“There is no safe place. America is not a safe place,” says Erin Alter, placement counselor for LCMS World Mission.
But the Synod’s mission board takes every precaution to ensure the safety of its missionaries, she adds: “We really take the safety of our missionaries very seriously.”
Ken Reiner, personnel care manager for LCMS World Mission for almost 17 years concurs, and says, “We are very careful as to where we send missionaries and try very hard not to send them to a place where we are tempting the Lord for their safety.”
Reiner, a longtime missionary to Nigeria, today monitors “very carefully” a number of “hot spot” countries on behalf of missionaries, who are evacuated when U.S. State Department advisories — or other factors — warrant such action.
LCMS missionaries were last pulled from the field in 2004, because of armed robberies in Guatemala, and in 2003, during periods of political unrest in Cote d’Ivoire and Venezuela.
Posted Feb. 23, 2006
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