Genevieve Smith is the firstborn of Craig and Barbara Smith, leaders of the home education movement in New Zealand, and the eldest of eight siblings. Home educated for all her 26 years of life, she devotes her boundless energies to making her father a great man and her family a powerhouse of reformation. Whether she's cooking ethnic food for her family, studying theology, drafting clothes patterns, working on their family's homeschool magazine, discipling the younger girls in her church, smooching her baby sister, or speaking in public, she does it all with hearty zeal, as unto the Lord. Genevieve has written several Bible study booklets and was a contributor to the book, So Much More. (In the following interview, we'll put our questions in bold.)

The Smith Family: Back row l-r: Alanson, Zach, Charmagne; middle row: Dad, Mum, Genevieve; front row: Jeremiah, Jedediah, Kaitlyn.

Genevieve, you have started up a ministry called Issacharian Daughters. Can you tell us about this?

Issacharian Daughters is a newsletter which is under the oversight of my parents, Craig and Barbara Smith. It is emailed out once a week to a large network of young women in New Zealand , Australia, and the USA . The name Issacharian comes from 1 Chronicles 12v32 which says:

“And of the children of Issachar, which were men that had understanding of the times, to know what Israel ought to do; the heads of them were two hundred; and all their brethren were at their commandment.”

My desire is to help young women understand our times so that they will know what they ought to do.

You are very familiar with the needs of girls on both sides of the world. What are the most serious needs that motivated you to start Issacharian Daughters ?

My Dad is from California, so I have had a lot of opportunity to spend time in the USA , though I was born and raised right here in New Zealand . On one trip to the USA (back in 2001) the Lord taught me many things, the end result of which was a new direction and vision in my life. Read my testimony here. Where once I was a Legal Executive with aspirations to be the first woman Prime Minister in New Zealand , I was now at home, helping my father with his ministry to home educators, assisting my mother in the home, working on family relationships, learning homemaking skills, preparing for marriage, and learning to be a Titus 2 woman.

Returning home and becoming part of my family again, after being engaged in full-time employment and travelling overseas, resulted in a large variety of learning experiences, challenges, and questions. My Dad’s ministry couldn’t supply me with an income. Where would I get money? Was this even important? When people ask what I’m doing, what should I tell them? How can I share my vision of daughterhood? How do I respond when people tell me I’m wasting my life? What can I do to put myself under my Dad’s authority? How can I shake off my independence and become part of my family and my family’s schedule? How can I have victory in the areas of patience, kindness, self-control, economy, honour, respect, submission, love, graciousness, forgiveness, etc?

I was so excited about this newfound vision of Biblical daughterhood that I talked to a lot of girls in New Zealand about it. I was invited to speak at a conference in New Zealand to a group of girls. The topics given to me were Virtuous Womanhood and Making Our Parents Successful. They were both subjects that were on my heart.

After a while, I began to meet other girls who had come home or who were raised with a home vision. I also had a part in influencing many girls to come home. As we talked, I realised that they had gone through or were going through many of the same challenges I experienced when I returned home. Some of these girls were taking these learning experiences in their stride. But many were not finding satisfactory answers to their questions and were finding the challenges of returning home very, very difficult. Sometimes I would think, “I found a satisfactory answer to that question!” and I’d want to share it. Or I’d remember an article I’d seen which helped me know how to deal with a particular issue and I’d want to pass it along.

This brings me to your question, “What are the most serious needs which motivated you to start Issacharian Daughters.” The needs which prompted me to start the email newsletter – the needs I felt like I could do something about – were the following:

• First, the need for encouragement. Girls like myself who have come home in the face of pressure from the world to be independent, to do our own thing and to be engaged in full-time work or study need to be encouraged that what we are doing is right and good. It has eternal significance. We aren’t wasting our time. We need to be encouraged to press on.
• Second, the need for vision. It is easy to come home with vision and just as easy for this to fade and be forgotten. Vision needs to be renewed. We need to be continually reminded of why we are here, what we are doing, and where we are going. And it is good to get advice as to how it can be done.
  
