I’d like to say the moment I stepped off the plane in Nairobi on Tuesday, January 11, 2022, at 10 P.M., I was on solid ground–normally when I land in Kenya, that’s how I feel.  However, traveling internationally during the pandemic adds a layer of insecurity to each step. And the steps are many: extra […]

Beatrice and Christine in the kitchen, Kenya, 2006 A turning point is a time at which an important change takes place which affects the future of a person or thing.  (College English Dictionary). Fifteen years ago, (this very month!),  I was seven days into my first mercy trip to Africa. Truthfully, since day one, I […]

Me and my mama, 2016 I was out for a bike ride enjoying the cool of mid-morning, letting my mind wander as my legs pedaled.  As I was coming around a bend on the bike trail, something to the left caught the corner of my eye. “A snake!” my brain registered as my heart raced […]

This would become an all too familiar sight as the years rolled by and I spent more time in Kenya, but on a sultry, sunny afternoon in 2006, what I saw was jarring.  I was in Kisumu, a larger city near Lake Victoria in western Kenya.  Amidst the rumble and jumble of cars, motorcycles, matatus […]

Walking through endless wheat fields in Spain  2014 “…unless a grain of wheat falls into the earth and dies, it remains alone, but if it dies it bears much fruit” (John 12:24). Jesus’ words from the Gospel of John served as the epigraph of Fyodor Dostoevsky’s exquisite novel, The Brothers Karamazov, and are inscribed on […]

One of the reasons I love Kenya, January 2020 If you missed the first part of this blog, simply scroll down and read it. …..Obviously, since you are reading this, I survived the flight, even catching a few hours of sleep.  I landed in Doha around 5:30 PM the next day (eleven hours ahead of […]

Traveling is stressful and requires loads of patience.  Any seasoned traveler will attest to this.  Even the most detailed plans can go awry. Learning to accept that something will not go as expected, then adapting accordingly is the key to keeping one’s sanity. Maybe there are a few folks who actually like sitting in an […]

This guy makes hefting my suitcase up three flights of stairs look easy peasy. (He pretty much saved me, and with a smile!).   Like this young man who graciously lightened my load in Nairobi last year, the generosity of so many of you have lightened the load of someone in need. Many thanks to […]

Moon over my driveway Last night, the moon, full and pregnant with light, pierced the cold darkness. Her luminosity beckoned me to leave the warmth of my kitchen, bundle up and come outside to linger a bit to watch the slow-moving orb make her way across the inky sky. I heeded the call, (several times, […]

31 August 2014 Before embarking on the Camino de Santiago (a pilgrimage through Spain), I pounded the pavement, dirt roads, hiking trails and any other surface that might provide some sort of physical conditioning.  One of my routes close to home, led me by a construction site. I watched as the ground was leveled, wooden […]