The magic of forgiveness
“I wish you had been born a boy!” I don’t know how many times I heard my mother say that as I was growing up. I understand better now, considering her own upbringing and... »
Personal Accounts
Riverside walk
Long discussions regarding possible changes made the future seem foggier by the day. Several years earlier, my husband and I, together with a few friends, had founded a h... »
Down in the salt mines
We went down 378 spiraling steps into the Wieliczka Salt Mine in southern Poland, wondering what we would find and thinking about how easy it would be to get lost in the... »
Moment by moment
When our son Pete was three, he was diagnosed with leukemia, and from one moment to the next, our lives changed drastically. There are no instruction manuals that can pre... »
Face the storm
Quite a few years ago, our small family was traveling on a freighter from Europe to our new field of service in South America. Due to long delays in the loading of the sh... »
Riding the dragon
Strapping on my harness and checking my gear to make sure it was secure, I held the reins tightly in my hands. The winged creature lurched, squirmed, wriggled, and writhe... »
The payoff of perseverance
“You are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think.”—Christopher Robin (A. A. Milne) The first time I read this quote, I thought of a st... »
Winter is coming
I dislike cold, icy, snowy winters. That is a big reason I was happy living in Mexico for many years. But now my wife and I are in Canada, and yesterday it snowed. It is... »
Hard knocks
Have you ever wondered why it is that from time to time you find yourself going through the school of hard knocks? Just when you’re thriving on some “ups” in your life, s... »
Three cups of tea
Right after graduating from high school, two friends and I decided to travel around the western Mediterranean. It was 1969, and the streets of Europe were filled with you... »
My heroes, warts and all
One thing that seems to be unique to the Bible is how the “heroes of faith”—with the exception of Jesus, of course—were far from perfect men and women. As the saying goes... »
Tribute to a butterfly
Andja was born in 1962 in the former Yugoslavian republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina. When war broke out in the 1990s, Andja’s family fled as refugees to Vojnic, a small t... »