Group 21. Jakarta, Indonesia. August 2016. The Lausanne Movements’ Younger Leaders Gathering was finally getting underway, and I was excited to meet my mentoring group of six up-and-coming Christian leaders from all over the world.

We recently returned from a one month mission to Australia in which we saw God’s faithfulness abundantly. There were four of us on the team; Fr. John & Patti Sosnowski, Tina and me. The invitation to Australia came from our daughters and their husbands, Stacey & Simon Fua (missionaries with YWAM) and Kerry & Daniel Berris (who lead an Anglican Church plant).…

One cool Virginia morning when my daughter Kelly was about 12, I was driving her to a dentist appointment in an unfamiliar part of town. The road we were on was a divided highway with two lanes going in either direction lined by cement curbs. I wasn’t speeding, but I was looking at the buildings to find a street number so I could determine if we were getting close to our turn. These were the days before GPS.

I set off on my bike for the Garifuna village to spend the afternoon with friends, to stroll on the beautiful Tela beach along the Honduran coast. Before I knew it, it was getting late and I knew, as a young single girl living in a foreign land, that I’d better hurry home before it got too dark to be out on my own.…

When I first step off the plane, turning the corner into the crowded terminal and before I even collect my suitcase from baggage claim, I’m hit by a deep, rich aroma of berbere. Berbere is a pepper that is fire-roasted, sun-dried, and ground into a red powder that spices nearly every dish in Ethiopian cuisine.…

We had been in Honduras for a few months when I decided to wander off in the crowded San Pedro Sula market to “look for care bears.” I was three years old, but I still remember my mother’s frantic expression, running through the rows of vendors, with my older sister in tow. “Busca mi nina,” she called over and over in her broken Spanish. She was sweating, half-crazed, and crying when she swooped me into her arms, shouting, “never do that again!”