Monthly Archives May 2012

It was the summer of 1999.  I was nearing the end of a highly impactful mission’s trip to Tijuana, Mexico, and we were sitting around a campfire singing praise songs and sharing about what we had learned that week.  And in a moment of complete sincerity, and possibly following the crowd, I declared before my high school youth group and fellow mission’s workers that I was feeling called to missions and I was going to continue on with Spanish 4 during my upcoming senior year.

And then I returned home.  And a few weeks later I started to feel the opposite of called to missions.  And then school started, and I remember very clearly walking to my first Spanish 4 class and turning to my friend and saying, “you know, I really don’t feel like being in this class.  When am I ever going to need...

A few years ago when we lived with our dear friends, Genevieve introduced me to her precious Jamie Oliver cookbook, The Ministry of Food.   What I most took away from it is his amazing curry recipe, but also the title of the book inspired me and got me thinking.  There really is no better way to describe the gift of food than as a ministry.

I can’t tell you how many thank you cards I either have written or should have written to people who so kindly brought meals when we were hospitalized or had just had babies or had lost a loved one.  The gift of not having to cook when you just aren’t up to par is such a ministry, not to mention blessing people with that fine art of your own personal cooking skills.

Or I think back to those support raising trips when kind hosts would send us on our ...

One of the things  I am quickly learning about living here is that everything is just a little bit more complicated than it is in the U.S.  For instance,  because we don’t have a car, we walk to the grocery stores, and that means that whatever we buy, we must also find a way to get home.

The other day, I happily toted my little canvas and plastic pull cart from a store called Carulla and a few of my oil cloth bags from the states.  I was gonna go shopping, and we were out of a lot of things, so I was really gonna go shopping.  I had an hour before Nathaniel needed me back home so he could go to a meeting, so off I went, with the sun shinning on my back and all.

Well, rookie mistake number one – I grabbed a full sized shopping cart and started loading it up – drinking water, veggies, c...