Not-so-pearly Whites

October 7, 2020

Recently, after being out in town for a couple of weeks, having some long talks with some of the “big cheeses” of our organization, and making a few earth-shatteringly huge ministry decisions, we eventually were able to fly back into our quiet little bush location… just in time to host a dental team that had […]

Train Up a Child in the Way He Should Go

August 25, 2020

Our village got hit with a bit of bad news this last year when they were informed that they would not be receiving a schoolteacher for their community. They had been working over the last several years trying to get a small government school started in our remote little village (we are 5 hours from […]

Still Alive

July 19, 2020

We are not dead. I know, it may have APPEARED like we had fallen off the face of the earth three months ago, when we began an unplanned, near-complete-cessation of public communications, but we DID NOT. No, the reasons for our silence were much less dramatic. Basically, when you boil down our litany of excuses, […]

Ain’t No Party Like A Callahan Party

October 28, 2019

[So, here’s the deal: I wrote this post a couple of weeks ago, but, due to the pitiful protestations of the last ragged vestiges of my feeble pride, I never published it. Since then, however, my pride seems to have given up any hope of reclaiming its former glory*, and I have decided to go […]

The Sacrifices We Make

August 17, 2019

I just had my first hot shower in three months. A little while later, I flushed the toilet, without having to dump water into the bowl with a bucket. I hadn’t done that for one month. Then I made a meal for my kids using bread that we didn’t have to bake ourselves and eggs […]

Awake, Oh Sleeper

June 25, 2019

Not everyone knows this about me, but I have insomnia. It first started right about the time we arrived in PNG and began our language study in 2015, and it has been going strong ever since. Now, I know that correlation does not equal causation, but I am a Millennial, and have an inherent need […]

The Sad Side of Success

June 24, 2019

I have been able to drop about 15 pounds since arriving back in our village a month and a half ago. Having spent a fair bit of time on the “husky” side of the scale lately, it’s been nice to finally see a bit of movement in this other, less blubbery, direction. I still have […]

Meet Izzy

June 8, 2019

I was going to write about language-learning woes today, because that is where my mind is at these days. As I pondered my potential prose however, I was reminded of a post I did a while ago on that same subject. I went back and reread that other post and was impressed with how aptly […]

Don’t Be A Cow

June 1, 2019

As a general rule, I think we tend to take things for granted. We go through each day, utilizing incredibly advanced technologies, interacting with amazingly unique people, and experiencing wondrously special events, and we do it in a ho-hum sort of way, like a cow flicking a fly off its buttocks with its tail. The […]

Snips and Snails and Puppy-dog Tails…

May 28, 2019

Often, I write about specific incidents that I’ve experienced in our overseas “adventure.” Sometimes, I write about broader, more topical subjects. But, mostly, I just whine about petty personal inconveniences as though they are on equal standing with the Kennedy assassination. As this is a family blog though, I thought I’d take a moment to take the focus off ME, […]