training. Dr. Mitchell is passionate about seeing individuals be the healthiest and happiest versions of themselves and utilizes a holistic approach to help clients overcome life’s challenges so they can live their lives to the fullest

Before pursuing her masters, Dr. Mitchell spent time working in missions and alongside ministries doing pastoral counseling. She also worked with a not-for-profit helping women survivors of sex trafficking and assisted in the development and operation of the organization’s safe house. Through these real-life experiences, she gained a heart for individuals who have experienced trauma and understands the challenges that those survivors can face. Through counseling and advocacy her hope is to help individuals experience restoration and have hope for their future.

Click Here to connect with Dr. Mitchell.

Join Brandi and James as they meet with Ulrika Ernvik to discuss helping people navigate traumatic experiences using Safety Stories. With extensive experience working with children and adults in Sweden and Thailand, Ulrika has dedicated her career to helping people process trauma and rebuild safety. Her curiosity about how ordinary people can support healing led her to develop SafetyStories©, a method grounded in neuroscience and storytelling that fosters connection and safety in everyday life. Safety Stories is a trauma processing method that can help both children and adults work through their traumatic experiences. Even more powerful is that leading someone with safety stories could be used by anyone.

Ulrika Ernvik grew up as a TCK in the Congo and raised her own TCKs in Thailand. She is a Licensed Psychotherapist and Authorized Social Worker (MSW) with a Master’s in Psychotherapy focused on family and systems work. She is also a trained teacher and supervisor for therapists.

Ulrika is the author of several books in Swedish and English (and other languages), including Third Culture Kids – A Gift to Care For and SafetyStories©. She currently lives in Sweden, where she works as a family therapist within the Primary Health Care system and offers counseling, training, and supervision through her private practice, Familjeglädje. She also runs Sakta Farten, a platform promoting care for burned-out individuals and a weary planet.

Find out more or connect with Ulrike Ernvik

Join Brandi and James as they sit down with Kimberly Drage to explore the complexities of organizational change. Kimberly highlights the crucial distinction between change and transition, noting that every transition inevitably involves some form of loss. She emphasizes that, while organizations often devote substantial energy and resources to managing change, the process of navigating transitions requires a different approach. With a grace-filled perspective, Kimberly offers practical insights into facing these challenges effectively.

Kimberly Drage is passionate about the well-being of cross-cultural workers. From her own experience serving in a closed country in Asia for 11 years and in Europe for another 8 years, where she currently serves, she has seen, first-hand, the connection between organizational practices and mental health for people on the field. After becoming a coach, she began evaluating the models of care and support for cross-cultural workers and started asking, “what it would take to truly empower global workers to thrive in their work and lives?” This question eventually led her to study management at the University of St Andrews. She currently serves as the Deputy Director of the John Powell Institute (JPI) at Mission Training International. JPI is working to connect research on well-being for cross-cultural workers to policy and practice for organizations. It is her hope that her work will inspire conversation and resource organizations when it comes to the central role organizations play in the well-being of cross-cultural workers, not just in member care services but in organizational culture as a whole. Empowering organizations to be their best for those serving in them is vital to both global workers and the Great Commission, for we cannot honor the mission without upholding the people who are carrying it out.

Resources

Join Brandi and James as they sit down with Kristen Cagwin to discuss both the external and internal preparations necessary for a smooth transition back to home cultures. Together, they explore the best times and practical steps for planning, as well as long-term strategies to help individuals, couples, and families navigate this significant change successfully. Tune in to discover valuable insights on how to transition well and support lasting adjustment at home.

Kristen grew up in Illinois and attended Wheaton College (2000), where she met her husband, Joel. They moved to Kandern, Germany, in 2013 to work at Black Forest Academy. Since then, they have lived in Kandern, with the exception of one home assignment year in Wheaton, IL (2018–19), and one year in Chiang Mai, Thailand (2022–23), where Kristen interned at Cornerstone Counseling Foundation.

