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He could have chosen to come another way. He could have come in a powerful storm or with a flash of bright light. He could have appeared as a fully grown powerful man and instantly gained the respect of a vast following. As my French devotional book said on Christmas morning, " He could have appeared suddenly like a glorious man with all the marks of honor."  But he didn't.  He came like a tiny, innocent baby. He came with a sweet cry in the middle of an otherwise silent night. He was held by the hands that he created. Nobody would have even known it happened had it not been for the angels, who of course didn't announce it to the whole world but rather to a regular collection of ordinary shepherds.  "You will find a sign," the angelic host announced, but it wasn't the star. It wasn't a bright light shining over a stable in Bethlehem. The sign was this: "You will find a baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger."  This seemingly ordinary,...

It was 6:10 am, 30 degrees, and my breath looked like smoke in the beam of my headlamp. My two brave (or crazy) friends and I began our ascent of Pinnacle Mountain for a sunrise climb.  It's fun to be up so early in the morning and not have to be quiet, so we laughed and talked all the way to the top, catching up on a year's worth of life adventures. One studied biomedical sciences in London this past year and came home with a masters degree. Another got married and moved into her first home. I had a few stories to share as well from my first year in Africa.  We got to the top of the mountain just in time to watch the whole sunrise unfold - you know, not just the moment the sun peaks over the horizon, but rather the fifteen minutes both before and after when the clouds take shape  as the light from the sun moves and colors them.  We sat in a little bit of silence for a while. Not uncomfortable silence, just natural wonder-filled silence as we watched God paint the sk...

"What time are we leaving in the morning?" I asked Dad, even though I already knew the answer.  "4:00 AM of course!" he replied enthusiastically. "What Roussel vacation would start any later than that?!" He threw the freeze dried Mountain House meals and extra Starbucks Christmas Blend instant coffee packets into a plastic tub, which was lined up next to all our dry bags, packed and ready for the river. All you need to be happy can fit in a canoe, I do believe.  So our annual Buffalo River float trip began that next morning at 4:00 AM, and I started it off just like I do every year - sleeping in the car all the way there.  My dad and Mike did wake me up once to see a gorgeous sunrise that lit up the whole sky in a fiery red. "Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning!" Mike jokingly added, because we already knew that the forecast for that night and the day after was 100% chance of not just rain, but thunderstorms.  That's why we got on th...

"Come and see what God has done, how awesome his works on man's behalf! Come and listen, all you who fear God; let me tell you what he has done for me."  I wrote that verse from Psalm 66 at the very top of the dry erase board as a reminder to everyone, including myself, of the reason we were all there.  I noticed the exclamation mark in that Scripture right away. People put exclamation marks everywhere these days. If you put periods instead of exclamation marks in your text messages, you sound rude. Everything has to be high energy and excitement all the time. But the Bible is not that way. In fact,  exclamation marks in the Bible are not that common, so whenever I see one, it makes me think it's there for a reason.  "Come and see what God has done, how awesome his works on man's behalf!" I decided that I wanted to make this whole evening about just that. With an exclamation mark at the end!  I named the event "come and see" based off this vers...

It all began over Thanksgiving weekend, when my uncle was sitting in our dining room and saw a rat cross the neighbor's porch across the street. "It was this long!" he emphasized as he spread his two index fingers apart to demonstrate that this was no little house mouse. It was  a rat.  Not too long after that, I had a strange encounter involving an empty toothpaste tube that I threw away in the trash can in my bathroom. The next morning when I pulled back the shower curtain to hop in the shower, there it was. My empty toothpaste tube in the bottom of the shower.  "Kaysi, did you put my toothpaste in the shower?" She gave me a strange look and a blunt "no", as if to say "why in the world would you even ask me that?" But to me, it was a legitimate question.  "That's just like a rat," my dad said, "to dig toothpaste out of the trash and drag it off somewhere." In my mind I am thinking about just how big a rat would have ...

I was sitting on the living room floor watching You've Got Mail when I was suddenly inspired. I saw Meg Ryan's short, bouncy blond hair, and I said to myself, it's time.  I was also inspired on thanksgiving day because of that dog show that comes on after the Macy's day parade. Just a few days before thanksgiving, I was out and about with my mom when I saw my hair in the reflection of the car windows. Some days, curly hair just does weird things. On this day, my kinks were falling over my shoulders in just the right way that I immediately thought about those things you see on the Internet of people who look like their dogs. "I'm look just like a cocker spaniel!" I said to my mom, and she laughed so hard that she couldn't even say, "Of course not, you look fine, honey." Because that wasn't what she was thinking anyway. I really did look like a cocker spaniel, and we both ended up laughed so hard that we couldn't get a hold of ourselves...

"Dad, did you get new glasses?" I asked. He paused to think for just a moment before replying, "Yeah, I guess they are new to you!" The newness for him has worn off by now, but a lot has changed in a year, and I am just now noticing it all for the first time.  Take the new sink knobs in the kitchen for example. You don't have to turn the left one ten degrees backwards anymore to get the water to stop dripping.  There's a new Tropical Smoothie Cafe right outside our neighborhood and they finally finished that interstate exchange where there has been construction for what seemed like twenty years.  There are all new songs on the radio and new movies and shows that people are talking about.  The other day at the checkout in the grocery store, my mom stuck her credit card in this device, and it kept her card and wouldn't let go until the transaction finished . "What is that?" I exclaimed, and she explained that the new chip technology helps prevent...

