“This is such a heavy burden. May God give me strength to bear it.” This is what people say when they have been elected to Christian leadership in Tanzania. During elections, people are very reluctant to put themselves forward, always waiting for someone else to suggest them. Even the most […]
We have discovered that we have a henna tree in our backyard. Callum’s nanny started picking the leaves and I asked her what they were for and that’s how I found out what it was. Where did I think henna came from before this? Did I think it was some […]
One of the common laments for westerners living in the majority world is how long it takes to do things. It’s often hard to work out why, so every now and then I record all the steps it takes for me to fix things. For example, it took me this […]
Since we moved house, I have joyfully returned to having house help. (The story of why is for another day.) Mama Pendo is a grandmother who comes twice a week to clean the house. This week she said to me very kindly, “Kama kuna tatizo, usinyamaze.” It means, “If there’s […]
One of my mentors wrote to me recently that now that things are settling down a bit in our lives, it might be that the emotions that I haven’t had the chance to pay attention to while we were in survival mode will bubble up to the surface and unseat […]
I am generally not a fan of devotionals, but in this very hard season of our lives my normal things weren’t working, and I felt I needed something to ground me. Well, Nailed It! 365 Sarcastic Devotions for Angry Or Worn-Out Christians by Anne Kennedy is absolutely sensational. It’s a super […]
It has become commonplace in the west in recent years to assert that the ways in which women experience oppression in Australia are minor compared to the oppressions that women in the majority world face, from gender based violence to lack of access to education, to maternal health, to poverty […]
