Purpose Asia

“”The virgin will be with child and will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” which means, “God with us.””  Matthew 1:23 (NIV) We’ve heard it a million times, could recite it in our sleep. We intellectually understand it and once a year actually probably think about it a little bit. But how would our lives look different if we walked around acting like it was true? For instance, I’m a nurse, that’s who I am. But lets pretend for a minute that you didn’t know me and someone told you I was a nurse. You have heard it a thousand times from others that I’m a nurse, you could recite it in your sleep. You intellectually understand it and whenever you have a sniffle or an ache you actually probably think about it a little bit. But what would happen if, in a crisis you had me in the room with you and, instead of asking me to help, you turned to your friend and asked for help or whipped out your cell phone to Google what to do or call a...

Airports: the intersection of my most bitter sorrows and deepest joys. A tangled mess of gut wrenching goodbyes and laughter filled hellos. I love and hate them all at once. Corridors to my future that lead me further and further away from my past. Away from those I love, to reunite with those I love. A topsy-turvy, upside down, paradox that I can't seem to work out no matter how much I try.  Before I left Washington people kept asking me if I was excited to go back. Yes? No? Can I get a pass on this question? I can't help but laugh. Before I lived overseas for extended periods of time I asked the same question. Now I find the question so confusing, and my emotions so convoluted around the issue, that whenever anyone asks that question I stand there dumbfounded, paralyzed by my conflicted feelings. It's the nature of my life, my calling.  Things are more complicated now. My emotions, impressions and feelings are so different now. I'm struggling through them but gratef...

Saturday morning dawned dripping and misty. I tumbled out of bed and stumbled to the kitchen. Today I had to bake a breakfast treat before a going-away party for a friend. I pulled out tubs of flour and sugar and set to work measuring and kneading. Soon I stood up and brushed stray hairs from my face after closing the oven on my soon-to-be masterpiece. It was a good morning. Then the phone rang. I fumbled on the shelf above the fridge to grab it and pulled it to my ear. “Hello?” Funny, there was a strange tickling feeling on my arm. The person on the other end of the line started talking but another tickling feeling on my neck and arm distracted me. I shook my head thinking I was just being paranoid. “Uh huh.” I agreed distractedly to the voice on the phone. There it was again. This time I couldn’t control my paranoia. I had to look. I pulled the phone away from my face and gaped at it in abject horror. Swarming out of the buttons, battery compartment and every orific...

a Bougainvillea bloom on one of the roads where I live I sit on my bed after a full day.   My wet hair dangles around my face and I contemplate the peeling nail polish on one hand while I scratch one of my more than twenty mosquito bites with the other.   I can hear the bat flapping out of the guava tree in my front yard and night sounds pile up outside my cantilever windows like cans down an alleyway. Sometimes I’m amazed when I think about where I live and the work I do. I feel so average most of the time and tonight I certainly look it. But then I get to thinking about it. I live on an island in the South Pacific. Every day I speak a language other than my heart language and I emerge from my house to hibiscus and banana trees in the heart of a valley nestled among jagged, jungle-covered mountains. I walk down a dirt road and walk into a clinic that routinely sees malaria, dengue, ameobaisis, tuberculosis and other tropical disease along with everything from...

Here I sit, alone in my house, and listen to the sounds of afternoon fading into evening. The parrot screeches from its roost down the street and the smaller birds fuss like so many parents scolding their children to go to bed. The bright colors of day soften into the hazy hues of twilight. Clouds swathe the hills like a down comforter pulled over knobby heads, and everything drips with the remnants of the late afternoon rain. It is a cacophony of peace, a clamor of stillness, with which this valley so expertly surrounds its brood daily. The last couple of months have been a season of goodbyes. Many of the group that came at the same time as me have left for furlough or have finished their commitment to working here. The high school seniors I’ve come to know through helping with plays or mentoring them at the clinic have graduated and have gone back to their passport countries to start college or university. The constant cycle of time and the ebb and flow of change continu...

     This may come as a shock to some, but many days my work feels insignificant. I fill my working hours with checking vitals signs, charting, counting pills, giving instructions, performing treatments. I spend my lunches praying with a group, or listening to or teaching a Bible study, or meeting with one of the girls in my community group. At night when I’m not spending time with friends I’m whittling away at rewriting literacy materials so they can be used in the initial stages of Bible translation. One day flows into the next and I feel like I’m just living life. Nothing fantastic or dramatic or epic, just putting one foot in front of the other, trying to be faithful with what’s in my hands.         I guess, in a way I had envisioned something different for missions work. I think a lot of people do even though we try to bluster and say we know missions is about living life and sharing Christ in a different c...

     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...