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I would bet that you know a little about the story of Hosea, that during a time in Israel’s history when they had abandoned God, he asked the prophet Hosea to marry a prostitute. In loving her faithfully, Hosea would allegorically demonstrate God’s relentless love to Israel despite her whoring (yes, the Bible even consistently uses that word) after other things besides the Lord God.  But then Hosea starts to have children, and just as his marriage prophesied to the people of Israel, so did the names of his children - names like No Mercy and Not My People.  God tells Hosea to name one of the children Jezreel, saying “I will punish the house of Jehu for the blood of Jezreel” and “I will break the bow of Israel in the valley of Jezreel.” I wondered about this, so I flipped back to 2 Kings 9-10, where we learn that Jezebel, one of the most wicked women in the Bible, as well as king Joram and king Ahaziah were murdered in revenge by Jehu in Jezreel. It’s one of those stories th

Snowflakes flurried in the beam of his headlamp, which shone like a bright white wedge, a drastic contrast to the dark woods. The fog of his breath also caught the light of his headlamp, and then lifted and vanished into the moonless night. Nothing could be seen outside the distinct boundaries of that beam of light. He tilted his head back and looked into the thick, clouded sky, and the light caught the crystal edges of each glimmering snowflake as they floated and fluttered, taking their time to drift down to earth by the most indirect route.  The night was so quiet that I could almost hear the snowflakes landing, a muffled quietness only undertoned by the crackling of the campfire. I directed my gaze downward and stared at the movement of the flames and the glowing embers, warmed by the closeness. I watched snowflakes blow into the fire and disappear, amazed by how such extremes of cold and heat can get close enough to touch for just an instant, and I was equally amazed that I c

Valentine’s Day 2016 fell on a Sunday, and on this particular one, I went to a village church and met a little boy that would capture my heart and leave a mark on it forever.  He was about twelve years old, skinny, and leaning on a wooden stick. His face was serious. Stoic. When I tried to make him smile, he would not. It almost seemed like his eyes told the story of twenty years of suffering, as if childhood had been stolen from him. And no wonder, for his knee was permanently fixed at a forty-five degree angle, the entire knee joint swollen to the size of a large grapefruit. It was covered in a black, crusty, infected, chronic wound.  He had fallen off his bicycle two years prior, and although his family had done their best to take care of him with doctor visits, bone settings, and dressing changes, all their extra saved money eventually ran out, and this little boy remained unwell and resorted to dropping out of school and spending his days on a wooden crutch.  On Valen

If you are around me enough during my first few weeks back into the United States, you might notice a few things that could be explained as “reverse culture shock”.  You might notice that I always take my shoes off at the door, that I am paralyzed by the amount of choices in the super market, that I crave rice and fresh vegetables, that I’ve already washed all the dishes by hand by the time I even remember about the dishwasher. For a while, I wake up at 4am and want to go to bed by 8pm. I may spend the majority of my time under an electric blanket, even if you think it’s not cold enough (it is to me). I may forget how to pump my own gas or put my credit card in the reader instead of sliding it. I feel weird wearing pants, I drive slow and have the tendency to think that I can drive anywhere, even if it’s not a road. I may speak a little frenglish every now and then or ask you if what I just said was an actual English word. I will want to wash my hands immediately before every meal

Every day, hundreds of refugees are flooding into Greece and countries like it around the Mediterranean Rim, seeking refuge from conflict and crisis. You have probably heard news headlines about the modern day refugee crisis, but I wonder how many people are hearing about what this means in the spiritual realms for the kingdom of God.  For God is so good at taking crisis and creating victory, transforming tribulation into triumph.  Just like what we read in the book of Acts when God used the persecution of the early church to send the gospel across the world, God is similarly using the modern day refugee crisis to get his gospel to unreached places through displaced people.  I sat in the Glyfada church of Christ in Athens, Greece, one Sunday night and worshiped in both English and Farsi with a full room of predominantly middle easterners. It is extremely difficult to get the gospel into places like Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and Iraq, but people are being brought out of

As the tour bus wound its way towards the ancient city of Philippi, our guide talked enthusiastically into his microphone, giving us tons of information about the history, climate, culture, and geography of the area. My mind was already set on Paul, since we had been tracing his second missionary journey as we traveled across Greece over the last few days. The section of Acts 16-19 was becoming more and more real since we visited Mars Hill where Paul gave his famous speech to the athenians, the Jewish synagogue in Berea where the faithful Bereans searched the scriptures, and the upper city of Thessalonica where Jason likely lived and welcomed Paul.  Now, the trip was culminating in a visit to Philippi, and as we approached, the guide casually made a remark about how this area was an epicenter for many earthquakes, one of which just happened the week before. Although his information was strictly geological, I couldn’t help but think about how Paul was released from his prison cell

