(Scroll Article for March 2010)

“Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”  These words are said as ashes are applied to our foreheads on Ash Wednesday as we are invited to keep a Holy Lent.  We bring the palms from Palm Sunday that have blessed our houses all year and burn them in a bonfire after eating our fill of pancakes while wearing gaudy plastic beads and funny hats.  “Remember you are dust and to dust you will return.”  We hear it but do we really understand what it means to be dust?  And to return to dust?  (more…)

(Scroll Article for March 2009) 

“How much do you weigh?”  Not a question that a girl like me likes to hear.  Fortunately, I was allowed to write it down and didn’t have to say it out loud in the middle of a meeting of missioners.  Our flight from Entebbe to Mundri was to be on a small plane where every pound had to be calculated into flight information.  So I actually added a couple of pounds to the number just to be safe but that was before we went to the wedding in London.  We had wedding cake, congratulatory toasts, traditional French candies and croissants for breakfast so those couple of pounds I added to my weight rapidly became reality!  I began to have nightmares that the plane would crash because I was over my weight which only caused me to eat more.  Crazy thinking!  (more…)

It is the last weekend before Christmas.  I’m barely unpacked from Sudan; the house isn’t decorated for Christmas unless you count the Nativity I bought in Uganda or the ebony carving of the Holy Family and a donkey.  I have barely bought a gift for anyone.  No cards have been sent.  And all I can think of is Thanksgiving.  (more…)

I have this little snack-sized baggie filled with slips of pink paper on my desk at work.  It was given to me at a workshop to stimulate creative writing.  The workshop was an all-day affair that was to stimulate us to think creatively and spiritually.  We made collages, made up stories about things we pulled out of a bag and talked about our lives.  I’m always looking for something to stimulate me to write.  The only topic that ever really gets me going is mission and Sudan so I am writing this as we are at the last moments of packing to leave to go there again. 

Those little pink slips I mentioned have silly phrases on them.  You are supposed to pull one out every day and write on whatever it says.  One of the papers says, “That’s stupid” and it is about what I thought when I saw them in the baggy.  Another says, “Play it louder” and that is pretty funny as I sit at my desk listening to an entire band of bagpipers practicing “Scotland the Brave”!  I think not. (more…)