Digging through my memories and as I try to uncover what I anticipated church would look like when I moved to the field, I knew that my teammates and I wouldn’t often go to a public church. That’s about it. Looking back, I can see that I forgot to imagine what we would do for church. […]
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Today was my fourth day of driving with my recently turned 15-year-old niece. With a few hours of driving together under “our” (this is not the royal we, if you’re teaching new drivers), we were both feeling good about her progress. And then we had three near misses. One in a parking lot with a […]
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I had flown to China before, but that was always with a return ticket. When I moved to China, my ticket was one-way. Back in the day, smoking was allowed on the flights. I was on a Chinese based airline and I began to understand some of the changes I was in for when the […]
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Gil and I met at 21 years old, married at 23, and were living in Tanzania by 24. We had been married all of nine months before we moved overseas. We had gotten to know each other as co-leaders of a cross-cultural ministry in California, and our desire to be missionaries was one of the […]
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Hello ALOS friends, Before we jump into the meat of this post, I have a request. After writing Looming Transitions to help you with their transitions and All the News to help you stay on the field via good communication with supporters, I want to help people navigate their first year on the field. In December […]
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Dear New Missionary, I spent last week with about 40 of you, helping with your training. I saw the fire in your eyes and the urgency in your prayers but heard the waver in your voice. I saw myself in you, 16 years ago, when it was I who sat in your chair with the […]
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I sat on the floor, weeping. I was two whole days into living abroad, and I was already losing it. Those tears portended more, and in our first year overseas, the thing that knocked me down the most, the thing that discouraged and distracted and depressed me the most, was the sense that I was […]
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The following post is one I have been re-living as of late, as we re-enter living in SE Asia after a two year stint in the States (original post is here). The whole family is thrust constantly into those awkward situations of being the new kids on the block, and I’m reminded of how hard […]
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Heidi and her husband are overseas newbies. They moved to Kenya in October, 2012, to capture the stories and images of the people and work across Africa. Her story of loss and gains is a poignantly beautiful look at the early days. Some Life Overseas readers are looking forward to those days, some are looking […]
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