By Mommy Emily I’ve wrapped up 18 gifts from the thrift store for my kids to open, one for each of the days I’m gone. I’ve snuggled and wept. I’ve had a slumber party with dancing and games and too many stories, because tomorrow I will say goodbye to my family and step onto a…
by Erica Hale It’s been just under a year since my feet last touched the deep red soil of Sierra Leone, since we walked through the villages and drove to see all the farmland being cultivated and visited the people across the deep waters of the Little Scarcies river, where there were no churches and…
By Mommy Emily It’s dusk when the news hits my phone. The church we worked so hard to build for Pastor Santos last month in the South Sudan camps has been destroyed overnight — along with countless other churches and homes and businesses — by a vicious cyclone that went on to strike Mozambique, Malawi…
By Mommy Emily I’ve been meditating on the sacred holding places. The places which held Jesus on earth. Mary’s womb, which first made space for the holding of the divine conception. The manger, a rough-hewn wooden cradle, holding the King’s infant skin; the wilderness, holding Jesus’ stomach hollowed by 40 days of hunger; the stone…
Post by Joanne Viola, treasurer of The Lulu Tree The photos come in on my phone of men and women – my brothers and sisters – in South Sudan. They labor so hard to construct churches, sanctuaries for the people to come and worship, and hear God’s Word. They are simple structures consisting of open…
Post by Erica Hale, VP of The Lulu Tree It’s hard sometimes, living in two worlds. Here, in the United States, a skiff of snow dusts the ground and the frozen grass pokes stiffly through. In the waning light, Christmas lights start to blink on one house at a time–the furnace kicks in with a…