As the sun rises each day in the refugee camp, a familiar site is mothers walking together to the bore hole to get water.They are often in small groups. Plastic jerrycans in their hands. Each woman wearing colourful toob’s (long flowy pieces of printed fabric) wrapped around their bodies. They return to their homes gracefully…
Continue reading ➞ WHAT IF WE WERE MOTHERS WALKING TOGETHER?
It was a memorable morning at the refugee camp.I heard them singing before I arrived.Training was to start at 9:30. As I rode my bike along the straw fence-line their melodies were audible. Turning through the gate I saw their colourful toobs1 dancing with hands clapping and legs moving to the rhythms. No instruments, just…
Continue reading ➞ COMMUNITY HEALTH EVANGELISM EXPLAINED. And remembering songs of joy
Dare I ask, what is God's attitude towards repetition? Does He view His daily work, like making the sun rise, mundane and ordinary? It was June 2018. Our family were back in Australia. We were staying at my parent’s house on the beautiful Coast. I was up early one morning, writing, trying to piece together…
I hate to admit it, but I struggle not to idolise time. I hate ‘wasting time.’ I grew up making to-do lists and carefully planning my days towards maximum efficiency - even in primary school! Contentment at the end of a day came to me if my to do list had been completed, if I…
Continue reading ➞ JOURNEYING TOWARDS CONTENTMENT. My daily life in a refugee camp
My husband grew up on a farm in Washington State. He was driving tractors from an early age. Pulling things apart, working out how they work and fixing stuff has always been his ‘thing’. He studied construction management at college and first got passionate about working out practical and creative solutions to better the lives…
Why mud brick constructions? My husband builds things. Houses. Solar powered cars. Toys for our son. But he particularly loves the challenge of building with only locally available resources. One resource that is plentiful in the camp is dirt (as the dark brown colour of my son’s daily bathwater testifies). It is everywhere. It is…
Continue reading ➞ YOU WON’T BELIEVE THESE 5 MUD BRICK CONSTRUCTIONS. My home for 2 years
Do you feel bogged down and overwhelmed by your daily? Do you wake up and feel like you are just getting back on that treadmill again, trying to get from sunrise to sunset and sunrise again amidst the messes and meltdowns and monotony?Is there hope? As a mum in a refugee camp, the treadmill of…
Landing in a beautiful hard place Have you ever ended up somewhere you had planned to get to, only to find yourself wondering just moments into arriving, what on earth am I doing here? That was me as I stepped off the plane onto the dusty Refugee Camp airstrip on the 13th May 2016. I wasn’t…
Continue reading ➞ WHAT ON EARTH AM I DOING HERE? When life lands us in hard places
Do you ever listen to a song and a line just keeps running on repeat in your head? I would often find myself walking through the Refugee Camp singing to myself, ‘Would you let me see the world behind your eyes’. It’s a line from a Jon Foreman song. I would watch the people who…
Have you ever been relieved in a social setting because your child is with you? Or am I the only one who has found having a child with me can transform awkward interactions into something much lighter? Sure, there are times that we wish our children were elsewhere. When they poo at the wrong time…
Continue reading ➞ 3 WAYS I BELIEVE CHILDREN MAY TRANSFORM OUR JOURNEY
Hallelujah in the Mountains 