Beautiful Language Indwells the Believer
When my daughters were teenagers growing up in Italy, a group of American high schoolers asked them for Italian swear words they could use. My bilingual daughters, were unfortunately accu...
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Mission & Calling
55 articles gathered under this theme.
The Family Tree Before the Manger
Growing up we called it the “Mennonite game.” Within a short span of meeting someone new, we somehow managed to find a connecting relative within a massive tangle of roots. When one of ou...
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What Is Your Calling?
A friend recently phoned me and began our conversation with, “Are you bored now that you are retired?” My four children are in various throes of raising our grandchildren. I watch them an...
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Of His Kingdom There Will Be No End
How many times have you said, “there’s just no end to this?” Paperwork, bills, middle of the night feedings, late at night work shifts, or maybe it’s simply the dirty pile of dishes in th...
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Do You Feel Like a Nobody?
I heard the door open and my husband’s heavy footsteps slowly ascend the steps. “Hi Honey,” I greeted at the top. “How’d it go?” We were young with a newborn in a new city, new apartment,...
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The Reward of Achievement
If you were to walk the streets of Bologna, Italy during a spattering of months out of the year, you might see a confusing sight. Now and again whether in a crowd or walking alone, amid A...
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Is Jesus Our Mighty God?
“For unto us a Child is born, Unto us a Son is given; And the government will be upon His shoulder. And His name will be called Wonderful, Counselor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Princ...
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Who Really Owns My Time?
“I don’t have time” is one of those ridiculous things we say pretty much all the time. As if time can be owned. As if we could take charge of it, I mean really, “who’s got the time?” Righ...
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Are You Spiritually Limping or Confidently Walking?
When one of our daughters was in second grade, her school teacher mentioned an issue that she’d observed. Our daughter had begun to limp. She complained about her leg hurting, especially...
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Who Are Your Wise Guys?
Calling all wise guys. Only what if they aren’t? Remember that old advertisement, “let your fingers do the walking?” It promoted a thing once upon a time called the yellow pages, which wa...
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Pondering What Are The Chances?
This morning I chanced to look out my bedroom window. Water splashed up from the little “pond” in our back yard, as if a fish slapped its surface. A water feature which worked once upon a...
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I Wish My Kids Had Known My Mom Like I Did
I wish my kids had known her better, the woman I called Mom. I would like to have them remember how her hands flew over the piano keys, and see the line of piano students that came to the...
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Chosen Isn’t So Special if You Are a Turkey
My kids used to say I should write a how-to-hide-the-turkey-recipe book. We ate a lot of turkey when we lived in Italy. Affordable and easily available, I disguised wings, thighs and brea...
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Come Aside To a Deserted Place
The first August I lived in Italy, I had no idea what had hit the entire country. Still anemic in language and culture, I didn’t know what to make of the silent streets of Florence, usual...
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I Fell in Love with American Thanksgiving While Living In Another Country
I learned to really appreciate this American tradition in a place where it was not celebrated. Our first years we felt alone without family. We joined with fellow North Americans, friends...
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Standing on the Other Side of the Line
Landing on Italian soil in 1982 The first time I boarded a plane for Italy, I left with one husband, 24 suitcases, a child on each hip, one holding her daddy’s hand and the absolute assur...
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Do You Really Wanna Be Full?
“I wanna be full,” my grandson says. Tomato red rims his mouth, like the ring around a bullseye. Sauce lies draped down the front of his green shirt. A whole lotta food didn’t hit the mar...
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Slow Food, Fast Food. What’s Your Spiritual Palate’s Recipe?
“How sweet are your words to my taste, sweeter than honey to my mouth!” Psalm 119:103 ESV When fast food started flipping burgers in Italy, it raised a commotion. Protests and picketers l...
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Jesus Gets Personal With His Disciples
It’s the craziest thing when you see someone who looks like someone else from some place else in a place they shouldn’t be found. When we moved to Italy across the ocean, across culture a...
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Mistakes of Grasshoppers and Other Regular People
“We seemed to ourselves like grasshoppers, and so we seemed to them.” Numbers 13:33 (ESV) It’s impossible to read about the Israelites’ long exodus from Egypt without being convicted of s...
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How to Combine Sincerity, Love and Others
My acquisition of the Italian language really doesn’t reflect the amazing teacher I had in Florence, Italy, or the excellence of her skills. Like Michaelangelo she chipped away, always co...
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We Were So Alike Until We Got Married
(This post may have a familiar ring to it. You may have read it on the first go around Feb. 14, 2017, but it’s especially appropriate for a revisit before Valentine’s Day sneaks up on you...
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What impact will my life have in the future
My husband has a carpenter’s chalk line. He rolls it out, squints down its straight line and lifts it slightly between thick fingers, then lets it snap. It leaves a distinct chalk line ma...
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How Far Would You Travel if Everything Aligned?
“After Jesus was born in Bethlehem in Judea, during the time of King Herod, Magi from the east came to Jerusalem and asked, ‘Where is the one who has been born king of the Jews? We saw hi...
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Make Sure You Accent the Right Thing
It was a tiny village, not much more than an intersection with a few stores. When we moved into the area, the only American family in Magazzino, Italy, we gained immediate notoriety. I co...
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How to Have 2020 Vision in This Strange Time
Every morning I take a walk in the city and pass a spot where I can see a massive field of grain. As I top a hill it’s there. My entire vision fills with gold. Day by day whiter, riper, f...
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Who Really Has the Power to Fix It?
