God creates unity

March 1, 2021

When Ely and I were dating long distance, one way we decided to make Christmas special was to open advent calendars each day over the phone. I found a cheap chocolate one, and she came up empty at a couple of stores. I promised that I’d get her an advent calendar some other time, and […]

How many Bibles do you have?

October 1, 2020

The Bible is the worlds all-time best selling book, with billions of copies in print. It’s a hard statistic to track, since there are so many versions, languages, and publishers, but one statistic that I found estimated around 5 billion have been printed. Since the world population is 7.5 billion, and I can count 8 […]

Supporting a missionary explainer video

July 21, 2020

I made a little video to remind people that when you write a check, it should be made out to Ethnos360 with a note saying who its for. Check it out on Youtube:

The right to pursue happiness

June 1, 2020

Our last class before I graduated from the training center was called Suffering. The purpose of the class was not to make us suffer (other classes fill that requirement) or even to mentally prepare us for suffering since “No matter how much we are mentally prepared, the cold water will always take our breath away.” […]

Phonetics

February 15, 2020

We’ve almost completed the first phonetics class where we learn to distinguish and repeat various sounds that may occur in a language. In general, we start with the most familiar sounds in a group that we use in English and add the sounds that either don’t exist in English or exist but we don’t think […]

Mail delivery

July 7, 2018

There’s a letter for me! An unknown student of a Christian school in the United States reminded me of how encouraging a little bit of communication can be. Speaking of which, it has been one of my goals to send postcards to my supporters. I’ve picked out a handful that don’t seem completely tourist-y, and […]

Running out of trumpets

February 26, 2018

Packing a trumpet to Brazil was a little tricky. There wasn’t any room to put it in checked luggage, and who wants to trust various airlines with checking something as delicate as a musical instrument anyway? But to bring it as a carry-on could mean sending my laptop into the checked luggage, which I’m also […]

Christmas on the river

January 5, 2018

The adventures began at the first airport. The flight was delayed due to weather, and I got a new itinerary right away, expecting to miss the first connection in Chicago. Though the airline wasn’t able to provide free rooms to the many, many affected people, they did provide cots and bags of toiletries to ease […]

Why Brazil? A list of 8 reasons

May 5, 2017

Life is full of possibilities. How is it that I have chosen to go to Brazil? 1. A personal need to serve Jesus told all His disciples to go and make more disciples. Each person had unique character traits and gifts that equipped them to carry out their commission in a uniquely effective way. Peter’s […]

Check engine light

March 22, 2017

This week I’ve been working on replacing the neutral safety switch in my car. The check engine light has been warning about this for months, but it’s only when the car failed to start that it became important enough to replace. A quick look through Proverbs reveals a host of warnings against foolishness, laziness, strange […]