Their son graduated from BFA in 2025 and now attends Lehigh University (PA). Their three daughters are all current BFA students. After graduating and getting married, Kristen worked at Wheaton College for seven years before staying home full-time with her kids until they were all in school. It took Kristen a few years to identify what she wanted to pursue vocationally, but she eventually discovered the intersection of spiritual direction, yoga, and psychology as the path of wholeness that had been most helpful in her own journey. She holds a master’s degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from Concordia University Irvine (2023) and a master’s degree in Intercultural Studies from Wheaton College (2006). Kristen is a certified spiritual director through Sustainable Faith (2021) and a trained yoga instructor through The Yoga Abbey (2020). She has her LMHCA (WA) and hopes to complete full licensure by the end of the year.

Kristen currently works part-time in the Counseling Department at BFA and part-time as a Member Care counselor with the CMA. In her free time, she enjoys hiking in and around Kandern, listening to podcasts, and relaxing with family and friends. In her counseling role, Kristen enjoys getting to know her clients and accompanying them toward a greater understanding of their story and healthier relationships with self, God, and others.

Join Brandi and James as they talk to Alex Galloway about the different types of care that are needed and available for cross-cultural workers. This includes ways sending organizations can be resourced and equipped and how to find outside or external help when needed. This type of help can be cousneling, spiritual direction, coaching and healing prayer and they disucss how to know what help is right and what a hollistic approach looks like.

Dr. Alex Galloway, Psy.D. is a clinical Psychologist who has specialized interest in trauma recovery, sexuality and the holistic care of God’s people. He enjoys encouraging, equipping, and empowering those who minister on the “front lines.” Additionally, he trains and consults with sending agencies to ensure that our “sent ones” are Sent Well. He serves at sentwell.org

Join Brandi and James as they talk with Bethany Hiser about the socially acceptable addiction to work. There can be an unhealthy attachment or co-dependency on work that shapes our identity and sense of acceptance. Work often becomes the socially acceptable addiction, particularly for those in full-time ministry and cross-cultural work. A significant part of our identity is formed by what we do, which can lead to burnout.

Different from simply being empathetically impacted by work co-dependency is the need to solve others’ problems to feel okay yourself. This overextension of self is often rewarded and may appear positive on the outside but can lead to burnout and compassion fatigue. Are we motivated by a need to be needed because we aren’t okay unless everyone else is? The root of addiction lies in deriving something from a behavior or substance. There is a deep need that must be met through our relationships with our creator, not through our identity in our work. 

“We have to know we have worth and value and live out of that place” Bethany Hiser

Bethany currently works as the Director of Soul Care for Northwest Family Life, a network of therapists trained to work with survivors of domestic violence and sexual trauma. As a bilingual social worker, chaplain, and pastoral advocate, Bethany has worked in a variety of ministry and social service settings with people affected by addiction, sexual exploitation, incarceration, and immigration. After experiencing her own burnout, she has become passionate about being a sort of midwife alongside other helping professionals, as they navigate secondary trauma, move toward groundedness, and uncover their belovedness. She works in the US, yet has a global heart as a TCK. She has offered Soul Care support and training to organizations in India, Bolivia, and Thailand, as well as spent significant time in Central America, Scotland and France. She is the author of From Burned Out to Beloved: Soul Care for Wounded Healers, partly her story, but moreso a trauma-informed holistic soul care guide for other helping professionals. Bethany lives in San Diego with her husband Kenny and their two young daughters in an intentional neighborhood community.

Website / Substack Newsletter /Social Media

Join Brandi and James as they interview John Fawcett and discuss resilience and stress for cross-cultural workers. John defines resilience as the capacity or ability to manage, cope, and thrive amid change. Change is a constant in life, and the stress it brings can lead to distress. The ability to navigate these changes and distress is what defines someone as resilient. 

John has over 25 years experience in international humanitarian aid focussed on the development and implementation of comprehensive staff support processes, cross-cultural team development and leadership effectiveness.

John has considerable experience in designing and implementing comprehensive staff support processes at local and global scales. He has worked across cultures and languages and has very wide global experience in applying these practices. In the early 1990’s he moved to humanitarian work in post-genocide Cambodia and began developing staff support processes for World Vision International in the context of the Cambodian and Rwandan tragedies. He was then asked to direct World Vision Internationals newly established Staff Support Program. In this role he developed and a global network of trained staff who provided onsite support for staff in WVI field locations.. In 2003 he edited and published the “Stress and Trauma Handbook: Strategies for Flourishing in Demanding Environments, (World Vision Publications)”, which has proved to be a foundation text for those in the business of supporting those who provide intentional care for others. A few years later he took up the role of Director of Staff Support for Save the Children USA and lead a process to develop an internal, comprehensive staff support strategy. Since leaving Save the Children John has consulted with many stakeholders in Emergency and Preparedness programs and with governmental donor agencies. He has published widely in the fields of research and strategic implementation. 

