After making that decision to become a long-term missionary, the next step is to choose a location. Even if you know the country that you feel called to, there are several questions that you need to explore before deciding on a destination.
When selecting a ministry to work with overseas, rely on recommendations from people that you trust. When you start communicating with this contact, try to determine what their philosophy of ministry is. When I was researching churches in Italy, I considered working with a particular ministry until I discovered that we had incompatible evangelistic methods. This church also had little freedom for diversity in ministry approaches.
Researching as much as you can about possible missions sites is very important. A pastor in Ivory Coast stressed this idea to me. He had seen missionaries come to African villages without doing homework beforehand. There are some villages that are so dangerous that the pastors have been killed, which is the reason why there is not currently a church. Historical, social, and spiritual details such as these are critical to be aware of before making a decision.
Probably the best thing that you can do when deciding what country to go to is take a short-term trip. These trips can expose you to various people groups and different forms of cross-culture ministry. They also give you a picture of what life would be like living there. During your stay in each location attempt to determine if you could plausibly do long-term missions there. I know a married couple who are taking six months to travel to a few different countries to see where they would like to do missions long-term.
It is very risky to whole-heartedly commit to long-term missions without substantial information. As the Bible says, “My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge” (Hosea 4:6). Invest some time in research and short-term trips, and gain all the knowledge you can.
