What are you wearing?

May 13, 2013

I bought this necklace while I was in another West African country and wore it for the first time a week ago. But I was surprised to find out that here it wasn’t seen as a necklace. I had two different people question me about it, thinking that it was something else. This “something else” […]

Dakar

April 24, 2013

These last three weeks I have been in Dakar, Senegal. Here I have been having orientation, having meeting with NTM leadership, perusing important books in the NTM and Wycliffe libraries, spending time with Senegalese believers, buying gifts for my friends in My Country, studying Jula, meeting other missionaries, and getting some time to rest. It […]

Dear Mr. Pole Vaulter

April 5, 2013

When I was in high school I often played the school harp in the hallway after school. People regularly stopped to talk to me. I remember that one day someone stopped to talk to me and asked about if it was difficult to transport a harp. I told him that yes, it was hard. But […]

Making tô

April 5, 2013

(This was supposed to be posted on March 24th, but it didn’t get posted for some reason. So it’s late, but I hope you still enjoy it.) Tô is a staple food here in My Country. It is made with flour and water, so is like ugali (for those of you who know that food […]

No white people

March 24, 2013

This weekend was an anniversary celebration of my denomination here in My Country. It was a big deal, including a church service Sunday morning at a stadium with over 3000 people in attendance! But Saturday was more fun, so let me tell you about that . . . On Saturday morning people from many different […]

Culture Shock

March 24, 2013

(This was written on Sunday, 3/17/13) “Culture shock,” or “culture stress,” can be described as “the anxiety that results from losing all the familiar signs and symbols that help us understand a situation” (definition from CLA Methodology, MTC). And that’s a bit of what I’ve been feeling this week. It’s when you’ve been trying to […]

Numbers

March 1, 2013

Last Wednesday in my Jula language class we worked on learning numbers. Now I could count up to the 1000s if I thought about it really hard and had a really long time. You would think that if you knew the numbers you’d be able to count money easily. But no, it doesn’t seem to […]

Dirt Roads

February 9, 2013

Before I left the US I shared the following statistic many times: In 2004, only 5% of the roads in My Country were paved. That’s the latest I knew and I didn’t know what to expect when I got here. From what I’ve seen around town, it looks like that percentage has gone way up […]

John 13:7

February 5, 2013

Yesterday I was reading in John 13. I came across John 13:7 and thought that it summed things up here quite well. It says, “Jesus replied, ‘You do not realize now what I am doing, but later you will understand.’” Sometimes I feel like everyone I meet here could tell me that multiple times a […]

Same But Different, Part 2

January 31, 2013

Same: The other day we had spaghetti and meat sauce for lunch. It came complete with a spaghetti claw (if that’s what you call the spoon thing you use to get spaghetti out of the pot with). The tomato sauce even had ground beef in it, which is the only time so far that I’ve […]