Your Unique Weakness, Made Beautiful

Reading Time: 3 minutes

strength in weakness

When my husband John was younger, he hated hardware stores. (Work with me here.) He hated all the hooks sticking out of the walls to hang things on.  To him, it felt like those hooks were headed straight for his eyes. It was an odd weakness that followed him to adulthood.

Yet years later, as we lived in a remote village in Ethiopia where John was working on a water project, he began having trouble with his eyes–a malady seeming particularly unfortunate following a lifetime vulnerability. read more

“Trust and Obey, Mommy”: Gala’s Story

Reading Time: 4 minutes

trust and obey

Our family had been in Ethiopia for about two weeks one February when we decided to visit the village where we’d soon be living.

My husband John is a water engineer. Our task was to put in a water system for the Tokay area and surrounding villages. We had just begun language school in Addis, so our skills were limited–but we were excited to see the village where we’d live for the next three years, about four hours west. read more

My Big Dream (that Starts Small)

Reading Time: 5 minutes

big dream

Editor’s Note: This piece originally appeared on Rebecca Hopkins’ blog, Borneo Wife, when she and her husband served in Indonesia. She now blogs from her new American home at rebeccahopkins.org .

A window in my kitchen faces our backyard. Much of my days are spent cooking and watching, washing dishes and listening, making granola and checking. The kids are often dangling or running or whooping outside, playing on our mini-playground with the zipline. read more

Memos from a Christmas Robbery

Reading Time: 4 minutes

Christmas robbery

My husband and I, kids in tow, were maneuvering at a snail’s pace through a traffic jam in our trusty high-clearance minivan. Our speakers happily trumpeted the Christmas CD my mom had sent, and we chatted, our energy high for our Christmas shopping in the city and the Christmas party of our non-profit (which, with the barbecue and kids running around in shorts, tends to look a little more like the Fourth of July).

It was sometime after “Let it Snow” that our heads all swiveled to the driver’s side, where a man was banging—hard—on the outside of our van. Never a good sign in Kampala. read more

Opposition, Rejection, & the Voice Silencing All the Rest (with FREE Printable)

Reading Time: 3 minutes

At the time, I was drowning in lists. I no longer had a kitchen table; we’d sold it (or given it away? I don’t remember). We were getting immunizations and snapping passport photos of wiggly preschoolers and typing elaborate packing lists into spreadsheets. I found myself longing for the moment I would snap my seatbelt buckle on a Uganda-bound plane: At least then, even if there was more to do, I couldn’t do a single thing about it.

In the midst of said hurricane, I retrieved some medicine from the pharmacy. My kids were bouncing up and down like little pogo sticks. “We’re moving to Uganda!” one of them brightly announced to the pharmacist.