Well, hello again, and welcome to the Centre for Christian Living podcast.
Great to be with you.
And if you recognise this voice, it's because you've maybe been a long-term listener to the CCL podcast.
It's Tony Payne here, and I'm back this year as the director of CCL, the Centre for Christian Living, and the host of this podcast.
I was around back in 2017 when we kicked off this podcast and was the host for a few years.
And in the meantime, since then, Chase Kuhn has been in the chair and more recently Pete Orr, and we're all very grateful for the work that they did.
And I'm especially grateful to Pete Orr because In the final months of his stint as the stand in host of this podcast,
he recorded a whole bunch of interviews so that I would have a little bit of time to get myself sorted and organised.
There'd be a few interviews and conversations to start the year.
And so in this episode, we still have the lovely lilting Northern Irish accent of Pete Orr having a conversation with
Tania Snowdon, which I'll tell you about in just a moment.
But first, a date for your diaries.
Our first Centre for Christian Living public event, which this year is going to be in a slightly different format.
We're calling it an ethics workshop.
Our first ethics workshop for the year will be on the 7th of May here at Moore College.
It's a Wednesday night at 7:30.
There'll be more details to come.
I'll just tell you at this stage that the topic is going to be “Neurodivergence and the Christian life”.
We'll say more about that in the coming weeks, but put the 7th of May in your diary and plan to
come to our first event here at Moore College for the Centre for Christian Living for 2025.
But to this episode in which Peter Orr talks with Tania Snowdon.
Tania and her husband Mike spent quite a number of years on the mission field in Spain and have been back in Australia now for a few years.
And so Tania is really well-equipped
to share about the whole mission experience; to speak about why you would think about going and the whole decision
about whether to go overseas; the choice of where to go and how that all works; the training that you receive
before you go; what the experience is like when you arrive on the mission field and start to speak the gospel
into a new culture and what that's like; how missionaries can be best supported by those of us
who don't go overseas in mission; and interestingly, what it's like to come home from mission—
the Snowdons have been back in Australia now for a few years, having come back from
the mission field—and what it's like to return to your home culture and re-enter it;
and how those of us who've been here all along can welcome and help missionaries who are returning from their overseas service.
There's a lot that Tania has to share and to help us and encourage us with about the subject of mission and the Christian life.
Here's Pete Orr with Tania Snowdon.
Welcome to Moore College's CCL podcast and today I'm joined by my friend Tania Snowdon who works for CMS and we're going to talk
a little bit about her journey into the mission field and what she does now. But first of all, Tania, welcome to the podcast.
Thank you.
It's good to be here.
Can you just tell us a little bit about yourself, about your family background?
Yeah.
So I'm married to Mike and we have four boys.
They all have red hair, their age spanning from the littlest one just out of kindergarten, our eldest just started high school.
I've got a mom and a brother and a family of believers around the world.
Fantastic.
Can you tell us how you became a Christian?
Yeah.
So I lived with my mom and my dad and my brother growing up and mom and dad would
say that they Christians and they tried to take us to church when I was little.
I hated it.
I remember once I tried to drain the car battery on a Saturday night because I knew if it had no battery, we couldn't go to church on a Sunday.
So I was not keen.
But then they stopped going.
They didn't really like it either.
Fast forward a few years.
When I was at high school in year 12, I went to an all girls high school.
So we heard that there was this thing called the Crusader study camp.
So our parents were very keen.
This is me and my group of friends.
for us to go and study and we were very keen to go and meet some boys from the other high schools.
So in year 12, I went on this crusader study camp and I clearly remember they said pack a Bible, found a Gideon's Bible, threw that in.
We get there every day.
There are these talks from the Bible and the talks are on the minor prophets.
So my Gideon's Bible was useless, but I clearly remember being so struck by
this God who I had thought was maybe real, but I figured I was nice enough.
If he was real, that would all be fine in the end, but I was really struck by the book of Hosea in particular and how.
God is described as this loving husband of a wife who is a prostitute who rejects him and goes after other men.
And I had never understood both that God was so real and present and desperate for a relationship with his people.
And I had never understood that by me ignoring him every day, that was essentially rejecting him.
an adulterous wife.
That camp turned my life upside down and I finally understood what the chapel services at school talking about Jesus were on about.
Um, so I prayed and asked for forgiveness and that was high school for me.
And I spent the first few years of uni a little bit confused, but ended up in a great church and grew from there.
And, uh, you ended up at Moore College, we overlapped at college, how did that journey happen?
Yeah, so I think I studied psychology at university, I spent my uni years, the first few a bit confused but God put
these Christian people in my path and I went to their church, I think they thought I wasn't a Christian but I was.
