I congratulate you for hearing God's call to cross cultural mission and your willingness to respond. You ask about "life skills." Good question. Here are some suggestions:

1) As part of learning to love, adore, and serve God, is growing in consistency in meeting Him each day. This gives Him the opportunity to communicate with you, to guide you, encourage you, convict you of inadequate behavior, and remind you of His love for you.

I would encourage you to develop the pattern of writing down each day what the Lord gives you as you meditate on Scripture, think through the issues you are having to face, and describing how He is meeting your needs.

2) Peter ends his second letter with the words, "grow in grace and the knowledge of the Lord Jesus." We come to know Jesus better as we review His teaching, seek His face, and allow Him to stretch us.

Each year you might want to take a little retreat and ask yourself, "What have I learned about Jesus this year?" and ask Him to continue teaching you about himself.

3) Seek to live in harmony with all around you. This means learning to forgive offenses and asking to be forgiven. The first will challenge your sense of justice. (What he did to me was totally uncalled for!) The second is humiliating.

I have learned from experience that it is not always possible to work through hostilities with either co-workers or acquaintances. We certainly can't change others. But we can change ourselves.

You may have to ask for help from a neutral (makes sure it's neutral!) third party, such as Paul suggests in Philippians 4:2, when he asks a person whom he calls his "loyal yokefellow" to help two Christian leaders end their conflict (Euodia and Syntyche).

Believe it or not, most missionaries will tell you that their greatest problem was getting along with their fellow workers. Why? Well, missionaries are often opinionated and have strong personalities: who else would leave family and homeland to travel to an unknown place, learning a foreign language with the purpose of convincing people to leave the religion of their family and culture to serve "the one true God"? A tough breed, most missionaries, especially those who stick it out.

4) Learn to trust God for His supply of resources. Read missionary biographies. You'll find most have encountered great difficulties with finances and other provisions. Hudson Taylor was firmly convinced that "God's work, done in God's way, receives God's supply."

However, it is not automatic. It involved a test of faith, faithful prayer, and sometimes cliff-hanging situations. God will undoubtedly take you through some of these experiences before you leave home. You've mentioned the matter of clearing up financial debt. This may be one of the experiences of finding God's promise worthy of trust.

In Psalm 34, David encourages us to praise the Lord "at all times," having come out of a death defying experience. The Psalm is a very instructive review of what God expects of us and what we can trust Him for.

5) Develop a circle of faithful friends and prayer supporters. We have friends who have supported us by prayer and financially for 43 years, some without a single break in their monthly donation. What an incredible blessing!

If you can get a group of people to pray for you, you probably won't have to worry much about financial support. But you will have to do your part. People can't pray intelligently if they don't know what to pray for.

I recently received a call from a godly man who complained that the missionary he had faithfully been supporting hadn't communicated with him for 10 years! This is inexcusable. In this day and age of e-mails, blogs, etc., we can keep people abreast of our situation for virtually no cost, except for the time and energy to sit down and write them.

We try to sent a short up-date monthly or more often, with a photo if possible. For years we had to depend on snail mail, but e-mail makes it so much easier now. Better frequent, short messages, than infrequent longer ones. Include stories. Don't preach sermons!

6) Make sure you have learned and practiced the basic fundamentals of personal ministry:

- How to share the Gospel in a simple, concise, but relatively complete way.

- How to share your own personal testimony in three minutes: what your life was like before you became a Christian, how the Lord met you, the difference He has made in your life.

- How to help a new Christian grow in the faith.

- How to answer the most common questions non-Christians ask where you are planning to serve. (You will need to be in communication with people who work there to develop both the questions and the most adequate answers.)

- What the Church is and why it is important.

7) If you know where you are going to serve, ask the Lord to help you get to know someone from that place. Spend time with them. Ask them questions. Ask them what they think of Americans (as you get to know them better). Ask them to recommend books which will help you understand their culture. Ask them to take you to their favorite ethnic restaurant to sample their food.

Don't defend the U.S. Don't critize their culture to them. Ask them for suggestions in making friends with people of their culture. Ask them what they think of Jesus (as you get to know them better). Ask, listen, and learn.

Well, Amanda, there is a starter.

Don't hesitate to ask questions. Keep in touch with me if you would like to.

Blessings on you.