The woman bounced down the path, her arms pumping strong on her afternoon jog. She looked so fit. So light. So free.
I did my own bouncing as my 2-week-old baby fussed in the Baby Bjorn strapped to my chest. My 4-year-old son was taking his turn in the stroller. My 2-year-old walked beside me, holding […]
The year began with my Christian friend asking me how I was planning to be a “better believer” in 2013. “Are you going to read your Bible more consistently? Are you going to be a better spouse? A better parent…perhaps?”
Much to his dismay, I replied, “Neither…I don’t have any plans.”
After a brief moment of silence, […]
This week marks one year that our family has lived in Papua, serving at the MAF base in Sentani … 365 days, every single one of them spent in this far-flung province of Indonesia.
I look back on the year, and it’s easy to focus on the struggles. The bout of malaria, the terrifying flash flood […]
What makes Christmas…Christmas? Since my first overseas Christmas eight years ago, I’ve wrestled with that question. In the past eight years, we’ve had eight very different but equally wonderful Christmases. There was the year we were in language school in Costa Rica and loved ones came to celebrate with us on the beach. There were […]
Is it hard to envision Christmas in the tropics? It was for me when we first moved to Indonesia in 1998. I didn’t even bring a Christmas tree in our shipment. Maybe I thought we’d just use a banana tree! I learned, though, that Indonesian Christians LOVE to celebrate Christmas as much as we do […]
“Do you have any costumes that we might be able to use for the shepherds?” Isabelle, the head Sunday school teacher, asked me. We had just finished rehearsal on Tuesday evening, five days before my first Christmas as an adult in Africa. We had only arrived about a month before and I was in the […]