Part of a Bible study, started reading the Bible for the first time and then got involved in all these Christian camps.
I finished university, did psychology, couldn't really find a job.
So I spent these two years doing part time work, which freed me up to help out at scripture
at school and run crusader camps and do youth ministry, which I didn't know was a thing.
And I was opening the Bible with these 12 year old girls who are really keen.
And I just thought, Oh, what is this life?
And so I think I had just some good people.
Encourage me to think about, could you do this with your whole life?
I didn't have a 10 year plan, but I thought I love this.
And so if people I trust think I could, maybe I'll investigate it.
I did MTS at a church.
And I loved it.
And so after that really knew, yeah, I wanted some more training.
And then I think I knew that I loved ministry, but I didn't really know even what I didn't know and really wanted some more years in the Bible.
So you're okay.
And you come to Moore College and a few years after Moore College, you're getting on a plane to go to Spain.
Just talk about how you got from one to the other.
Yeah, as I said, I did not have a 10 year plan.
So I meet all these young people now who seem to have all these steps and they have
this path and you hear about this pathway into ministry, and that was not me at all.
So I somehow When I became a Christian, I had barely been a Christian for a year and I got invited to lead on this thing called CMS summer school.
And so I went along and we had all these infant age children, but I met all these missionaries and I did it every year for the next 10 years.
And so I think God really.
kept just giving me these little injections about the world is bigger.
The world is bigger.
I also ended up when I did MTS, we took some of the youth from our church up to the Northern Territory to an Indigenous
community and visited some missionaries there, met them, lived with them, realized they were just people who loved Jesus.
normal people living life in a different place.
And so I never had a plan or a great conviction to go at that point, but I think God kept, I guess, lifting the veil a bit to his world.
And then when I was at college, I was in my final year.
I met this first year guy, uh, who was called Mike.
He had a plan.
So his plan was to pursue going because not everyone does that.
So his plan was to pursue going.
And stay, if there was a reason not to.
So when we got married, I felt like God had been saying, well, I've exposed you to this over
so many years, I had said, I'd be willing to go, but I'd never put my money where my mouth was.
So that was a real crucial moment.
And when we got married, we were sitting in summer school as you do, and we heard about these.
Missionaries from Europe, most of them doing student work, and they kept saying how hard it was and how isolating it was.
One guy had been walking around a campus for three months trying to find one person to talk to.
And he didn't find that person.
And so I remember just having that feeling in my gut going, I need to pray for these people.
But also feeling like, ah.
Maybe we need to go and work alongside them.
So that's what started us having chats with CMS and somehow taking those little next steps.
So interesting Europe sparked by that summer school session.
Was there any particular reason that drew you to Spain or was that sort of the place in Europe that you could serve?
That's a good question.
Mike had randomly been in a prayer group for Spain once.
And he also had a UK passport and this was before Brexit.
So we knew his UK passport would get us into Europe and he'd been praying for Spain.
The other factor for us was John and Joanie Lovell.
So I went to college with John Lovell and in fourth year college, they did this big turnaround and we're headed to Spain.
So we, I think knowing ourselves as people and hearing how isolating it was in Europe, our little desire was to go and work.
At least in the vicinity of someone that we knew, not to be our own little bubble, but to support each other, to be there for the long term.
So John was going to do some church planting there.
Our heart was for Spanish youth.
I guess just hearing how Spain as a country, that next generation of young people just didn't really have the chance to hear about Jesus.
There weren't youth groups in churches.
Things like that.
So marrying all those things together and in the CMS process, God worked to end us in Spain.
I guess many of us, when we think of Europe, when we think of Spain or Italy or France,
we think of a place that we go on holiday with beautiful beaches, sun, great food.
What was it like actually living there?
You know, what were your first few years like?
We'll get onto this sort of spiritual dimension, but the actual practicalities of living in Spain.
I mean, we did love it.
So obviously Spain is not a hard place in terms of you have electricity and
you have water, lots of missionaries are sent to places that are hard to live.
We loved our time in Spain.
So we did live in Valencia.
So there was a beach nearby and there was great food.
The day was quite different there.
So you would get up a little bit later than in Australia.
But you would have your main meal at two o'clock in the day.
Then you'd have a little break, then you'd go to a lot later at night.
Like our Bible study would start at nine and then would finish and we'd have dinner after that.
That was a challenge at times, but I think the other quite different thing was, so we left with one baby, had three other boys over there.
They start school really early in Spain, which I loved actually.
So when you're turning three in that year, you start going to school, not pre school.
