Kibera is perhaps one of the largest shanty towns in the world. A place bustling with life. And a place where it is painfully obvious that life is cheap. Today, the streets and footpaths of Kibera bear the marks of a war zone. Read More...

At the end of the day, or at the end of lifetime, a mission station is still more than buildings or the presence of a missionary. It is a place where out of the chaos of a forest, a hospital emerges, and out of the darkness which engulfs a society, a church emerges. It is the work of men and women like Earl and Helena. And it is the work of God.
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All forty-four gathered in the main rehabilitation room. They sat on floor mats, a mass of giggles and crutches. Each wore a blue tee-shirt with the John Paul motto wrinkled across the back, borne of the Apostle John: "that they may have life abundant." Read More...

Panther Bior tugged at my elbow. "How many more miles?" he asked. I looked at the GPS, turned back toward him and shouted above the roar of the airplane engine, "Fifteen." "Fifteen," he said and paused thoughtfully, "that is good." Read More...

I walked quickly to catch up with the group and, coming alongside Joshua, I matched my pace to his. The low, late afternoon sun brought a reprieve from the awful heat of the day, and we made our way down a sandy road toward a village Read More...

Well this is a new one. I check the airstrip list and scan a thousand odd names to find my next destination. With an often-repeated series of twists and toggles, I can program the latitude and longitude into the GPS computer and instantly get a course, distance and ETA - only fifteen minutes away, roughly southeast from my present position over the vast and featureless Sudan Read More...

From the four corners of America to the mysterious reaches of East and Central Africa... Professionals, students, moms, and every variety of church lay-people pack their bags and brave the vaccinations. They come to Africa on a mission. Read More...

We sat hunched over on goatskins, in a dark, steamy, somewhat smelly hut of sticks and grass and cardboard. It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim light, after coming in from the blazing sun of a Kenyan afternoon. Read More...

Home again – in the familiar pew of a hometown church, I touch the wood and upholstery and then look down to see the scuffed leather of my familiar shoes set against the deep, clean carpet. My mind wanders for a moment and I imagine these same shoes against the red dirt of Kenya where they were just a few short weeks ago. Read More...

Heat. Flies. Black cotton soil. All of them stick to you like glue. The heat can top 120 degrees plus humidity, the flies simply will not leave you be, and the mud cakes so thickly to your shoes you cannot lift your feet. Some areas are dotted with sparse vegetation, and others are thick with trees. Blue sky, brown dirt, and muted greens and yellows in the grass - in every direction it is the color of earth and bearing little resemblance to the twenty-first century. Read More...

My wife looked quizzically at me after I got the call. “I thought you hated Congo flights?” A hint of excitement must have been evident on my face. After all, I was just called in to finish off a week-long evacuation out of Bunia, a volatile little town in eastern Congo. Read More...

Frozen boogers on my sleeve. Fingers numb, dizzy from a lack of oxygen and chilled through five layers of clothing, I pull myself up the final rock wall here at sixteen thousand feet above sea level. It’s 5am…a bright full moon setting in the west and the promise of a new sun on the eastern horizon. Mild hypoxia continues to slowly take its toll… Read More...

A refugee camp looks a bit like the aftermath of a tornado. Scattered about in the open grass are clothes and pots and people. The stuff of many otherwise organized lives, and the very lives of those who have fled look as though they are littering a hillside with nowhere to cook their dinner, nowhere to lay their heads. Read More...

Tuesday morning, 4:30 am, I jump out of bed two minutes before the alarm clock sounds; my mind is in full gear, even anticipating my wake-up call. A flight uniform and a well worn pair of boots are laid out and I get dressed like someone who has done this a thousand times. I grab my overnight bag, stuff my passport into a zippered side pocket on my cotton khakis, and spend a few moments sitting in bed next to Renee. Read More...

Seven thousand feet below me, lost in a greenish mist, is a canopy of tightly packed trees. It stretches before me for hundreds of miles, and creeps behind for hundreds more. I’m flying over the rain forests of the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly known as Zaire, and simply known to us as “the congo.” Smack down in the middle of the continent of Africa my flight takes me over not only dense forest but over an unforgiving land ripped by wars and sad, brutal histories. Read More...

Snap.snap.snap.snap.snap. A cool and dim dawn hour awakes to the sound of high-voltage igniters firing steadily as the engine compressor spins to life with a speedy whine. The Cessna Caravan begins its start sequence: Starter engaged, igniters on, fuel on, a whoosh and a low rumble as the gas generator lights. Engine revolutions build with a dry, metallic-like whir as the nine-foot propeller disk paddles the morning air. Read More...

So much road. So many white lines ticking away aside our little Honda at 65 miles per hour. Two thoughts constantly cross my mind. Where do we get all this asphalt? And why can’t we send some to Africa? For seven weeks this Spring, the country opened up before us over five thousand odd miles of America. Read More...

It’s hot, it’s tiring, it’s a foreign landscape unfolding before you at a hundred and fifty miles per hour. Read More...