This is the last day of August, and I don’t want the month to end. For one thing, it’s my birthday month, and I don’t want the parties to end. Additionally, August is the month when I, as a child, typically flew away from home to live at boarding school four hundred miles away. You can read about the challenges in my previous blog posts. Now, however, I’ve just returned from an epic two-week vacation in Australia. Chris and I…
During her 80s, my mom painstakingly wrote her memoir. Drawing on her memories of thirty years in Nigeria, she worked hard to summarize her life and the years she and my dad spent serving in Nigeria with SIM. To fill in her memory, she referred to the many letters she had written over the decades to family and friends back home in the US. When she turned 92, we finally published her magnum opus on Amazon KDP. The back of…
“Do I need to fly back home to see my oral surgeon?” I rubbed my jaw, gently massaging my throbbing tooth. “We’ve only been in Scotland two weeks, and we have a whole month left of our holiday.” My husband looked up from his laptop where he sat across from me at the kitchen table in our brightly lit cottage near Loch Ness. “Everything will work out. We’ll find you a dentist and get you taken care of.” His fingers…
This painting and poem popped up in my Facebook feed last week, and I cried when I read the poignant words. The poetry expresses how I quietly missed my mom and dad every day for the first four years at boarding school. As I read the poem, I mentally changed a few words to reflect a school day at Kent Academy (KA), but the author’s loneliness touched my emotions … and my tear ducts. Whom have you missed in the…
Happy Thanksgiving to my friends and family in the US, and Happy Holidays to all of you around the world. I’m blessed to have each of you as a friend. This month, I have much to be thankful for. (Not the least of which is that I’ve recently learned it’s acceptable to end a sentence with a preposition!) Our annual writers’ conference was scheduled for the beginning of November, near Sacramento, but since I had broken my kneecap, I wasn’t…
During the last thirty days… My mom’s memoir was published, Our daughter got married, I hosted two garden tea parties, Fractured my knee (again), Then canceled our annual neighborhood tea, and… This is apparently my 100th post! In January 2018, I created a website where I could post short devotions sharing what I learned as I searched for God’s involvement in my daily activities. Coincidentally, a month later, I received a prompt to write several vignettes about my childhood as…
This is a quick note to say my mom completed her memoir and it’s coming soon. Addendum: It’s here! https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DJDVHW47?ref_=pe_93986420_774957520 Over the past ten years, Marcella (Marcy) Jones has carefully crafted her memoir. In the book, she shares details about their thirty years in Nigeria. It’s being published through Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) and will be available on Amazon as a soft-cover and an eBook. Here’s a sneak preview of the back cover: Growing up on a farm in California’s…
Recently, several things went awry in my life. A sinus infection morphed into the flu then into bronchitis and had already lasted for over a month when I tripped over a foam roller I carelessly left on the floor. The searing pain in my left leg led to an ER visit and a diagnosis: tibial plateau fracture. Three weeks prior, my husband had retired, and our health insurance terminated at the end of the month. COBRA coverage was supposed to…
Nearly every year since our 25th wedding anniversary, Chris and I have flown back to his homeland, Scotland. He’s a pilot and loves to travel, but I’m a homebody who traveled too much as a child. When away from home, I feel a bit lost and rudderless. I just want to stay put. So this week, I’m grounding myself in Scotland by calling or messaging friends back home in California. I’m trying to comprehend that I’m here in the north…
Do you have a heart for orphans? Have you ever wanted to travel to Kenya? Today I’m delighted to share the ministry that my sister, Cindy, and her husband, Kyon Yi, have taken on. Come with me to Kenya–a beautiful country I haven’t actually seen–but through this blog post, we’re both visiting virtually! Twenty-two years ago, Kyon’s mom, Elaine Yi, witnessed the plight of street orphans in Kenya when she visited there with World Vision. Previously, Elaine had partnered with…