Author: trotters41

The Tropical Seasons Paradox

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by Elizabeth

“If you cannot think of anything appropriate to say, you will please restrict your remarks to the weather.”

–Mrs. Dashwood to her youngest daughter Margaret in the 1995 film adaptation of Jane Austen’s novel Sense and Sensibility.

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Flooding in the streets during rainy season

Today’s post is about the weather. This should be an exceedingly appropriate topic, if a certain esteemed fictional character has anything to say about it (though I’m not sure she does). Instead of four seasons, those of us living in Cambodia have only three — all of which fall within what I would call Midwestern American “summer.” That means that to the outsider, all of life here is just plain HOT. After living in Cambodia awhile, though, I’ve learned to discern the subtle differences between the seasons.

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Missionary Mommy Wars {A Life Overseas}

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by Jonathan

I just want to come out and say it; I’m not a mommy. Shoot, I’m not even a woman. (OK, those were some of the weirdest sentences I’ve ever written.) But despite my obvious shortcomings, I’m still writing this article. Here’s why:

I look around and see young moms and experienced moms who are serving cross-culturally, and they’re under siege. I see them, battle-weary and bleary-eyed, burdened by expectations that would crush the strongest. I see them wrangle toddlers and tonal languages. I watch them brave open-air markets with raw meat hanging on hooks and open-air homes with neighbors peering in through windows.

Click Here to continue reading this post on A Life Overseas…

A814AB Section of barbed wire. Image shot 2003. Exact date unknown.

Making Friends with Short Term Workers {A Life Overseas}

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Today Elizabeth is over at A Life Overseas, reminiscing about relationships with shorter term missionaries.

This is the time of year when summer interns head back “home.” The time when short term teams taper off, and kids go back to school. The time when life on the field supposedly returns to ”normal.” So as summer winds down, I want to take some time to honor the short term workers who have touched my life over the past few years.

I didn’t know my life would intersect with so many short term workers when I first moved overseas. It all started when we’d lived in Cambodia for six months, and we met a girl volunteering at the orphanage next door to us. She’d been surprised most of the volunteers weren’t believers and was desperate for some Christian fellowship. So we took her to church with us.

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Part 3: What Does Children in Families Do?

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by Elizabeth

So far in this series, I’ve written about what it was like to live next to a typical Cambodian orphanage for two years. I’ve also outlined some reasons why children might be sent to an orphanage, even if they are not orphans. The current system, as I’ve described it, is incredibly broken.

This project has required a lot of mental and emotional energy, certainly more than I had initially expected to give. The deeper I delved into the orphan and orphanage issue, the more poverty I discovered, and the more complicated the problem became. The social problems stemming from poverty can be very disheartening at times. That’s why the work of Children in Families is so very hopeful and encouraging to me.CIF-Logo

So today, instead of just discussing the problems, as I’ve done in the first two posts of this series, I’m going to offer some solutions. How does the organization Children in Families help at-risk children and their families? That’s the question I’m hoping this blog post will answer, along with some of the common concerns people have about family-based care, because they are valid concerns, and because Children in Families has answers to those concerns.

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Paul, the Mysogynist?

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by Elizabeth

While this tends to be a faith-walk type of blog, and not a theology blog, I’d be a fool not to admit that some of my biggest personal crises happen at the intersection of faith and theology. As this is an enormous subject, and as I am not a Bible scholar, this post is not meant to offer an authoritative stance on my part, or even to start a debate: it is simply an important part of my faith journey that I feel the need to share. I asked God to help me write something that honors Him but that expresses my struggle to understand certain parts of the New Testament, and this is the result.

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Saint Paul, by Raphael

I always loved the apostle Peter. It seemed to me that he said whatever he was thinking before he had time to think about it. He was impulsive, given to emotional outbursts, and faltered under fear — and I could relate. Yet Peter always returned to Jesus, and he lived Forgiven.

Paul, on the other hand, was never quite so important to me. I only started getting to know him several years ago, in a counselor’s office, as I worked through the concept of grace. Week after week I sat on that couch in the counselor’s office, crying, trying desperately to understand the doctrine of Grace, trying to accept the fact that God loves me completely, apart from anything I do or don’t do.

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