Marriage, Motherhood, and Ministry on the Mission Field: Reflecting on Twenty-Five Years in Croatia
After 25 years serving alongside her husband Kris in Croatia, missionary wife Nina Brackett sits down with Shelbi Cullen to reflect on her life of ministry. As a missionary wife, Nina offers honest, hard-won wisdom for missionary wives and couples preparing to go—or preparing to come home.
*This is a transcript of an interview and has been edited for clarity.
10 min read
Introduction
Shelbi: Why don’t you tell us a little bit about your ministry in Croatia.
Nina: Sure. Kris’s main job is to teach at the school. He’s also a pastor of our church plant. And my main responsibility has always been the women’s ministry. We have two groups in the ministry, and my group has women whose ages range from 17 to just a couple years younger than me—so like 48 or something like that. So it’s a large range of different ages, different experiences.
For the most part, all these women are first generation believers. That’s something we take for granted, I think, in America—especially people who grew up in a church. Like, I have had to talk to our girls about modesty because that is so unheard of—to even consider modesty. It’s a foreign word. And no one had ever observed Christian parenting or Christian marriage. I mean, all of that is foreign to them. So is even keeping a home.
When my kids were little, I couldn’t do a lot of ministry. But I would invite the girls and we would cook together. I taught them how to make orange chicken one time and then Mexican food at other times. I had to feed my family, and that’s what I could do, so we tried to incorporate things like that.
And another thing we do is hospitality. Being on the mission field, I’ve had to learn to improvise and learn to cook. So I cook a lot for people. We usually have students over once or twice a week for a meal, and we have a Sunday meal for people in the church.
Shelbi: That’s good. I love your discipleship emphasis. I know you said that you couldn’t do quite as much ministry, but all those things you described were all ministry—the practicing of hospitality is just such a great way to get to know people. And I think that’s a great blessing that you’re able to support Kris in that way.
Before Going Out
Shelbi: Before you guys went to the field, did you face any challenges during support raising?
Nina: The Lord was so good to provide. When we got married, we already knew that we wanted to be missionaries. So from the beginning, Kris was always at Shepherds Conference looking out for pastors in Georgia. He would introduce himself and say, “Hey. I’m planning to be a missionary, can I contact you when it’s time for me to go?” So he had a list of pastors to contact near where his parents lived, and we concentrated on California and Georgia for our support. When he graduated, we just called them up and were able to visit and share the vision and get connected. So yeah, the challenge for us was not so much raising support. God was so good.
Shelbi: That’s good. I love how you guys planned so well and were so proactive. I mean, that’s what great planning is. What else that you ran into would be important for missionary candidates to be aware of before leaving for the field?
Nina: I remember a missionary telling me that when we go to the field, my husband is going to do probably the same thing—he’s going to study the Word in the same way and pretty much do everything else the same way. But I am not going to shop the same, raise the kids the same, etc. So that really prepared me mentally. And what was available was not the same, especially when we first moved to Croatia—it was two years after the war. I think it took us three trips to find a toilet brush and things like that—the kind of things you take for granted. Meat was not always available. So her telling me that helped me prepare mentally.
So I would say be flexible. That’s kind of a mantra for missionaries: Be flexible and embrace the challenge and the test. Think positively—that this is not a burden. It’s a good challenge. Like, I had to improvise and make a meal out of what I had available in front of me. And it was an opportunity to rise up and be creative. I wouldn’t have learned most of what I know about cooking if we had stayed in America!
When You First Arrive
Shelbi: Once you guys arrived in Croatia, what were some of your hardest challenges?
Nina: Honestly, the biggest challenge for me was the cold weather. I was in the Philippines and then moved to California. And when we came here, it was the worst winter in about 30 years. And that first winter, I was pregnant and had a miscarriage. So it was just one thing after another.
But when Kris and I left, we were committed to this. We had agreed to be there for four years without coming back, so there was no way out. And I think that helped me mentally. Challenges like the weather and the new language were hard, but we were committed to being there. We treated it like any momentary challenge—it’s just a season.
Shelbi: I love that resolve to be committed. How about the challenges of just being a missionary wife in the context of raising children? How was their schooling situation?