"This world is not my home, I'm just a passin' through..."  I hum the simple song in my head and think it's a little too upbeat for the moment.  I've never been more homesick in my whole life for a home I haven't even been to yet. Coming home to America after a year in Africa makes me feel a little bit like I just don't belong here. Or there really. It's like my heart was made for somewhere that I just haven't found yet.  Don't get me wrong: I love being in America and I love being in Africa. I'm really happy in both places, but I can't help but feel like neither one if them is where I ultimately belong. Like where I want to stay forever.  I watch the news flashes about events in Paris. I see images of Syrian refugees and hear the heated debates of angry people who won't look others in the eye, who are so stuck in their own fear that they can't even look past it to actually see what matters. I think about the people I know a...

Little white bunches of baby's breath flowers line the aisles and pink rose petals sprinkle the floor. The light streaming through the windows illuminates the colors and makes everything look absolutely glorious, like each item in the room is  waiting in breathless anticipation to witness the covenant that is about to take place. All the girls spend all morning getting ready to look their best for the occasion, and even the boys dress up all dapper and proper. But nothing compares to the beauty of the bride.  I have never seen her look more beautiful in her entire life.  My best friend, the bride. She is always beautiful, but there was just something spectacular about her today, and it wasn't just the perfectly fitting white dress, the delicate lace, the way the veil fell over her shoulders. It was the sparkle in her eye of delight and desire. She loves her groom, and that's what makes her beautiful.  And what's more amazing is this: Christ calls us his bride.  ...

I couldn't believe how little time it took. It was Monday morning, and I woke up before my alarm, so I got up and got to work. I had luggage to unpack and stuff to find a place for. I had a financial report to fill out and send. I had that list of emails that were still sitting in my inbox because I said, "Oh, I'll take care of that when I get back to the States." I was busy, busy, busy all day long - talking on the phone, communicating about times and places to visit, and organizing all the things I need to do during furlough.  At the end of the day, I had gotten a lot accomplished. I guess. But I felt terrible. I hadn't left the house, I had hardly talked to anyone face to face, and it was only Monday. I have only been in the US one day, and I am already back into old habits . That's how life in America is for me - fast-paced, always busy, always having to do something. That's not how life in Africa is. Africa has taught me to slow down, that time is irr...

After being a white girl in Africa for the past ten months, I really just wanted to blend in for a change, but even that was proving to be harder than I thought. I was in a train station in Europe on my way to visit a friend and find some rest in Germany before continuing on to my final destination in the USA. This whole train travel thing was new and exciting to me until I realized that traveling with two checked bags and two carry-ons is easy for a plane. Not so much for a train.  After managing to get all my luggage on board while looking like a ridiculous tourist, I sat down in my assigned seat. The lady next to me just stared. After an awkward pause, she said, "Long trip?" "Yes," was all I could breathlessly mutter, already feeling like the stand-out person that I didn't want to be. She kept staring. "Do you have any warmer clothes?" I looked down at my light weight jacket and capri pants with chill bumps on my legs. Everyone else was in their win...

I wish you had just been there. I am tempted to just write down every detail of the last three days that I spent with our national team on a team retreat, but I know it wouldn't really be that exciting for you. Because you just had to be there to understand just how wonderful it was.  I wish you had been there when we went to the waterfalls of Banfora and the Africans oohed and aahed at the beauty of God's creation in their own country that they had never seen before.  I wish you had been there as  we walked down the path to the falls and sang songs of God's majesty and marvelousness. We were kind of like a marching praise band. I wish you had been there to see them play the human knot  game...you know when you stand in a tight circle and grab each other hands and then have to untangle the knot you've made without letting go of your hands. I think it took them somewhere around an hour and a half to undo it, but we assured them it was possible, and they did it with mu...

"Come here," Geoffrey said gently. "Stand right here and close your eyes." Gertrude followed him to the spot and closed her eyes, waiting for her surprise. Gertrude is a neighbor of ours that lives just down the street. We met her through kids' club because some of the children that live around her come each week. When she fell severely ill one night, she came tapping on our door to ask for help. We payed for the medicine tha she needed - just some simple antibiotics, antiparasitics, and antidiarrheals, but I think it might have saved her life. After that experience, Gertrude insisted that she wanted to come to church with us, so we took her with us the next week to a village church in Zinkone several kilometers away. She loved it so much that she told us she was going to go back each week, even if it meant pedaling her bike there and back - a long journey in both directions that would take several hours, especially for a woman as small and frail as she is.  She...

I took my two warm crepes and prepared them just right. One with a thin spread of Nutella. One with lime and sugar. It's gonna be a great day, I said to myself and smiled. When the interns were here this summer, they joked with me because of how much I loved eating crepes. Whenever there were crepes for breakfast, I would light up and say, "It's gonna be a great day!" The phrase stuck, I guess, because I still uttered it to myself this morning when I sat down with my lovely, perfectly rolled-up crepes.  What made my breakfast even better was that I ate my crepes over an open Bible and received great and applicable encouragement from Colossians 1:11 in the Message.  "We pray that you'll have the strength to stick it out over the long haul - not the grim strength of gritting your teeth but the glory-strength God gives. It is a strength that endures the unendurable and spills over into joy."  As my time left for this first term in Burkina i...