Publications

Re-Entry Publications

$7.95 Buy on Amazon

This book offers suggestions, reflection guides, and support for the person experiencing the process of transition, from the time of preparing to leave through their return and readjustment to their home culture. The book offers a deeper understanding of the transition process, exercises for personal reflection and processing, important reminders, and tips for storytelling. The guide shares insights from decades of experience with those returning from a time of living and serving in another culture.

Several months before my husband and I were leaving South Africa after two years as missioners, an earlier version of this book came in the mail. It gave us the words and questions that we most needed to hear and answer as we said our goodbyes and returned from the bush to the high powered suburbs of Washington DC. As I worked with many returned missioners in the following years, I found this book continued to be both a revelation —“these feelings are normal”— and a consolation to know that they were experiencing the acute life transition dozens of missioners and volunteers had known before them.

– Maureen Connors, PhD

$7.95 Buy on Amazon

This book is intended to help those at home better understand the experience of re-entry and offers suggestions for helping make this time of transition life-giving for those returning and for their receiving community. It includes information about re-entry, transition, and practical advice for those at home who want to support their loved one. The guide shares insights from decades of experience with those returning from a time of living and serving in another culture.

In my seven years as Executive Director of From Mission to Mission, a frequent question I received from families, religious communities, and parishes about a returning missioner or volunteer was: “How do we welcome them home?” This practical guide helps all concerned avoid inappropriate comments, plan meaningful liturgies or prayer services and promote understanding of the life transition the volunteer or missioner is experiencing.

– Maureen Connors, PhD

Finding Life After Trauma: A Guide for Missioners and Volunteers and Those Who Care for Them
By Michelle A. Scheidt, DMin and Maureen R. Connors, PhD

$27.95 Buy on Amazon

This book offers resources for volunteers and missioners, leaders of mission sending organizations and religious communities, and those at home who want to better support their loved one who has experienced trauma. Including information and learning about trauma, practical suggestions and tip sheets, and emotional and spiritual practices, the guide helps equip those who have experienced trauma with the internal resources they need to heal and thrive. The guide shares insights from decades of experience with those returning from a time of living and serving in another culture.

I have worked with trauma survivors for the past fifteen years. This is a wonderful book for missioners who have so much to process when they return to their first home. Sometimes that includes traumatic events, and this book is a useful guide, while recognizing that some will need additional professional support. It’s also a great resource for the people who love those returning missioners and want to understand and support them.

– Rev. Kenneth W. Schmidt, MA, LPC, NCC, Executive Director, Trauma Recovery Associates, Kalamazoo, MI

Book Cover

At Home in the Journey: Navigating the Transitions of Our Lives

By JoAnn McCaffrey

$19.95 – Buy on Amazon

At Home in the Journey is both a guide and a process that generates meaning and light for people who have had difficult journeys and transitions in life. Just as valuable, this book also brings understanding for those who love the person who struggles and wish to support them in their journey. In this second edition, the author broadens her text to help all people struggling with feelings of isolation and being misunderstood or unappreciated for what they’ve experienced, and she provides practical exercises and well-researched resources.

JoAnn breathes affirmation, truth, understanding and wisdom into the transition process with At Home in the Journey. Years after my mission experience, her work invites me to continue unraveling its endless gifts. She gives words to feelings that resonate, leaves readers feeling seen and heard, and provides tools to use for all of life’s transitions; tools to embrace them, honor them, grow with them and become more whole because of them. This is truly a gift to all of us on this journey of life, one to share with everyone.

– Kelli Nelson, MNM, Executive Director of From Mission to Mission

Short-Term Mission Publications

Understanding Short-Term Mission: A Guide for Leaders and Participants
By Julie Lupien

$27.95 Buy on Amazon

This guide offers support and learning for those who lead short-term mission programs as well as for the participants. Topics include understanding mission, practicalities for leaders, a comprehensive tool kit for reflection and spiritual practice, and a series of essays sharing wisdom from experienced leaders of short-term mission experiences.

