Theology, opinion, fiction, and the occasional limerick.
Today is our second-born son Nathanael’s 17th birthday, and as I contemplate this his final year before official adulthood, I am reminded of the many times that he has surprised us, entertained us, and brought us joy with the unexpected things that often come out of his mouth. What follows are his greatest hits, the…
As I worked through the book of Genesis with my Old Testament Survey students this year, I noticed, for the first time, something quite profound. Are you ready? You might want to get out pen and paper and write this down. Genesis 12 is preceded by Genesis 11. Neat huh? No? Well…let me unpack it…
Last summer a team came down from the US, and in the course of their stay one of the men bought a cake from a local vendor at an exorbitant price. When I found out about it, I laughed and told him “Welcome to Brazil!” Later, as we were discussing the day’s events, the group…
I’m going to start out this article by blowing right by Godwin’s Law and drawing a straight line to the Nazis. In my defense, my intent is not to smear a political opponent with contrived similarities to der Fuehrer (So you like bratwurst, huh? You know who else liked bratwurst?). Rather, my aim is to…
They are ubiquitous throughout small-town USA. Today they mostly serve as houses, sheds or chicken coops, but once they were a fixture, an integral part of every community. You can still usually tell them apart from other houses, sheds, or chicken coops by their rather unique structure. I am referring, of course, to the one-room…
This is the long-awaited final installment of a three-part series designed to help potential short-term missionaries as they seek to make the most of available language-acquisition tools. In Part One we talked about how to best use Duolingo, and in Part Two we talked about how to take advantage of the foreign language content to…
This is the second installment of a three-part (so far) series on digital tools available for people interested in short-term missions opportunities. In the first post we covered everyone’s favorite language app, Duolingo. Now we will move to another app that has proven very helpful to me: Spotify. Spotify? Really? Yes, and here’s why. With…
The other day this tweet caught my eye: The date on that tweet was 12:03 PM, October 3, 2023. At 6:23 AM on October 7, less than four days later, the first Hamas rockets crashed into Israel. If this were the only thing happening, it might not be so interesting from an eschatological standpoint. Even…
Over the years we have had many visitors from the US who have come to help us with sundry projects here in Brazil. They have stayed for anywhere from a few days to a few months. They have come by themselves or in groups. And invariably, as plans are being made for their visit, they…
Several years ago I “rescued” some of my parents’ old music LPs from certain death. Since then I have often wanted to listen to them, with one main issue standing in the way: I had no phonograph player. I kept my eyes open, but the cost of a new one here in Brazil was always…