LU Shepherd for MK Scholars Strives to Make LU Home for Missionary Kids after 40 Years Away From Her Homeland

A gardener planted purple petunias as a young girl ran out to the yard, scooping  up a handful of Persian dirt and placing it in her pocket. She scuffed her shoes in the dirt, not knowing those scuffs would be some of her final steps on Persian soil. The child’s mother held her with tear filled eyes as they escaped from the revolution that was devastating the country of Iran, their home.

This was not the goodbye Nastaran “Nastinka” Morgan could have ever foreseen.

“For all these years, I’ve been living homesick,” Nastinka explained. “For 40 years those shoes scuffed in Persian soil have sat in a box as a memory of where my heart truly lies.” 

Nastinka experienced a nomadic childhood as her father, an Iranian general, planned a coup to combat the countrywide revolution. No matter how many countries Nastinka lived in, none could ease the longing for her homeland.

Week after week, month after month, and year after year, Nastinka waited to return home – 42 long years passed while her country was dismembered.

Years later, Nastinka now oversees the scholarship process that brings Missionary Kids (MK’s) and Third Culture Kids (TCK’s) from all across the world to Liberty’s doorstep. Nastinka can relate deeply to these student’s homesickness – the feeling that a part of them is always somewhere else; and her experience provides her with a profound empathy towards the students involved in the program. 

“It makes sense to me that our sovereign God has allowed the experiences of my life to now lead me to a moment where I can take 200 children and hug them, believe them, trust them, pray for them, and know the sorrows they face,” Nastinka said.

MK’s lead different lives than most students. Nastinka said that the shock of arriving at a place like Liberty University, and even the United States for that matter, can be dismantling. Oftentimes, MK’s are unsure of how to truly plant roots and make Liberty, a place often so starkly different from the cultures they are arriving from, a real home. 

“These students are coming off of the spiritual battlefield,” Nastinka said. “My hope for them is that they will unpack their bag, both physically and emotionally.”

Nastinka plays a distinctly crucial role in the lives of MK students by working to make Liberty University a meaningful home for those whose true homeland lies an ocean away. She encourages her students to not simply partake in the American ideal of a “melting pot,” as she described, but to lean into their story and what makes them particularly different. 

“I respect and revere diversity,” Nastinka explained. “Diversity is the real beauty; I hope to inspire this ideology first in the hearts of my MK students and then in the hearts of the student body as a whole.”

Because they each come from such vastly different countries and cultures, TCK’s and MK’s often do not have much in common. But that is where they have found their commonality and camaraderie, relating to one another through their differences and bringing new cultures into the conversation at Liberty.

“We believe they should be here because they are the catalyst,” Nastinka said. “They truly make all of us stronger by bringing perspective to Liberty and causing us to think more globally.”     

Jessi Green is a Feature Reporter. Follow her on Twitter at @jessigreen0.