A life less comfortable

Shall I try to capture my surroundings in a paper cup? The first sensation would be the heat pressing through the pads of your fingertips while you gingerly hold the burning, not-intended-for-hot-liquids cup. It's so immersive I'm going to mix metaphors - it climbs up onto your lap and demands an overly friendly and burdensome attention like that of a slobbering dog. He pants and grins exuberantly, his furry insistence that you and he are, in fact, bffs!! All things considered, it's WAY too close for comfort and absolutely impossible to miss! The color of the contents of that cup would be shimmering shades of green forest straight out of a technicolor fairy tale. The feathery plums of bamboo shoot up like fountains amidst the shorter shrubbery and taller multitude and variety of trees. The waxy, glossy leaves shine brightly like clustered-jade constellations in the canopy. Heat hits every surface. A soupy scent of vegetation and flowers and rot waft in and out - alte...

We are settling into our borrowed home on the hill. The house we are living in has been around since the first missionaries arrived in the 1940s. The main part of the house is made from really hard wood walls, a cement floor covered in tile and an iron roof covered in overlapping roofing sheets. From the air it is a square-ish shaped dwelling with a patchwork metal roof. It is at the top of the mission station providing the most spectacular views of the jungle and within sight and sound of the waterfalls that fuel the hydroelectric power plant. Our friends and teammates that were living in the house full-time before us had to unexpectedly stay in the United States for vital medical care of a family member. They have generously lent us their home and furnishings and other household goods. This has allowed us to move to the jungle with our suitcases and very little else. We are very thankful. The team has welcomed us and we are so looking forward to settling into a rhythm of routi...

The practical meaning of meekness has always been a bit elusive to me. It is generally defined as quiet, gentle, and easily imposed on; submissive. Some associated synonyms are mild, weak and timid. In the beatitudes (Matthew 5:5 ESV) Jesus states, " Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. " I have never really had a vibrant and full-bodied grip on this concept of being meek. This summer while serving on staff with icc (intercultural communications course at JAARS headquarters in NC) my co-facilitator and friend Inah shared with the staff a devotional on humility and meekness. It has transformed the way I understand and interact with meekness. She introduced us to the word Praus which describes Ancient Greek war horses. In Ancient Greece wild horses were gathered up and trained for battle. When a horse was declared Praus it meant the horse was meeked and could be trusted in battle: " to be meeked was to be taken from a state of wild rebellion and ...

Marseille is the setting of Alexandre Dumas classic book, “The Count of Monte Cristo” more specifically the prison featured in the book is Chateau d’If. It is a prison just off the coast of Marseille much like Alcatraz Island prison located in the San Francisco Bay off the coast of California. The fictitious character Edmond Dantes is falsely accused of treason and sent off to serve out his time without a trial at the grim island fortress.  It is a story with classic elements of love, adventure, justice, revenge, hope, and forgiveness. Steve and I took a short ferry boat out to Chateau d’If last week. It was a spectacularly beautiful day with clear cerulean skies overhead and glass-like blue-green waters below. The Chateau d’If is a small fortress on a rocky island rising out over the sea. Our crowded ferry docked and we began our short climb up to the medieval prison with curved turreted walls; a striking stark white stone structure against the aquamarine sea/sky backdrop. ...

The following is the story of a, perhaps, prophetic t-shirt given to Steve by our daughter Megan several years ago. One Christmas our daughter Megan ordered a t-shirt online for her dad. The shirt had an outline of a little airplane with the words "Give Props" above the said image. It was cute since Steve is a pilot of  small airplanes and around that time we were raising money for a new propeller for our Gabon program's Cessna 207. Fast forward to last Fall 2017 when Steve was contacted by Ron- a pilot who was considering donating his airplane, a Diamond DA20, to MAG.  Ron had been renting a few planes he owned to local flight instructors and was ready to move away from that rental business. Ron had heard of MAG through Damon Whitlow, one of the flight instructors who had rented the Diamond aircraft from Ron. Whitlow was a volunteer for MAG at the time. Steve initially asked Ron to consider another organization to donate the Diamond aircraft as MAG has a small fl...

Abrielle Braxton, my dear friend and teammate crossed over to the other side of eternity on December 6th. I met Abrielle about this time last year at our MAG Christmas party. She and her husband Joel came into town for the festive occasion. They had been poised and ready to launch onto the field to be MAG missionaries in Rus Rus, Honduras nearly three years ago when Abrielle was diagnosed with cancer. Since that time she and her amazing husband Joel had been fighting against the cancer with chemo, radiation and, most recently, a bone marrow transplant. They moved to Burlington, NC last February as they had been given positive results that the cancer was gone and they had been put on a maintenance schedule to have regular check ups. We were thrilled to receive them and have them on staff with us.                                             Abrielle and I work...

Healthy, Resilient, & Effective in Cross-Cultural Ministry by Laura Mae Gardner is the latest book I've been reading, highlighting, and bookmarking. This book calls itself, "a comprehensive member care plan." As I am the Member Care Coordinator for MAG, Missionary Air Group, it makes sense I am carefully engaged within the pages. What is member care? I'm so glad you asked! I will quote the sample job description from Gardner's book, "to prepare, equip, strengthen and empower our staff for effective life and service within our organization... and beyond!" Sometimes I've described member care as the soft skills required for effect international workers. In MAG's case we specialise in aviation that primarily supports medical missions in Guatemala, Honduras and Gabon. The technical skills of the job are obvious, you must know how to fly a plane and maintain it. As an international worker you likely will need to learn another language and cul...