Purpose Asia

Thanksgiving is one of my two most favorite holidays (the other is Easter). I love that Thanksgiving is a time for family and friends to enjoy each other without expectation. I also love how it causes me to stop and think about what I have and forces me to reflect on what I am thankful for. You see, I don't know about you, but I often get caught up in the business of life and forget about all the wonderful things I have been blessed with. As a result, I find myself weary, stressed and wishing for things I think I don't have. However, this year I realized just how grateful I am for what I have. Major life change brings a new layer of perspective to the season of Thanksgiving and my imminent move to Papua New Guinea has made me aware of how grateful I am for good friends, amazing  family, and God's provision of all I need. I'm also thankful for all the miracles He's done in my ministry in providing prayer and financial partners, nursing licenses, work permits, pla...

      This last week I packed all my earthly belongings into two giant plastic trunks (action packers) to send to North Carolina to be shipped by sea from there to my new home for the next four years in Papua New Guinea. There was a lot of wondering and worrying: what should I pack? What will fit? What will I really want in Papua New Guinea? How do you even begin to pack for four years in a foreign country? It was certainly a crazy time and I wish I could say I did it with grace, composure, and dignity. However, more often than not I was disheveled, stressed, frustrated and exasperated with a healthy dose of "this is really real and my emotions are like a Richter scale about now with a 9.0 earthquake registering." Packing certainly has brought home to me how close my departure date really is: in less than two months I will set foot on the soil of Papua New Guinea, my new home for the next four years. That's both heavy and  exciting.       ...

Have you ever heard people say, "I'm not good at saying goodbye"? Or perhaps, "I don't do goodbyes"? Today I had to say a lot of goodbyes and went scrounging the internet trying to find a good quote to sum up how I was feeling. You know what I found out?  Nobody knows how to say goodbye. I realized that no one can make sense of goodbyes. No one can sum them up. No one can unravel the complex, messy, convoluted emotions that are all tangled up in goodbye. Goodbye is such a short word and yet such a vast emotional experience. Just trying to think about goodbye, when you're truly immersed in it, is like facing the darkness of an unseen path and willing it to go away by merely staring it down. It's paralyzing. It's overwhelming. And yet, there's a glimmer of something that you just can't put your finger on in every goodbye. At first you just have the nagging, grating reminder of the fact that you have to part ways with places and...