He now lives in his home country of New Zealand, enjoying a time of semi-retirement with a focus on family, environmental conservation and resilience.

Find John at https://www.resiliencecheckin.com

Join Brandi and James as they talk with Dr. Frauke and Dr. Charlie Shaefer about the theology of suffering. We all have one, as it frames the way we believe about the nature of God and the suffering we encounter. Frauke talks about what often causes spiritual struggle is the discrepancy between prior assumptions and what people experience. Charlie adds that a theory of suffering is we try to reconcile a loving God with the experience of pain around us.

This is so relevant for cross-cultural workers because the reality of encountering suffering is much higher in the difficult locations they live and serve. Our bodies are wired for meaning-making, and we are trying to get a sense of orientation and predictability for the world. This makes spending time to form and revisit a theology of suffering an important part of the life of the cross-cultural worker.

Check out their book Trauma and Resilience, which James highly recommends. You can take this spiritual resilience questionnaire James put together from their book.

Charlie and Frauke met in a Folk Religions class in the School of Intercultural Studies at Fuller Theological Seminary after Charlie had returned from working in Togo, W. Africa and before Frauke left Germany for Nepal to work in a rehabilitation hospital for those with leprosy. About a decade later they reunited in Grenoble, France. Married in 2000, they work together as a psychologist, Charlie, and psychiatrist, Frauke, sharing their God-given desire to support the mental health needs of global workers and others in ministry.

Frauke and Charlie particular passion is for strengthening the resilience of global ministry workers, who face high levels of stress and trauma in the locations where they live and the type of work they do. Providing training, retreats, counseling, psychiatric care, and consultations, Charlie and Frauke focus on the emotional, spiritual, and physical needs of these workers, their families, and organizations.

While based in North Carolina, God has called them to minister in the Middle East, Asia, Europe, and North America. Frequently traveling or using video conferencing technologies, Charlie and Frauke continue to serve those global workers who have responded to God’s call.

Join Brandi and James as they talk with MaDonna Mauer about the challenges of raising a TCK with disabilities. There may be more limitations, challenges, and minimum care necessary to live cross-culturally with a family member with a disability. However, there are also beautiful opportunities to see God at work in your family and in the lives of those around you.

After graduating from university, MaDonna began her cross-cultural work as a teacher for a Christian international school in China. She quickly learned about TCKs through her work and later even more from her German MK husband (Uwe). They have three adult TCKs. They moved to Taiwan a few years after their middle child was diagnosed with Cri-du-Chat Syndrome. MaDonna has an MA in Care and Counseling and works as a short-term counselor with Global Crossroads Consulting, helping clients and families in all kinds of transitions. She is currently a PhD candidate in the Intercultural Studies department at Columbia International University, researching the lived experiences of missionary families who have a child with disabilities. MaDonna, Uwe, and their middle daughter still reside in Taiwan.

Ways to get in touch with Madonna,

Join Brandi and James as they have Dr. Keith Webb back on. This time, they discuss the importance of financial planning for cross-cultural workers. So often, this is an afterthought, a point of contention, or even a theological block. Keith talks about financial planning as having Faith in Advance. Keith has developed a training called Money Matters, which focuses on building financial sustainability. This course particularly focuses on the 30s-40s age group, helping them start NOW to plan for the future.

Keith E. Webb, D.Min., PCC is President of Creative Results Management, a coach training organization for Christian leaders. He designed The COACH Model® and is author of the best-selling book, “The COACH Model for Christian Leaders”. For 20 years, Keith lived and ministered in Japan, Indonesia, and Singapore. Keith teaches practical skills for mission workers. His latest course is “Money Matters,” how to build financial sustainability.

For Money Matters and a special discount: https://workshop.creativeresultsmanagement.com/moneymatters-special

For Coaching Training: https://creativeresultsmanagement.com