(xaris and shalom)

On many topics, my prayers are vague.  When it comes to mind, I may ask for God's protection that day.  If it occurs to me, at the end of the day, I may thank Him for keeping me safe.  But unless I'm doing something like wandering around Cleveland at night looking for a bus station, or traveling on roads that are icy and being blizzard-ed upon, I generally don't really think too much about God's providence in regards to my safety. Yesterday morning, I did. Yesterday morning I was scheduled to start my shift at Panera at 8 am.  This starting time always leads to me rejoicing, because it means that I can catch a bus at a stop that's quite close to the apartment rather than my normal one, which is a bit of a hike. A little before 7:20, I headed out of the apartment and went to cross the road to get to the bus stop, and noticed that there was a police car and two civilian cars pulled over there... right in front of my bus stop!   I hope I'm not going to get in troub

So, my mom has always been very fond of Le Petit Prince .  I don't think I'm wise enough yet to love it as much as she does, but I already own a Chinese/English version of it. Anyway, when I saw a book called Little Princes: One Man's Promise to Bring Home the Lost Children of Nepal  sitting on the library shelf, I pulled it off, because clearly the author of this book (Conor Grennan) already had good literary references going in his favor.  Plus, it was about social issues in Asia.  What's not to love about that? It was a good book.  I loved it. And it made me miss the kids who live at the House of Faith orphanage in Chiang Dao quite fiercely.  Depreena and I only spent a few nights there, and communication was limited, due to my Thai vocabulary consisting of sawadee-ka (hello) and korpkun-ka  (thanks), but there was a lot of fun and laughter and love.  I remember a conversation with Mookda as we walked back from our swim time in the nearby dam about how we were sister

April 1 is known internationally as a day for practical jokes.  (Trust me, students in China get pretty into it.)  But when I think of April 1, I'm more likely to think of something else -- a call that came eight years ago with the news that "Pappy" Oscar, a man from our church who had adopted us as grandchildren, had died. He had been diagnosed with cancer only a month earlier. And every year I'm a little surprised about how much I still miss him.  But I do  miss him; I miss a lot of things about him. I miss how he prayed.  He is one of the few (only?) people I've ever known who used King James English in his prayers without it sounding stilted. I miss his love.  I remember him teasing me about boys and saying he'd better be one of the first to know when I got engaged.  I miss his hugs, even though my hair somehow always got tangled in his glasses. I miss his goofiness.  He was incredibly willing to play along with whatever us kids were doing.  Or to instigat