The cost of presence is absence. To want to be everywhere at once, is to want to be God. Yet in this nomadic life I often mourn my limitation to one place, one body. I have felt this price keenly since coming back from furlough
Last year, the harvest was good. I suspected that when it was happening, by the sheer number of drumbeat led, moonlight parties in the village. The number of marriages that took place within a short time after harvest, made me smile at people’s good fortune.
The threat of COVID is still here. Lockdown is in full swing. And masks are the new fashion statement. Some form of lockdown has been in place for the last eight weeks in Uganda. Church services have been cancelled including all gatherings with more than
In my feeble attempts to observe Lent this year I read (mostly) a devotional by Walter Brueggemann, A Way Other Than Our Own. It has short daily devotionals and prayers, just enough for a busy mother to be able to swallow each day. In one entry,
These are times we won’t forget. When President Museveni made the announcement last Wednesday that closed all schools for all ages across the country for a month due to COVID-19, I was standing in a grocery store watching it on their televisions for sale. A
“Our life is not willed by God to be an endless anxiety. It is, rather, meant to be an embrace, but that entails being caught by God.” – Walter Brueggemann Grief to grief. Night to night. Trial to temptation to failure to burden. This is
Days pass, the mountain of things untold grows, and yet it’s hard to know what to write! We’ve been back from furlough for nine months. We’ve written about people leaving the field and others joining us. We’ve told you of our trips to visit friends
My own conversion to Advent appreciation came several years before our children. A combination of authors I was reading at the time, that love-to-hate relationship most people, myself included, have with the ever-greater and ever-earlier commercial observances of Christmas, and a new marriage with its
I couldn’t sleep. I kept wondering what I would do if the boda (motorcycle taxi) I had arranged to pick me up before dawn didn’t show up. I woke up sure that my alarm was about to go off, but it was two hours away. Finally, I
The Way We Do
Visiting Georgia
I couldn’t sleep. I kept wondering what I would do if the boda (motorcycle taxi) I had arranged to pick me up before dawn didn’t show…
Village Dichotomy
I told Longole we would be coming home with her after work. She washes clothes for us twice a week. I invited myself, my…
Everything Now
As change continues to be the constant in missionary life, we’ve been rolling with the waves since arriving back in Uganda on May 1.…
On Being a Missionary
On Being a Missionary – Chapter 8
A Palace, or a Mud Hut? We come to what is perhaps one of the discussions that Chloe and I are most apt to…
On Being a Missionary—Chapter 7
Kings, Cooks, Beggars, Saints Our last chapter was a bit theoretical on the inevitability of culture shock and how to overcome it. This chapter…
On Being a Missionary – Chapter 6
Culture Shock It’s the biggest catch-phrase of moving between continents. When Chloe and I first arrived back in San Diego, it was the first…