Temporary Separation from Spouse

[Neto]

Someone mentioned over-the-road trucking in the thread about impediments to congregational membership, and while this wasn't new to me (the Beachy congregation here in Berlin had a policy about that), it got me thinking about guidelines for a time limit of temporary separation from one's spouse.

Does your congregation have a "policy" about this, and if so, and if your congregation is actively involved in ministry work projects, is there an exception for that? For instance, if the general policy for truck drivers is 'one night only' (or whatever) are exceptions made for a disaster service trip, a men's or women's conference, etc? Are there any special allowances for trips out of the country?

Secondly:
What is your own experience, in your marriage?
Have you ever been away from your spouse for more than a few days? If so, was it a hospital stay, or a ministry trip? A family related trip where the whole family was not able to go along?
What do you think the maximum time should be, if the purpose is work-related? Ministry-related? Would your make a difference between these two reasons for being apart?

[Josh]

We used to not tolerate OTR trucking. Eventually, some people just started doing it who were having a hard time finding/keeping a job and it slowly became accepted. It is still not acceptable to an airline pilot due to the fact you would be away from home so much, and nobody has tested that one (yet).

[RZehr]

We have nothing written down. Our company operates semi trucks. A couple drivers are Mennonite, but the rest are not. Nonetheless, we intentionally keep our drivers local. All of the over the road trucks/loads, are hired out to other trucking companies.

We have nothing official that dictates separation time. But I know that it is not ignored, and comments are made that we need dads and preachers to stay local. I frequently travel for a couple nights. At the moment I’m in Tucson at a conference. I schedule my own travel, so I schedule the travel around our church service in order to prioritize that, and I cut the travel as short as possible too. Sometimes I take a child with me.
I’m cutting my Tucson conference short - yesterday because of church, and leaving a day early in order to be home so that my wife make it to a lunch meeting with the other women at church and to take gifts in to a home for senile/demented ladies.

[Neto]

I was away from home for 3 or 4 days at a time on multiple occasions, once as a substitute member of the branch executive committee, but generally to go out to the village to mow the airstrip ahead of a village stay. This was especially necessary after returning from a furlough (home assignment) in the States, because the grass would be too tall on the airstrip to land with a full load. I would tag along on a flight to another tribal area, then the pilot would come back through several days later to pick me up.

Twice I stayed in Brazil while my wife came to the States with one of the children (once for medical care, and once for her aunt's wedding). These two times were for around 4 weeks, and on the occasion when it was for medical care, I flew up with the child who had stayed behind with me a month later, when it became clear that a surgery was necessary.

The longest I was away was at the mission's allowable limit - 6 weeks, for my first trip to the village. We went in by boat, with plans to get enough of the airstrip built that we could fly back out. (There were 6 of us on the crew, the project supervisor & his wife, another married man & myself, and then the pilot had also picked up two teenage boys from another village allocation. The boat trip was 4 days to get there from the closest river town that had an airstrip. Return trip back to that river town, about 15 minutes.) We had managed to get 350 meters clear enough to fly out with around 100 kilos of passengers plus luggage on each short shuttle flight to the river town. I was the first to go out, because at around 55 kilos I was the lightest, so I could watch the luggage until everyone got out. The only communication my wife & I had was over the two-way radio, with everyone in the entire area able to listen in (not just our mission people, but literally everyone who had a radio), and in Portuguese, too. She wasn't able to get up to the radio shack very many times, either, because our first child was just over 1 year old, and we had no car. (The radio shack was about a half a mile away from the house we were renting at that time.) It was also over our 3rd wedding anniversary.

I'm curious to hear more comments from others.

[Judas Maccabeus]

In our forty years of marriage, my wife and I have been apart for no more than a week.....twice. As to over the road trucking our ministry does not encourage it at all. It is not in our guidelines, so it is not a rule, but there are enough local jobs here, no one should need to.

My brother, who used to do testing, once said:

"They always pass the urine test."

I would suspect they are prime hires in transport.

[RZehr]

I do know one man who was into the obscene and was excommunicated. I was assigned to the thankless and unfruitful job of “keeping him accountable”, a job that I wasn’t very comfortable with doing. This man would drive truck and get into trouble, so his wife had to go along with him in the truck. Then when she couldn’t go for some reason, he was back into the adultery. The accountability group disbanded when he refused to take any meaningful steps we recommended that he take. I look back on that, and shake my head at the futility and ignorance of it all.

I’ve also known of yet another who got into trouble with lot lizards.

[Josh]

I do know one man who was into the obscene and was excommunicated. I was assigned to the thankless and unfruitful job of “keeping him accountable”, a job that I wasn’t very comfortable with doing. This man would drive truck and get into trouble, so his wife had to go along with him in the truck. Then when she couldn’t go for some reason, he was back into the adultery. The accountability group disbanded when he refused to take any meaningful steps we recommended that he take.

Concern about seedy activity at truck stops is another reason I have seen for groups that object to careers in OTR trucking.

[Grace]

The longest we were apart was two weeks. Hospital stays and some hunting trips to other states. I was able to visit him, when hubby was in the hospital. I don't mind hunting trips either. His time away gives me the opportunity to do some projects without the interruption of needing to cook and doing very little laundry. The one time I painted two bedrooms, the one being the one we slept in. Hubby gets congested from the chemicals in paint, so it was a good time to do the project when he was gone. I slept in the living room.

[steve-in-kville]

To my knowledge, I never was part of a church that had anything in writing, but there were a bunch of unwritten standards. Ironically, the same group didn't allow OTR driving, but sent men into the mission field who had a wondering eye for the ladies and somehow that was overlooked.

[Judas Maccabeus]

I’ve also known of yet another who got into trouble with lot lizards.

So the conspiracy theories are right! There are lizard people.