Get this. A 14-year-old Malawian too poor to have electricity reads a library book with photos of windmills and builds his family one out of a tractor fan, a bicycle wheel, lots of sticks, and I’m not sure what else. And it works. And it now powers his whole home and irrigates his fields. I [...]
Archive for category Noticing Things
Treasures in the Mud
Jul 13
When we moved to a city in Africa, the first reason my daughter Phoebe discovered to love the city was the abundance of brown coins. In South Africa, the smallest coin given out for change in stores is the five-cent coin, worth much less than the value of a U.S. penny. That means people are [...]
Filters off
May 27
Living among the poor is like having all the filters taken off of life. In North America, we can hide our problems, our sins, our addictions, our worries so much more easily. It’s like in North America we can pave over the mud, wipe it off with antibacterial soap, step over it as we climb [...]
Thoughts on Otherness
May 13
“…When you see how the people live, and still more, how easily they die, it is difficult to believe that you’re walking among human beings…”
Here’s an excerpt from article Adam and I wrote that just came out in Relevant Magazine…
…Travel can become an attempt to disconnect from anything and anyone familiar, as if by escaping the ordinary, life will automatically become extraordinary. But what are we running from? Behind the banter of daring deeds is a common desire to [...]
Wanted to just share a quote from Paul Hiebert, one of my favorite writers lately, about the importance of seeing ourselves through the eyes of outsiders. In our travels lately Adam and I have had many blessed opportunities to dialogue with people about our own North American culture, about African cultures, about how they see [...]
When my daughter was two years old, she went through a season of cutting teeth that was more miserable than anything we had yet experienced as parents. Some days she would begin crying in the middle of a meal and not stop for an hour. We tried everything—pain reliever, rocking, singing, even leaving her alone [...]
When have you been surprisingly blessed by stopping to listen to someone?
This is the first of some discussion-oriented blogs I’d like to set up to start hearing from you. Take a minute to write a little response, and read the good stuff others have to share.
In the first chapter of Into the Mud, “Noticing Things,” [...]
