I told the pastors that I was staying. They look concerned. The family looked concerned. Even I was concerned, but I tried to hide it.  “How will we talk to her?,” the family asked the pastor when they found out that I was staying. “She doesn’t speak our language. “
“ I don’t need to talk. I’m just going to pray,” I said..

The hours went quickly, and I noticed, as we pushed off to leave, that my heart decided to stay there. I let myself consider what it would be like to make this my home, to live here and to continue to learn and to teach, and I imagined the what-if’s, had I stayed. 

We gathered the teddy bears in our arms and marched out the door….

“As I stood at the stop, I noticed someone out of the corner of my eye—kicking a stone, then a bottle, in the middle of the road. At first, I assumed he was drunk. But something in the movement felt familiar.

Then I realized…..”

“God”, I prayed. “I’m so lonely. I’ve been told that the Quechua people are shy and don’t make friends easily but I really need a friend right now. I’m going to step outside my door and walk in the direction of the stream, believing that you will give me one friend.”

She was fifth and a liability.  Now she is first.
She is now in a Christian family, with a new name, loved and wanted.

“We all tried so hard.” She told me with disappointment seeping from her eyes. The tears were not meant to come, but they forced their way through her words.

We stood in the grocery aisle, carts full of last-minute gifts and wrapping. Christmas was just a few days away from us.

She finished, “It was supposed to be a good Christmas this year, but…”

I wondered, what if Moses had considered the Red Sea as his sign to surrender to Pharaoh and his armies? How did he discern whether to keep going or turn back? Indeed, if he had listened to the voice of the masses, he would have considered it wiser to stop now…. It was an obvious decision, wasn’t it?

I wonder if I could have supported Moses in that moment or if I would have given him wise counsel to see the signs, know when to stay NO Moses.

Far distant from the slain Goliath of our history, now we battle with scars, old injuries that never healed quite right and achy joints brought on by the passing of time. But time, it doesn’t bring us to peaceful fields to rest does it? Where are the still waters, the green pasture? Indeed it can seem time instead brings us to yet again, another battle with another

“I don’t think I’m going to make it to the village I may need to go back to UB to get our tickets changed due to this emergency.”

To which he faithfully responded, “You have no other option but to go to the village. This is what you’ve been waiting for, praying for.”

The how we were called there, and how we were called home is not the story for today, although it is one I do love to tell.

Today’s story is about the going back.

I’ll never forget the feeling in the lodge when everyone went home, and our director looked over at me to say, “Something big happened here,” with a follow up question of, “What are we going to do now?”

There is no routine, no blueprint really, no specific “guidelines” for and in my missionary-life.

David’s face was etched with hints of the thirty one years on the mission field but he carried it with such grace I marveled at how much he still resembled the youthful photographs I had discovered back in our home office in Illinois tucked away in an old shoebox with a note that simply read—remember.

It’s Friday night, March 8th and I’m tucked away in my small boat cabin, shared with two other ministry partners who are hard at work in the sweltering heat of the Bolivia Amazon Tributaries.

There is one fan blowing down on me, and I am in deep gratitude for the air circulating around me

This fan will only last until 10pm when the boat generator shuts down and all goes silent and still. At that moment I’ll  let out a complaint in the form of a childish groan.

Nothing could have prepared me for

Two Americans one Panamanian, one Caribean and one Bolivian.  I sat at my computer looking at their donations and nicknamed them the Fab Five. 

”When one of your missionary newsletters pops up in my inbox I feel like I’ve been hijacked.” He said it offhandedly and it drove me a little nuts throughout the years…until I opened Stacy’s email and felt the metphoric gun to my chest.

I shouldn’t be this easily disturbed by missionary stories….after all, I once was one.

You’ll discover him in wild, overgrown places in the jungles and dangerous areas of the cities overgrown with refugee camps— He’s there, taking care of feet. The lovely feet of those who bring good news (Romans 10:15) are helping the hurting feet of the people on our globe who are forgotten in many aspects. The problem is David is most of the time, a