Here are some castle ruins near Lipova, Romania that I climbed all over in September. Remember how we don't have castle ruins in America? Yeah, those rocks have been there since before America was a country. Pretty crazy to think about. ...

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Here are some extra video clips from my time in Moldova. Note that I am wearing the Green Sweater in one of the clips. A Thoughts from Places video from Moldova is forthcoming. ...

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I wore this sweater for the ENTIRE month of Moldova. Literally. I slept in it, worked in it, ate in it, the whole nine yards. And now, I put it in its final resting place - the Bucharest Airport in Romania. Funny thing was that Nepal ended up being way colder than I thought it would be and I bought a knock-off North Face jacket (Or "North Farce" as we liked to call it). Oh, well. Rest...

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I’m writing this blog from the my room in Indianapolis. I can look out the window and see leafless trees and mud and the rain-soaked wooden play structure that has stood forlornly in our backyard for near fifteen years. It’s not the same as looking out the window and seeing an exotic river delta or a bustling city street covered in street vendors or a barren Moldavian road waiting for ...

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Here is a fun video I made from Moldova. We were at the top of a mountain in the northernmost town in the country, a sleepy little place called Naslavcea. There was a rehabilitation center run by our contact for the month, Andrei. Andrei and a previous World Race team took a cross to the top of this mountain and set it up there as a place to go an worship and meditate (after a pretty tough twenty ...

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Greetings from India!   First of all, I must apologize to you, the faithful readers of my blog, for my infrequent updates as of late. The internet abroad is difficult to find and harder to actually use when found. You would think that through all of the “We should reset the modem” and “I wonder if it would help if I jiggled the ethernet cable” moments I would have le...

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A couple blogs ago I wrote about Asha Nepal and the work we were doing there, their mission for giving freedom to enslaved women and children in Nepal. After working there for about a week, my team and I headed out into the countryside south of Katmandu to a village called Khokana. We took a bus to a station at the north part of the village and hiked down into the valley to the church at which we ...

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I have spent the last ten days at the most beautiful place in the world (so far as I’ve seen): a home for women and children rescued from the sex trade and from the streets called Asha Nepal. The cool Nepali air chills my bones pleasantly as I wake up every morning and head to the roof to read my Bible and take tea. On a clear morning, I can see the Himalayas from up there. But there is more...

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Here is a long overdue Thoughts from Places video about our time in Romania. I hope you enjoy! ...

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As I stood on the tired concrete porch of a cramped house on the property of a home for women rescued from the sex trade near Kathmandu, Nepal, my thoughts drifted to this time almost exactly one year ago. What was I doing?   Most likely, I was in a high school classroom teaching freshman algebra to rowdy fourteen-year-olds. Last fall, I had been without a job for nearly six months after gr...

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