As we enter the new year, Mark and I want to pray for you—our partners—since you so faithfully pray for us:
Ministry
RENEWed Day by Day
Three times a year the Member Care Team at the Christar Mobilization Center, U.S. hosts RENEW, a five-day retreat for workers on home assignment. I wrote some thoughts for Christar's blog about how this event gives workers the opportunity to be refreshed, heard, and encouraged.
Give the Gift of Good Listening
Each month I write a post for Bible.org for their women's blog: Engage. I am reposting this article for my Pondered Treasures readers because I believe so much in the power of effective listening.
I Only Have Five Loaves and Two Fish
Bring what you have to Jesus—prayers, pennies, minutes, baby steps. And let him multiply them until they overflow.
Moses’s Five Reasons Why Not and God’s Five Assurances
As I prepare for yet another opportunity to deliver God’s message, I am tempted again to fixate on my inadequacies. How ironic that the first message I ever delivered in front of my fellow Christian Education classmates was on Moses's call (Exodus 3–4) and his focus on “I am not” rather than “you are God.”
A Better Word, Alive and Active
“Scripture in the trade language only hits the surface, but in the Biangai the message goes deep. If everyone hears this they will all repent,” the youth pastor exclaimed with a wide grin. My parents, missionaries in Papua New Guinea, had just tested a newly translated passage of the New Testament on some local believers.
10 Lessons Learned by a First Term Global Worker
Let me introduce my guest writer: a worker with my agency serving in the Balkans. She originally wrote this for her own newsletter, but it is so good I want to share it with my readers with her permission.
Crockpot or Microwave?
In my typical fashion, I dug in immediately, reading articles, finding new voices, listening to podcasts and posting to my social media. At the end of the week, my screen time was up 104%! I vacillated between wanting to throw up my hands in hopelessness (What can I do?) to jumping into premature action (What can I do?)
Pondered Treasures 