We had only been living on this little Indonesian island for a couple of weeks, but I noticed it right away. The prolonged stares, every pair of eyes on me in the parking lot as I tried to back out of a difficult spot, people pointing me out to their friends and yelling “Hello Mister,” giggling girls asking for a picture, even the teenage checker who snickered and said something to his friend when I spoke Indonesian. I found myself wanting to shrink into a hole … wishing that an invisibility cape had been invented for situations like this. Leaving my house became a stressful, draining event. It was a huge contrast from the city we had lived in for the past year while studying the language. Here, there are essentially no westerners apart from our MAF team, and people notice. The fact that my three little kids and I have blonde hair and blue eyes doesn’t help the situation.

A neighbor boy (left) comes to play with Ellie’s three children.

There are times I still struggle with wishing that I had an invisibility cape in my back pocket, but for now I take heart that Jesus is using me to reflect his light to the world.