School, full time school.
So you're learning how to write and read, but that was quite different.
But we actually loved getting to know the school community.
That's a very different thing in Spain as well.
We went to a little local school, so our kids did school in Spanish, and we felt like they were our family.
family, the school.
I'm still in touch with some of the teachers on WhatsApp.
I think in general, the biggest difference was that people had more time for relationships and they had more time for people.
So you'd go out and you'd walk down the street and you'd run into people and you could stop and you can have a chat and it wasn't the heads down.
I've got to go to my next thing.
I've got to get my kids to this.
Soccer game.
And then they've got this practice and life was just a slower
pace.
And the language, how did you go with the language?
Yeah.
It's a great question.
When you first asked what it was like, our first impressions were we arrived and we couldn't say anything.
So that was interesting.
Yeah.
We spent our first year learning Spanish.
I was a tutor in our house and Yeah, I really miss speaking the language, actually.
Yeah, it's not that, well, scratch that, I'm not going to say it, but it's not hard to learn.
It's easy.
Yeah, it's easy.
Anyone could do it.
Of all the languages, it at least has the same alphabet, right?
But yeah, I think when you go somewhere else, it's a real privilege to arrive and not be able to speak because It means you can't do anything.
It means you have to watch, you have to listen first.
You listen and you don't understand, but you can't go and be fully functional and make all the mistakes.
Now, obviously we made a lot of mistakes, but I think the privilege of.
Having at least a year just watching and learning and observing and people don't
expect us to be running a ministry because we couldn't speak with them for a minute.
That was really humbling and difficult because we knew we couldn't get to know people.
They couldn't know us.
But I also think, gosh, what a privilege to be weak and humble, humble in a forced sense, not because I'm so great, but in a forced
way that was growing for me and for Mike in our characters, but also just really helpful before we started then trying to do things.
So how long was it before you could start to actually do ministry?
I do remember after six months, we went to Valencia because we started in Madrid to help run kids club.
I don't know if I'd call that doing ministry because that was really hard and it was in English.
I think, look, people ask how long did it take till we were fluent.
I think that's a bit of a moot point.
I'd say now I can talk to you in Spanish, but I'd still make mistakes.
My preach is first sermon after 10 months.
But he would say preaching a sermon was the easy part.
It was the two minute conversation with someone at morning tea was the hard part.
So it's a bit hard to answer the question.
Well then just speaking more widely, you know, over time as you get more and more able to do more and more ministry, what did that actually look like?
What did ministry look like in Valencia?
So I said before we went with a heart for Spanish youth, but we also had no real job to go to.
Thankfully, the IFES movement over there has.
High school arm.
So the GBU is the big group and they also have what's called GBE.
So that's the high school arm.
Eventually, after we had been there two and a half years, they asked us both to become staff workers full-time because why not?
We didn't both do that.
But Mike became a staff worker for the GBE.
Now, that didn't involve going into high schools 'cause you're not allowed to,
but it involved meeting up with the local Christian high school age students.
Once a fortnight, we ran a bit of a combined youth group because most of the churches don't have youth groups.
And the goal was to encourage the Christian kids in their faith to persevere,
but also to encourage them, you can actually open the Bible with your friends.
at school.
You can start a group, even though we can't come in and do it for you, you can do that.
And so that was the goal of the ministry across Spain.
It's pretty small, not well resourced, but it's a great goal, right?
Like Christian kids, they're the ones who are in the high school.
They're the ones who are with their peers.
What sort of fruit did you see?
What were the joys of the ministry?
I mean, essentially I was involved in that and also did a whole bunch of other stuff.
But in terms of that ministry, we did see some kids start groups.
In the city that we were in, I don't think that really took off.
So it's hard, right?
Lots of the high school students, they're the only Christian in their school.
So if you don't have one other, it's really hard, but there was a national camp once a year, which was such an encouragement to the Christian kids.
And there was a girl on that who we met very early on, and she had just become a Christian, all excited.
And she realized, Oh, I'm the only Christian in my high school.
But if I moved to this other high school, there's another Christian or two there.
She goes home from the camp.
She convinced her parents to let her change high schools and they somehow did.
And so she then went to this new high school.
It was really clear that she was a Christian from the start and she started a group
and they started getting, I think in the end, about 20 kids along reading the Bible.
She's now at university, so she's in the Christian group there persevering, and so we saw a little snippet of that happening across the country.
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Wonderful to see that.
But over your time, there must have been setbacks and challenges and discouragements.
What were some of those?
Yeah.
Look, it's a different place.