• Third, the need for fellowship. This is different than socialization. Socialization is not part of the Christian’s brief, but fellowship certainly is. There are not many people in New Zealand with this vision and not many girls walking this path. In a small way, the Issacharian Daughters newsletter is able to fill the need for fellowship. Girls are able to send introductions in to be sent out with the newsletter. Those who have provided their email addresses have had other young women contact them and have been blessed through being able to email one another. This is what one girl said to me:    

Genevieve,
Yes, I have really enjoyed getting to know "Sarah"! I have been amazed at meeting someone with whom I have so much in common, who actually lives in New Zealand (!), whom I'd never come across before and yet she knows a number of people I know! Quite encouraging too... There are practically no other girls who share my convictions and ideas. And I have sometimes thought, "If there are practically no girls, why would there be any young men who would?!" It always seems impossible that there could ever be a man who would share the convictions and ideals that I would want to have in common with whomever I should marry. Oh, sure, I know the Lord could arrange it, but... (doubts?) Anyway, I was thinking one day about how amazing it was to meet Sarah and find that here was someone who had lots of the same ideas I do (even including the idea of making all her own floor coverings and drapery - crazy as that may seem!). I felt the Lord was just showing me that not only was it possible for the Lord to bring two people together, but HERE was another woman who DID have a lot in common with me! And if the Lord can do that, then surely I can trust Him to have the right man ready at the right time! Maybe He was also showing me that I don't know everyone in the country! It is so easy to think that if there were like-minded folks in New Zealand , I would have heard of them by now! ~ From your friend

It is marvellous to me that, through the fellowship this girl enjoyed with another Issacharian daughter, the Lord encouraged her that it was also possible for Him to bring into her life a likeminded husband if it was His will for her to marry. This was an unexpected blessing to the fellowship that can come from the Issacharian Daughters newsletters.

How did living in New Zealand , away from much like-minded encouragement, affect your decision to start Issacharian Daughters ?

Greatly. Let me explain. While New Zealand in its geology is something akin to a tropical paradise, in other ways it can feel like a barren wasteland. For example, New Zealand is a secular country. I have travelled to the USA three times in the past six years, and each time I sought to make the most of every opportunity to benefit from people, fellowship, vision, encouragement, exhortation, teaching, challenges, older women, ideas, and networking that is unavailable to me in New Zealand . Each time I came home, I did so with my batteries recharged and my vision renewed, ready to continue engaging in the pioneering work here in New Zealand .

Visionary daughterhood is a pioneering work in New Zealand . There are a growing number of us out here forging a path of visionary daughterhood (pioneering away with machete in hand to cut a path for ourselves—and girls to come—with Scripture and our parents as our guide and the occasional example of another girl from the USA or some other far-off port!).

I began to think of the sweet fellowship we could have if we networked together and got to know one another! I knew it could encourage and strengthen us for the work we have in our role as daughters.

Though I have access to fellowship, vision, and encouragement in the USA , many girls here in New Zealand do not, and I wanted to share this with them. Thus was born the Issacharian Daughters newsletter.

Where do you get your material for each issue?

Now this is an exciting question! I just love discovering good books, excellent resources, and inspiring people and sharing their testimonies and those writings and materials with others.

My parents love books. Building on their passion, I have stockpiled about 1,000 books, which I call my “library.” A large number of these are works of theology and Christian living. A large number again are on the subjects of femininity, womanhood, and courtship. I have also acquired a large number of Annuals for girls from the 1800s. These are just fascinating. Today if a girl wants to buy a magazine, the local supermarket might have such options for her as Cosmopolitan or Seventeen – works so defiling one can’t even read the covers. Back in the 1800s, magazines such as The Girls Own Paper and The Family Friend were edifying, moral, Christian works full of stories of charity, words of wisdom, accounts of martyrs, and tales of people bearing witness to the Gospel in their own communities.

I draw often from the books in my library when putting together the Issacharian Daughters newsletters. Sometimes I use my own writings on my experiences, opportunities, and observations regarding coming home. I love to talk to like-minded young women and utilise their testimonies in the newsletters. Sometimes girls will have questions about the content in a newsletter. I put their questions and my answers in future issues. Sometimes girls will submit material themselves which has encouraged them.

What I most enjoy is being able to share the writings of older women. Issacharian Daughters is a wonderful opportunity for older women to offer teaching to a whole network of younger women on topics such as those listed in Titus 2v3-5.  

