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 [...]
Archive for March, 2010
More about Charmaine
Mar 27
“It’s so hard to stay clean in all this mud,” I said as I wiped a glob of mud off my calf and stepped into my car. Oddly, these would be the last words I spoke to Charmaine (of chapter nine) before leaving for the United States, perhaps the last words I spoke to her [...]
Writing and Development
Mar 18
A friend just passed along this comment from a dear friend whose story is included in the book, who is now reading her own story in print: “How Chrissy so SMART? You tell a story and she hears so much, it helps to tell the story but how she hears small things?” Shakes her head, “uh uh uh.”
I [...]
Acting Above Us
Mar 12
They come and act like they’re above us… like we need them… like they’re more Christian than us. Until now I have never met someone like you who understands this. I feel bad saying it, but I often think, ‘We don’t need your food, your money, your help… This so-called help is destroying us.’
Today [...]
Where you are right now might really hurt. You might be wishing for a spouse or a child. You might be wishing you were done with school, or done paying off loans, or done caring for a child or relative. You might wish you weren’t locked into car payments, house payments, boat payments, or credit [...]
Lately I have grappled with a fact few of us want to consider: some places in the world are just going to be poor, probably for a long, long time.
Take the continent of Africa, for example. Economically, they are so far behind. Nearly any economic indicator will show them behind every other region of the [...]
Rich I Am
Mar 1
While I was teaching English at Glen Isla School (see chapter eleven), I gave the older students the assignment of writing stories from their childhood. Most students had barely legible grammar, some had clearly plagiarized from each other or other sources, and many did not turn in the assignment. But one group of students wrote [...]