So the church that we went to, John Lovell was our minister, so we had a fairly reformed, good preaching every week.
So that was great.
But if you think about the history of that church, when he arrived The minister before him, well, they hadn't had one for five years before him.
He was a missionary sent from, I think, Latin America, who was basically ungodly
and did a lot of bad things before that the guy in place was just really liberal.
And so the guitar is of the devil.
John sat in church one week and heard how it was Easter.
Jesus didn't really rise from the dead, things like that.
So it's got a Catholic heritage.
But people are very suspicious of religion, partly because of the dictator, I think.
There's just lots of baggage there to do with the church.
So in terms of the setbacks, I think the liberal theology was still around.
We did have a guy at our church who was fairly involved, but would post the opposite of the sermon on Facebook the next day.
Just really didn't believe that the Bible was the word of God.
Things like that.
That was hard.
I think Spain is known.
It's hard for missionaries.
So we did see a lot of other people in ministry burn out and leave for different reasons.
That was also really hard.
We saw Christians at university give up their faith and that's a discrepancy everywhere.
But I think It's just the hard ground and it takes a long time to build trust with people.
So watching other people, workers who'd been there for 10 years, 15 years, kind of damaged by that, I believe that was hard.
In terms of Christians that you met in church and other contexts, what did you learn from Spanish
Christians, particularly where you thought, Oh, this is different to what we see in Australia.
I think the main difference.
comes back to a cultural difference.
So the way that people have more time for people, I think that plays itself out in the church.
as well.
So there's just an expectation.
We would often have lunch on Sunday.
Every week after church, you can go out in Spain.
That's another thing I didn't mention really cheap food to go out.
So every Sunday we'd just be like, well, we're going out for lunch.
Come along.
Who wants to come along?
And just like continuing in relationships over food over time.
We had a guy visit our church.
He was really surprised.
He was from America.
You go out for a work lunch, and after 45 minutes you're like, right, okay, like,
I've got to go, and the Spanish person would be like, what are you talking about?
Like, this is not, this doesn't exist.
And they have a word for the conversation you have once you've eaten your food.
You sit at the table.
for another half hour, hour, and you talk.
There's a word for that in the language, because it's so valued, right?
So I think I've learned that from Christian friends there, that trust takes a long time to build.
But I think in Christian community, the way you share life with people, it comes with a lot of time.
That's wonderful.
So it sounds like not necessarily always easy, but some significant ministry, some growing Christian friendships and relationships, important
work that you're both doing, but you came to the point where you decided to come back, and I know that wasn't necessarily an easy decision.
Can you tell us about that decision?
Yeah.
So we, in the start of 2020, we went back to Spain for our third term.
People often say in the mission world, the third term, that's when you can start to do ministry.
So by a term, I mean, three years, we've been there for already six or seven going back.
We were so ready.
We were, we've got the language essentially, we've got relationships.
The GBE ministry, we're a part of that, all these ideas, then COVID hit.
That was one thing, but that didn't bring us back.
We lived that in Spain, which is another whole conversation, but then the next
year, June, 2021, I've got a call from my dad, but diagnosed with terminal cancer.
So we had thought before we left for Spain, you count the cost and you work out what are the factors, what are the obstacles?
What might bring us back if we had to, and we had known, given where my dad was in the family, my
mum's got some health problems, my brother has a disability, my dad was really looking after them.
So if anything happened to any of our parents, That would be a consideration, but him in particular, which in the end was a kindness of God.
We weren't expecting that to happen to him, but it was a very clear diagnosis and it was a very clear person within the family.
So we fairly quickly knew that we'd have to come back.
This was in the time when you couldn't come back to Australia.
So that was complicated in and of itself.
Stuff in Spain had opened up.
We were really excited to be there, but God made it so clear, which I'm so thankful for, that it was time and it was good and right for us too.
And how has it been coming back?
I know often some missionaries can find that even harder than actually going onto the field in the first place.
Yeah.
I would change your sum to.
99 percent of all the people I talk to now and all the research, most people would find that the hardest of the
transitions, partly because you spend a lot of time preparing to go and you invest, especially with CMS, a lot of
time and thought and conversation and years, usually people coming back, it's much quicker turned around and it's not.
Often what you planned for.
So it's been challenging.
The situation with my family is hard.
My dad passed away, but I said earlier that my parents weren't believers by God's grace.
They came to faith 20 years ago, and I have absolutely no doubt that he is with
Jesus, which is such a comfort and that my mom and my brother have a solid faith.
So that's amazing.
It's hard to come back though when our hearts were in Spain and for our kids, that's what they knew.