“Just don’t look down!” was one of the many encouragements shouted down the ladder as those of us already at the top of the water tower cheered on the ones below.  It’s just a simple metal ladder that goes from the ground all the way to the top, by for some reason (mainly the fact that falling might lead to your death), it takes a fair amount of guts and courage to get up there. Especially when you are doing it with a bunch of teenage girls!  But for my last girls’ Bible study with the single nurses and missionary teen daughters, we decided to pack our Bibles and a ridiculous amount of cookies in our backpacks and scale the hospital water tower to watch the sunset and study the last section of Galatians.   When you get to the top, it’s worth it. Remember that. It’s just a life truth. It’s hard work climbing anything - a hill, a mountain, a boulder, a water tower. But when you get to the top, the view is always breathtakingly worth it.  Green savanna, red dirt, blue sky

Africans have a different way of viewing money, and it can be very confusing to those of us who grew up in western thought. I read a book once that discusses these kinds of cultural differences, and I found myself audibly exclaiming “aha” and “oh, that makes so much sense now” after essentially every page.  For example, an American doesn’t want to be the kind of friend who is valued for their money. We think of money as superficial, therefore friendships need to be based on more than that. On the other hand, in Africa where everything is shared in community and there is very little personal privacy, money is no exception. If you have it, you are expected to share it, and it is not a private personal matter. Following the same thought, every true African friendship includes the sharing of money.  So If an African friend asks you for money, especially if you know the person and have established a relationship with them, it is actually a way of honoring you and complimenting the

“So what are you doing after this?” She innocently asked.  I found myself in a familiar place, one that I’m starting to get more used to. “I don’t really know,” I replied.  I explained how I had planned to go to Burkina Faso for a week before going to the United States for my annual furlough. I gave her a quick briefing on how the security situation in Burkina Faso, especially towards foreigners and Christians, has deteriorated over the past few years. Some more recent events and attacks have occurred in the area that I would be traveling through, which put a pretty abrupt end to my plans for a visit. I tried to find another road, but rainy season makes for bad roads, and not having a private vehicle makes for dependence on undependable public transport or taxis, which lead to crazy high costs and difficult logistics since taxis can’t cross borders and I needed to travel across three countries. Long story short, I did everything I could to make this trip to Burkina Faso happen

I rolled my eyes a little bit when I heard we were going to have a tour guide take us along a hike in the woods. Don’t get me wrong, I love hiking; it’s the tour guide part that I’m not particularly fond of. My knowledge of the woods and experience with hiking make me think I don’t need a guide. I’d rather go at my own pace, look at the things I want to look at, linger where I want to linger, and not be seen with a tourist group while I’m at it. It sounds pretty fiercely independent and arrogant, because it is.  As our African tour guide headed down the trail at the front, I took the tail end of the pack, moseying along and keeping a small distance between me and the others. The trail was breathtakingly beautiful and lusciously green. What a contrast compared to the dry northern region where I live! Instead of looking around, I found myself looking up towards the tops of the trees in this coastal forest. My head tilted back to soak in the beauty, which actually seemed to grow dens

If you look at west Africa on google earth, you will see a very distinct natural line that runs east-west and separates the land into two regions - the barren, dusty Sahara desert and the lush tropical coastal region. Everything north of this line is brown, everything south is green, and it’s so distinct that you can see it from space. And if you are driving in Togo, you can cross over it in a distance of about twenty kilometers. This past week, we did just that.  We live in the northern region of Togo, also known as (in google earth terms)...the brown part. It’s flat, it’s hot, it’s dry. For me and four other nurses, we haven’t left this region in about seven months. We needed a change of scenery and a little R&R, so we loaded up and headed south.  We oohed and aahed at the hills rising in the distance, and as the truck winded up through them and then passed over to the other side, we started singing “A Whole New World.” We had just crossed over the brown-to-green geograp

There are some days of living in west Africa that I just want to remember. Not because anything extraordinary happened, but rather because what ordinarily happens is just so unordinary. Sometimes I can’t believe what happens in a “regular” day. And it’s funny: I used to think the western world I grew up in was the norm and that Africa was the exception because of poverty. In reality, it’s exactly the opposite. In most things - wealth, social structure, access to jobs and health care, literacy, even the size of your house and the amount of clothes you own - the United States is the exception; the majority world is the norm.  Today was one of those days - just a totally “normal” day - but I write about it because it doesn’t just represent a day, it represents an entire lifetime.  It was a pretty crazy day, but I’ve gotten somewhat used to crazy being the new normal. Our four bed labor and delivery unit was constantly full. As soon as one bed opened, another person came and fille