There is a lot of new construction in my city, constantly. New buildings and apartment complexes being build every where you look. But you can only see the tops of them due to the ever-present high green walls that line the streets in front of the project. Often these green walls are plastered with scenic banners of the country’s astounding beauty: lakes, mountains, and fields of flowers.
My city is truly beautiful. One of my absolute favorite things about the city are the flowers. The streets are lined by flowers and the parks are always full of flowers, and typically in ornately arranged…
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Zara is a language teacher in my city. Each week she comes to my house for six hours of lessons, dressed in a steady rotation of national dresses and head scarves. Though she has three adult children and several grandchildren, I doubt she’s much older than 55. She was widowed at 35, but had studied English and with three young children, taught herself how to teach. For the last 15 years she has been teaching foreigners—mostly Workers—the language of her country.
For 15 years she has been teaching curriculums that include lessons on the gospel and stories of Jesus. Zara knows…
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I have been praying that the Lord would show me opportunities to speak truth and encouragement to the people in my life, and that I would be open to interruption so that I can fully engage in those conversations.
Two hours ago, as I was finishing dinner with my host family, I was planning: I needed to get started on my blog and newsletter and was thinking how to motivate myself to get them done without falling asleep. (Two and a half hours of eating and chatting each night has a way of making me very ready for bed.)
My gameplan was to do a facemask, put on some comfy pajamas, make some…
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Psalm 27:13 “I remain confident of this: I will see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living.”
When the going gets tough, what do you do? I feel so blessed by the fact that my first four months were marked by joy, fulfillment, encouragement, laughter, hope, and easy friendships and relationships! But what do you do when you start to see into people’s lives, see the intense difficulty and hardship that they face, and you can’t do anything to help? This has been my question in my fifth month here.
Supporting people in grief is hard enough in your own culture, but what do…
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A good and tough month. July has been full of blessings and of reminders that my reliance is fully on Jesus.
For the sake of ending on a high note, I’ll share one of the struggles first. This month I have been profoundly reminded that things are out of my control. There are ways I can be active and engaged but I cannot will situations or people’s hearts to change. One of the few situations this month that has provided this reminder came from the holiday regarding Abraham’s sacrifice, one of two important holidays in the Muslim world. In my language lessons I had read an…
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