This book provides practical guidance on how to prepare for, participate in, and reflect on the experience so that participants integrate short-term mission as part of a lifelong commitment to service. The guide shares insights from decades of experience with those returning from a time of living and serving in another culture.

Many good-hearted women and men have taken part in a variety of short-term mission programs for years, but proper guidance often was lacking. However, finally, this book, Understanding Short-Term Mission, provides an excellent accessible resource for participants and organizers through the stages of preparation, insertion, and return. It includes practical tips, reflection guides, and most importantly in-depth insights into the challenges and opportunities of such experiences.

– Rev. Roger Schroeder, SVD, Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD, Professor of Mission and Culture, Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, Author of What is the Mission the Church? A Guide for Catholics, 2nd ed. (2018)

Remaining Faithful: A Guide for Reflecting on Short-Term Mission Experiences
By Julie Lupien and Michelle A. Scheidt

$11.95 Buy on Amazon

This guide offers a series of exercises for reflection, integration, and prayer following a short-term experience in another culture. As increasing numbers of people participate in short-term mission, this book offers practical tools for integrating the experience as part of a lifelong commitment to service. The exercises can be used by individuals or groups to guide regular, structured reflection for one year following the short-term service experience. The guide shares insights from decades of experience with those returning from a time of living and serving in another culture.

I have been waiting for a resource like this for those who are returning from short-term mission and volunteer programs. They have seen good times and bad and been changed in the process, but they often don’t know what to do with all of this when they come home. Remaining Faithful provides a very usable practical guide—with good input, reflections, exercises, and prayers—to help people reflect upon their experiences and to integrate this into their on-going life journeys.

– Rev. Roger Schroeder, SVD, Louis J. Luzbetak, SVD, Professor of Mission and Culture, Catholic Theological Union at Chicago, Author of What is the Mission the Church? A Guide for Catholics, 2nd ed. (2018)

Close of Service Facilitator Manual and Participant Notebook: Materials for use with close of service retreats
$30.00 – Contact us to order this publication

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHIES
Maureen Rosemary Connors is enjoying her 70s as a gift of time with a ministry as a spiritual director, retreat and workshop facilitator including mission orientations. Head of her own company since 1979, she specializes in transitions and change. After she and her husband, Maury Flood, returned from two years as lay volunteer missioners in apartheid South Africa, she became Executive Director of From Mission to Mission (1995-2002). She has told the story of her own sexual assault while in mission to dozens preparing for and returning from mission. She has an MA and a PhD in educational psychology with a major in counseling from the Catholic University of America. In 2012 she “re-wired” after eight years as Co-Director of Programs at the Franciscan Center in Tampa. She and her husband live in Pinellas Park, Florida.

Julie Lupien has been the Executive Director of From Mission to Mission since 2002. In 2015, she received the first Pope Francis Mission Award from the U.S. Catholic Mission Association, in recognition for years of excellence, vision, and compassion while ministering to missioners returning to the United States after both long-term and short-term mission engagements. As a member of the Volunteer Missionary Movement (VMM) Julie served in Zimbabwe, Africa, and St. Kitts, West Indies. Julie’s short-term mission experience includes Alternative Spring Break in Appalachia when she was a campus minister at Northern Illinois University, participating in the Young Neighbors in Action program in Yakima, Washington, and a parish mission trip to St. Kitts when she served as a Pastoral Team member at Spirit of Peace Catholic Community in Longmont, Colorado.

Michelle A. Scheidt has worked in the nonprofit sector for 25 years and is currently a program officer at the Fetzer Institute, which is dedicated to helping build the spiritual foundation for a loving world. She served as a lay volunteer for two years and later co-directed the Claretian Volunteer and Lay Missionary Program in Chicago and served as a board member for From Mission to Mission. Michelle has extensive intercultural experience in inner city Chicago and in Latin America. She holds a BA in English from Marian University, Indianapolis; an MA in Pastoral Studies from Catholic Theological Union, Chicago; and a Doctorate in Ministry from Chicago Theological Seminary. Michelle and her spouse Barbara Crock live in the woods near Kalamazoo, Michigan.