Trans-Siberian. Trans-Siberian. Trans-Siberian. I’ve never been diagnosed “officially” but I’m pretty certain I’m a bit OCD! Once I get my mind stuck on something, I really have a tough time changing focus. Even with that crazy dangerous Chernobyl nuclear stuff, I still wanted to go across the USSR by train. News was usually hard to [...]

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Saturday night, my last night in Helsinki, I was packing and repacking and trying to sort through all my junk when Marianne brought me one ton of Finnish chocolate bars. Yes. Exactly one ton. Please note here that Finnish chocolate is ooohhh so delicious and I truly love it! But where was I going to [...]

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Tuesday morning Pia had survived yet another night with me sleeping in the bunk above her. Thank God for little things. I was thrilled that I had my Aeroflot tickets in hand and was scheduled to leave Helsinki on Sunday, April 27, heading for Moscow and then on to Beijing. But Aimo strongly cautioned me [...]

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Monday morning I woke bright and early relieved that the bunk bed had not collapsed crushing the small child beneath me. That my friend was a great way to start the day. Marianne and Aimo were in the kitchen having coffee and breakfast before Aimo headed in to the Foreign Affairs Office where he worked. [...]

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Long, long ago in a land far, far away there was an old-maid missionary, uh, well, maiden who thought she heard God’s voice and attempted to follow that voice wherever she thought it was leading her. Her handy hearing-God’s-voice-manual came from a beautiful Kingdom Princess named Corrie ten Boom. The poor old-maid-missionary maiden (is that [...]

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Tony Blair once said that he measures a country by how many people are trying to get out and how many people are trying to get in. In some cases in the US he could have accurately said, how many people are dying to get in. The US is still drawing tens of thousands of [...]

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A woman was recovering from heart surgery when the Lord appeared by her bedside. “Lord, are you here to take me home?” she asked. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one!) “No,” the Lord replied. “You’ve got 30 more years here on earth.” Well, knowing that , the woman thought while she was in the [...]

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Just four years after mainland China reopened to the West, I went there to live and teach. During that time I had the privilege of visiting a Chinese underground Church. The government was in the middle of a new campaign to crack down on what it called “spiritual pollution.” Of course, the Church was its [...]

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Daryl’s flight out of Chicago was cancelled last week and he had to spend the night in the Windy City. I decided not to go to church on Sunday, May 31st, and waited for my man to come home from the road. So, instead of sitting in a pew that Sunday morning I was sitting [...]

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Betty turned 78 on June 1st this year. She’s not married, has no children, was an only child and has no living relatives. Betty lives alone. She volunteers at IICS where Daryl and I work. She has volunteered there for nearly 15 years. She stuffs envelopes. Files Daryl’s crazy newspaper clippings. Gets huge mailings ready [...]

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