What are the books/messages/teachings/people that have helped shape your thinking regarding the role of young women, and will influence the direction of Issacharian Daughters?

I was home educated from day one, and most of my education comes from discussing things with Dad. So to answer this question, I have to start with my parents and the things which influenced them! They both became Christians in their early 20s and were discipled by the Navigators. They met through the Navigators and married in their late 20s. I have to mention the Navigators, because of their influence on my parents in disciplining them in Bible study, Bible reading, Scripture memorization and evangelism. When I was little, Dad discovered R J Rushdoony. Rushdoony introduced him to a whole new way of thinking. No longer was Christianity restricted to personal piety, evangelism, and end times. He was excited to read someone who applied Christianity to every area of life, including politics and economics, education and child-rearing. He read and we discussed authors such as Louis Berkhoff, Greg Bahnsen, Gary de Mar, Cornelius van Til, Gary North, and David Noebel.

My testimony (which can be read here) describes some books which really helped my thinking. One that really shook me up was The Way Home by Mary Pride. Until reading this book, I prided myself on understanding feminism and on rejecting such a way of life. Then I read this book and discovered I was a feminist. The most important and life-changing books I have read since then are Spiritual Disciplines for the Christian Life by Donald S Whitney and Bound for Glory and When You Rise Up by R C Sproul Jr. In the area of courtship, Joshua Harris’ I Kissed Dating Goodbye and Boy Meets Girl have been fantastic, along with Pastor Jim West’s The Art of Choosing Your Love and Christian Courtship vs the Dating Game, Emotional Purity by Heather Paulsen and Douglas and Nancy Wilson’s books. On preparing for marriage, More Than a Hopechest by Amber Moeller was excellent. On the subject of modesty, I really appreciate Christian Modesty and the Public Undressing of America by Jeff Pollard. On the role of young women, What’s a Girl to Do? by Doug Phillips, Vision Forum and the website www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com have been very, very helpful. So Much More by yourselves seems to touch on all these subjects and more. I consider that it was a classic from the moment it was published.  

What is your target audience?

Young ladies aged 12 years and older who have embraced a vision of victorious daughterhood as well as those who may be thinking about doing so (and also girls who may just like some encouragement regarding different areas of home life). The Issacharian Daughters newsletter is particularly geared towards young women in New Zealand, but girls from other parts of the globe are more than welcome to sign up for the newsletter too.

Girls younger than 12 years would benefit from much of the content. Mothers are welcome to sign up for the newsletter in order to enable them to analyse each newsletter’s suitability for their daughters.

And what do you hope those girls will get out of your email newsletter?

I hope that the encouragement, Biblical vision, and Christian fellowship will fortify girls for the race set before them. I hope they will be brought into a closer communion with their Father and Creator through the exhortation to practice the spiritual disciplines. I hope they learn ways to help, encourage, support, honour, and respect their fathers and mothers. I hope they are inspired to work hard on their family relationships and to take every opportunity to disciple their younger siblings. I hope they will be energised to engage in home work and to learn homemaking skills. I hope they will get excited about preparing for marriage (even without a suitor on the horizon). I hope they will be spurred on to prepare for being Titus 2 women. I hope they will be encouraged to bear witness to modest, feminine, beautiful womanhood.

And I pray that all these things may come to pass for the greater glory of God and for the furtherance of His Kingdom.

How can someone sign up to receive the Issacharian Daughters newsletters?

Anyone can subscribe for free to receive the Issacharian Daughters newsletters by sending an email to “genevieve AT hef.org.nz” with the words, “Please sign me up for the Issacharian Daughters newsletter.” That is all it takes.

Archived copies of the newsletter can be found here: http://www.hef.org.nz/page/890437

The Issacharian website with information about Issacharian Daughters is www.freewebs.com/issacharian.

Thank you for letting us interview you.

It is always a pleasure to talk with the two of you!

Anna Sofia and Elizabeth Botkin are the only daughters of Geoffrey and Victoria Botkin. They live with their parents and five brothers and enjoy nothing more than having rousing discussions about current events, theology, politics, history, literature, music, and reformation with their family around the dinner table. They are the authors of So Much More, which was published by Vision Forum in 2005 and quickly became their bestselling book. You can visit their website at www.visionarydaughters.com.