Nina: My girls went to public school in the beginning. Homeschooling does not exist in Croatia, so we thought that if we immediately homeschooled, we would just ruin our testimony. Even our church does not understand why we would homeschool. And we wanted them to learn the language and feel at home there. Gracie went all the way to eighth grade, Gabby to sixth grade, and Katie to third grade. And then we had to return to America for a long period of time to help parents with their health issues. Otherwise, we would have liked for them to go until eighth grade. We knew we would do homeschool in high school because it was common for the students to drink, smoke, and slept around. So we thought we weren’t going to send our kids—we didn’t even know if they were believers—into that world.
Regarding raising our kids in the ministry, we regularly did youth camps for the kids. And we did these because it was an opportunity for them to own their ministry. So like in English camp, from eight or nine years old, they were working with translators for the team. They also got to serve with music on the worship team. We did this from the beginning because we wanted them to get involved with church stuff not because we made them but because they wanted to. And they invited kids at their school, putting fliers all over. So it was really their ministry. They loved doing it, especially afterward when they became believers. That was big. I think it’s helpful as missionary parents to really get your kids in love with ministry.
Challenges During the Ministry Years
Shelbi: Where do you go to in the Word when you begin to grow weary in doing good?
Nina: The Psalms are always a good place. There is also a list of sermons that I have listened through so many times. And those are like my motivation. One of the sermons is on why it’s all worth it. And he’s talking about ministry. And I really love it; I’ve listened to it I don’t know how many times. It’s about God rewarding us in heaven. Christ promised, “I will return to you tenfold what you do for Me.” You know, it’s not wrong to think about rewards. Obviously, that’s not your only reason to do anything, but it is a motivation to keep going because it’s worth it, and the Lord is worth it. So these sermons have been very encouraging to me throughout the years.
Shelbi: Have you ever experienced any challenges as a missionary wife when you’ve had short-term ministry teams come over? Is that a burden to you at all?
Nina: No. In fact for me, especially in the beginning, I could not wait for the teams to come because I can speak English to them. So I would count the days when the Americans would come. And when my kids started getting older, they also loved to connect their American friends with their Croatian world and Croatian friends.
But it is a lot of work and a lot of commitments—especially because our church is so small and we have previously gotten a team of like 40 people from Ireland or 25 people from Georgia. We would have like eight kids and just make room for them wherever there was floor space. So it isn’t the easiest thing, but it’s so much fun for our family.
Leaving the Mission Field
Shelbi: So you’re getting ready to leave the mission field. Can you talk a little about that experience?
Nina: Yeah. When we left for the field, we knew our job was to replace ourselves. But when we got here, we realized that things are really slow here, and there’s no one to do your job. Eventually, you become a fixture that they expect to always be there doing the work. People don’t want to step up because they would feel like they were taking the job away from us. So we almost have to leave for the Croatians to take over.
We have prayed about this for three years. But I think the Lord now made it clear because my parents started aging and started to need more help. And I’m the only one who will take care of my parents. We weren’t sure about leaving, then my parents started having physical health issues, and that kind of confirmed it. Plus our daughter is fighting through loneliness because there aren’t many teenagers here she can relate to. So those things helped us decide that it’s time to go.
And the Lord provided a man—a former graduate of our school—to do the administration part of Kris’s job. We see more and more of the men stepping up and taking leadership, for which we are thankful.
Shelbi: Is there anything regarding marriage challenges that you think would be helpful to another young couple heading to the field to know?
Nina: One thing that was really helpful for me was that Kris never once pressured me to do anything. He never told me, “You have to teach Sunday School,” or “You’ve got to do this or that.” From the beginning, Kris always protected me, especially when the kids were little. So even though there was pressure from the church for me to do something, he waited for me. I love that Kris never pushed me but really shepherded me through all of it. I think that’s important—that you’re always a team, that he has my back and I have his back.
And Kris also forced me to communicate. And that was good. It’s good to talk things out and pray together.
Nina Brackett is married to Kris; together they served as missionaries to Krapina, Croatia for 25 years (1998–2023) and they have three daughters. During their time in Croatia, they served in Emanuel Baptist Church, where Kris served as an elder and taught in the Theological Bible Academy. In this conversation, Nina reflects on more than two decades of ministry as a missionary wife right before leaving the field.
Shelbi Cullen is married to Sean, and they have raised four grown children together. She is an assistant professor of Biblical Counseling and Women’s Ministries at The Master’s University and serves at Grace Community Church in Sun Valley, CA, in Women’s Ministries and the Biblical Counseling Ministry.