What is the Point of Missionaries

I would guess that pleas for money to fund Christian missionaries have been very successful over the last 100 years. My late uncle was a missionary. Some denominations, like Southern Baptists, have cut back funds for missionaries but keep the program alive. Missionaries are usually married men with children. How this affects their families was discussed recently by a woman on a Christian site. 

The wife of the male missionary is required to fit into the society targeted by the faith. If there is a language and cultural barrier, this is not always easy. Perhaps most children make such adjustments more easily than adults, but when the missionary assignment ends, children must reenter a society they are not familiar with, The link author asks believers to help children returning from assignment make new friends and become acquainted with a society that in now foreign to them. 

To an outsider, all of this seems very pointless. Societies around the world have religious views that came out of their cultures. The societies that live on the continent of the Americas had such religions. Then white Christians arrived and forced a foreign religion on them. Slaves came next. This Christianity at the point of a gun is not something to celebrate. 

There are contemporary missionaries that provide help in agricultural production and healthcare. To the extent this is done without pressure to accept a new religion this is laudable. My uncle and his wife ran an orphanage which, apparently, was needed at the time. He, of course, exposed the children to Christianity. That orphanage closed long ago. Perhaps there are people how senior citizen adults who appreciated that orphanage. I hope this is the case. In many places missionary work is resented by the host countries.