So we bring them back here, they're in one school for six months, then we have to move them to another part of Sydney, they're in another school.
So it's been difficult, but God's been really kind just in the timing of everything, providing more than what we need.
The Lovells were a very good support to us in Spain and he kindly brought them back to Australia before us.
So it's been difficult.
And church is different and that busyness of people is, you know, a challenge, but God's been good.
So what does life look like now for you?
Well, we've got four kids, so that's a little bit of time.
Also, I go out to see my mum a couple of times a week.
Help out.
So yeah, my dad's been gone for about a year, so we're still navigating through all of that, but the most fun thing I get to do is my job at CMS.
So I work with inquirers in the inquiry space, we call it, which initially sounds a bit weird, right?
It's such a weird word, inquirers.
I'm in the inquiry space, but now I have understood after doing the job for 18 months, it's a great
title because people come to me or to CMS and they're inquiring, is this something I should do?
What do you think?
We are then inquiring of them, like, who are you?
Who's God made you to be?
Altogether, we're inquiring of the fellowship and of God, and it is a real question asking time to discern what the path is.
What are some of the factors that you help people think through in terms of whether they should consider going to the mission field?
Yeah, it's a good question.
One that I'm constantly thinking about, it depends where people are up to.
So the great thing about my job is within the first few months I've met with uni students.
up to retirees.
So everyone's life is different.
So we've just sent someone to France who is retired and that's what she's doing with her retirement.
So I think what we're really on about is who God has made someone to be and how solid their relationship with him is.
I mean, that's first and foremost, what we're keen to see.
So anyone who wants to think about mission.
relationship with Jesus, living that out, living out the truth that you know, like that's fundamental.
Beyond that, there are also some others.
I think having a conviction to go would be the next one that I would count.
Because I think lots of us, we know in our heads, yeah mission is good, the world's important, God wants people to know Jesus.
CMS, a world that knows Jesus, we say the words and sometimes people might think, Oh, well then maybe I should think
about going, but there has to be a heart, it has to be a conviction and a desire that God has placed there to go.
Because if you go, you're going to need that to stay.
I think humility, teachability, lots of the things that you might consider, should I do ministry full time?
It's the same things.
It's just that when you go, you're going to be sent by people, but it's also going to be, in one sense, more isolating.
The higher stress will mean that your sin and your temptation and It's all heightened in your marriage.
How is that going?
How are you going loving your wife or your husband?
How are you going with loving and caring for your kids?
Or if you're single, how much do you desire a relationship?
All those things to consider.
So it's basically character, but the conviction is.
Obviously most of us listening won't end up on the mission field, but.
Can you speak to the importance of supporting those from our churches and friends who've gone and how
much that meant to you when you were on the mission field, the active support of Christians back home?
Yes.
I really can.
Because.
I mean, it's just fundamental.
And I think if I'm honest, I think lots of churches in Sydney, we do well at saying it's important.
And I wonder if those words don't always translate into a real heart of the people in the pews for that person who goes.
So the thing I love about CMS is that we're a fellowship.
So we all Send the missionary.
It's not us as an organization.
It's actually every person.
So at summer school, those 3000 people sending the missionary, we would not have survived without the prayers of people praying for us.
I just know that I went through times where it was hard to pray or, you know, where I just, I know that
Mike and I, we were not fully leaning on the Lord, which is so important, but I know that there was.
Chocolate people back in Australia doing that the way that our kids were loved and supported.
That was just fundamental as well.
When people would send a little reply to our prayer letters, that was really encouraging because you kind of dread writing them.
You know, it's important, but it's so key to just remember that the people who
stay, they're not just staying because it's default, they're actually sending.
So it's an active partnership.
What I loved is when I came back to Australia three years earlier, we had told the story about this girl, Sarah.
Someone at summer school, three years later, came up to me.
I didn't know them.
I said, Oh, now how's Sada?
And that was amazing.
Not just for me, but then when I could go back to Spain and tell Sada, like, so it's not just
you're partnering with the missionary, you're partnering with brothers and sisters there.
So it's a real thing.
Wonderful.
Tania, that's so encouraging.
Uh, thankful to God for how he used you and Mike in Spain, but also back here and really great and encouraging to hear all of that.
So thanks for being on the podcast.
No worries.
Well, thanks for joining us on this episode of the Centre for Christian Living podcast from Moore College.
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Many thanks to Karen Beilharz from the Communications Team here at Moore College for all her work in transcribing and
editing and producing this podcast, to James West for the music, and to you dear listeners, for joining us each week.
Thank you for listening.
I'm Tony Payne.
Bye for now.