Our middle child, Erin, started kindergarten at a large public school in a suburb of Tulsa. On her first day at Jenks East Elementary, I packed her Disney character lunchbox, slipped her plastic pink and purple backpack through her two little outstretched arms, and told her that this was the best day of her life so far. I was only repeating what she had been telling everyone for months, that her first day of kindergarten – real school as she called it – was going to be the “

This blog post is about Nambia. Yes, I’m going there. Not literally, because there is no country of Nambia. In a speech to African leaders at the United Nations last week, the President referred twice to the country of Nambia with regard to an increasingly self-sufficient health care system. To be clear, there are countries in Africa where the names have changed: Rhodesia to Zimbabwe, Upper Volta to Burkina Faso, Gold Coast to Ghana, Belgian Congo to Congo to Zaire to Congo.

But unless we are creators we are not fully alive. What do I mean by creators? Not only artists, whose acts of creation are the obvious ones of working with paint of clay or words. Creativity is a way of living life, no matter our vocation or how we earn our living. Creativity is not limited to the arts, or having some kind of important career. ― Madeleine L’Engle, Walking on Water Back in the 1970s, there was a crafting craze called “foiling.” It caught on mostly with women

This is the bungalow where we are staying. It’s a mission house that was the residence of an amazing family that served here in Ankaase for many years. Not exactly a mud hut with mosquito nets, eh? The electricity goes out about every two or three days throughout the village, but I can’t say that I’m roughing it too much. I did keep company with a few interesting insects and critters the first day, but I think I’ve scared them all off. The teachers at SDA School were gracious