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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....

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 ...

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 ...

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 c...

“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,...

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 complimen...

“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 Fa...