I know well my husband’s furrowed brow. I am well acquainted with the set of his jaw and the far away focus of his eyes. His spinning thoughts, the ones that talk louder inside him than s...
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Love, Social Media and Noise
In the love month, my challenge to you is to read what is called the love chapter in the Bible. 1 Corinthians 13 always convicts me of straying tentacles of my heart strings, and is alway...
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Hidden Things
A rubber duck accompanied my walk around the room. I laid it in plain sight on a shelf of the bookcase. Its classic yellow face and orange bill pointed to the door where my daughter would...
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Those moments no one sees
It was in a moment when the house was quiet, the girls at school and my husband at work that the little blue sleeper called my name again. The sun’s bright rays bleached my vision and I s...
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Those Detours on my Street
I have a friend who looked in his rear view mirror and saw the sign to a church, which propelled him to whip his car into into an unplanned detour. It altered his entire life. His traject...
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Bad Words and Clean Hearts
“But what comes out of the mouth proceeds from the heart, and this defiles a person.” Matthew 15:18 (ESV) When our family moved to Italy and went through the agony of language learning, o...
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When Tarzan Married Penelope
What if Tarzan hadn’t married Jane, the tree swinger? What if Tarzan married Penelope who didn’t share the same desire to swing from a tree? What if she had no idea that people killed spi...
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Momma, Is Jesus Here?
“Momma,” he called from the dark bedroom. “Is Jesus here?” “Yes, Justin.” “Ok, don’t worry Mom, we just can’t see Him,” he shouted from his bed. I plopped down on the sofa, letting Justin...
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What to do with your New Year's False Start
They called it the 50 yard dash. I was introduced to it at recess in first grade. I knew I was bad before anyone told me, in fact maybe that’s why I was so pitiful. I knew when we lined o...
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7 Days to Christmas: Son of the Highest Lk. 1:32
No one is higher. “He will be great, and will be called Son of the Highest” Luke 1:32; NKJV, the angel told Mary. He is as high as high gets. Son of the Highest is like the title God Most...
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9 Days to Christmas: PRINCE OF PEACE
“…and His name shall be called Wonderful, Counselor, The Mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6; KJV. When Isaiah penned those words, Israel was being decima...
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12 Days to Christmas: MAJESTY
So the bad dude king, Herod, called his chief priests and scribes together for a little pow-wow, a sneaky set-a-trap-for-the-baby kind of meeting. “Where is He who has been born King of t...
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17 Days to Christmas: HOLY
Mary the maidservant of the Lord found herself in an unimaginable situation. A child grew within her, Son of the Highest, without human father and apart from the curse of sin. Fully human...
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19 Days to Christmas: FATHER
Baby Luca cries that heart wrenching pierce of a little soul in despair. It stabs my own as I jiggle him up and down against me, that continual parental dance. My grandson’s body melts in...
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What's Hiding
I walked around the room with a rubber duck in my hand. I laid it in plain sight on a shelf of the book case. It’s classic yellow face and orange bill pointed to the door where my daughte...
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What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
The seconds tick at the cash register. We shake out our Italian, like a moth-eaten shirt, and blink away the fog of jet-lag. Everything is a de-j-vu of having been and done long ago. Phil...
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Get Me Out Of Here
Back in the day when “missionary” brought to mind pith helmets for the men and polyester ruffles for the women, my husband and I took three little girls away from their grandparents and e...
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Nobody told Me to Bring a Rocking Chair
“In returning and rest you shall be saved; in quietness and confidence shall be your strength.” Isaiah 30:15; NKJV. When Phil and I left for Italy with a two-year-old, a four-year-old and...
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Meltdown Dread
I plunked her diaper-padded bottom into the shopping cart and directed two little legs into the slots. The mission began. I had one hour, one child with me, two others at home, and a whol...
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Baal with a Pinch of God on the Side
“So Ahab sent for all the children of Israel, and gathered the prophets together on Mount Carmel.” (I Kings 18:20; NKJV). Let me paint the scene. A range of mountains, called the Carmel r...
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Take a Right at the Llama
I pull a faded black suitcase, it’s wheels rumble over the sidewalk, a grey path between verdant green. The rhythm of smooth concrete broken by lines reminds me of the clickety-clack of a...
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Do you have Holes in your net?
My net has holes. “While walking by the Sea of Galilee, He saw two brothers, Simon (who is called Peter) and Andrew his brother, casting a net into the sea, for they were fishermen.” Matt...
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Pink and Blue
Ephesians 5:33 (ESV) However, let each one of you love his wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband. As Pastoral care workers for our mission agency, my husband...
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The Big Red Elephant in the Room
“It’s not gonna turn out good for you,” Phil tells the young man and his lovely wife sitting close together on our couch. Their lives are about to tumble like clothes in a dryer. Packing...
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Lord of the harvest
“Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.” Matt. 9:37-38 NKJ...
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Remembering
I am not a good rememberer, and it has much less to do with my age than with my desire. My husband loves to remember. He enjoys thinking about the past, pouring over pictures from years g...
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Living in the Projects
Living in the Projects The upstairs of our house is down to its studs. A major project is underway. Between now and the vision of a new bathroom and bedroom is a gorge of unimaginable pro...
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The Great Commission Still Beckons
My husband grew up the pale-skinned blond boy in a black and white background of Ecuador. A child of missionaries, he biked deserted dirt roads, rode in airplanes and ate iguana. Immune t...
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Shepherd to shepherd
On November 26 our twelfth grandchild entered the world. It occurred, appropriately, just hours before Thanksgiving. Our son sent a picture of our brand new grandson cradled in his arms m...
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