Purpose Asia

     I gingerly pick up the microscope slide and set it on the microscope stage. Training my eyes on the tiny specimen beneath the magnifying viewer I focus it back and forth until the purple-pink blood cells come into clear focus. Then, I carefully place a drop of oil on the slide to go to the next level of magnification and look again. There, everywhere on the slide, are miniscule pink dots with purple rings inside the red blood cells. Malaria. Some of you may remember that I myself had malaria back in 2015 when I was training in the lowlands near the coast. It can certainly be dangerous if untreated and where I work it constitutes a significant portion of the patients that I help treat. In the tropics (especially lowland and coastal areas) malaria is a common ailment and where I live there are a few types that are common. It used to be that the mosquito that carried the malaria parasite was only found in the lowlands but we are starting to have an inc...

“ and He [the LORD] will be the stability of your times.” Isaiah 33:6a My fingers drum on the shiny silver hide of my laptop. I stare at the wood floor of my bedroom and listen to the dripping water outside my window. So much, too much to try to capture all of it in the tiny bonds of words. Words. Black and white and angular. Tiny bars wrapping around concepts that laugh at the thought of being contained in such a puny prison. Like a giant watching a toddler wrap a thread around his wrists, so the thoughts I want to convey smile condescendingly on me as I attempt to tie them down with sentences and phrases. Despite its condescension I set to, with furrowed brow and intent, fumbling fingers to secure the thoughts I’m having about the concept of transition. Some friends and I were talking about this gargantuan concept today. We’d all heard about culture stress and culture shock and the transience of the missionary community before we arrived overseas. However,...