“What I think you really want is God,” my friend said to me. What a slap in the face. No, I want the girl! The protest nearly made it out of my mouth, but I caught it when it was still in the back of my throat. Surprised at me? I wasn’t talking about my […]
culture
What My Church Never Told Me (Cont.)
In college, I got a group of friends around me that were like me in that they believed in Jesus, but they were different in some surprising ways. They talked about relationship with God in a different way than I’d ever considered. For them, the Christian walk was not so much about getting from spiritual […]
Hosted Amongst the Tribesmen: a Descriptive, if not Humorous, Anecdotal Recollection (Part Four)
– I wish you could be standing here with me right now. I’m far outside any signal that my cell phone could pick up, where a dirt opening before me stretches with a few trees, and then behind me lies a community of manyattas. This particular community is called Tubcha 3, where we don’t know […]
Hosted Amongst the Tribesmen: a Descriptive, if not Humorous, Anecdotal Recollection (Part Three)
Under the tree were a small group of wazee (“wah-zay,” that is, older men). They were sitting around in a circle as we shared with them. One man gazed intensely through his glassy cataract-covered eyes. His forehead was covered with so many wrinkles it looked like a topographical map. We sat with the men as […]
Hosted Amongst the Tribesmen: a Descriptive, if not Humorous, Anecdotal Recollection (Part Two)
– I didn’t think we were risking our lives bringing the seemingly unknown stranger atop our vehicle. There’s such a honor culture here that we knew he legitimately just wanted a lift. The people in East Africa are quite friendly and content it as a whole, and the tribal individuals in this area especially so. […]
Hosted Amongst the Tribesmen: a Descriptive, if not Humorous, Anecdotal Recollection (Part One)
– Arrival. It wasn’t that I spent half the ride crammed in the back of a 4 x 4. It wasn’t that the dirt roads were bumpy. It wasn’t even that one of our vans got stuck in the mud and had to be winched out. It was that departure had been delayed several hours […]
Africa 2017: A Day in the Life
6:50am. Wake up. I prepare my bucket shower. I go to the bottom floor of the house and fill up the electric tea kettle with water. Put it on for a few minutes, and it is boiling. Pour it into the plastic basin that I have in the downstairs shower/bathroom. In the areas of the […]
A Guy’s Take: Beauty is a Choice
I am going to marry the most beautiful woman in the world. Just watch me. Who is it, you may ask? Well, I can’t tell you. Why? Because I don’t know who it is. How can I be so confident I’ll get such a beautiful woman? Now that is something I can tell you. First, […]
Jesus: Don’t Judge? (pt. 2)
Okay, maybe judgment isn’t such a bad word after all. What, then, could Jesus mean by His words in Matthew 7:1? Well, first, who is Jesus talking to in Matthew 7:1? Check the context. Four verses later, He addresses his audience as, “You hypocrite.” Now, I will be the first to admit that I and […]
The Struggle is Real (pt. 2)
In my mind, it was not the biggest loss of the night by any means. Atlanta’s epic collapse was overshadowed by something far greater. How ironic that it was a young American man in the most American of settings that showed me the reality of my situation in this culture?