I walked out to the skate park, tired from a long day of travel. My day had started at 2 a.m. local time; now, the sun was setting. The mixture of travel fatigue, a good Mexican supper and the feeling of “coming home” to a place we have invested in for more than a decade created a sense of wonder as a considered what I watched. The skate park behind the YWAM Ensenada Campus is the child of my brother Omar and his wife Stephanie. Over the years they have prayed, begged, worked, fought, failed and then got up and prayed, begged, worked and fought some more. The result is the near-constant sound of skateboards rolling across the slab, ramping up the half-pipes, grinding the rails. You’ll hear c

Do you ever wish that spy-tech from the movies was easily accessible? If I could buy anything today, it would probably be the super-high-definition contact lens cameras. There are just so many moments in life that I'd love to capture instantaneously. Sometimes it's an amazing sunset, or the juxtaposition of two buildings side-by-side. Most often, though, it's the peaceful state of my sleeping kiddos, as their little chests rise and fall and their eyelashes do that exquisite and almost imperceptible flutter as they dream. Try as I might, I can’t make my camera do justice to the peaceful scene. As I read through our text for this week, Luke 2:8-20, the words of verse 19 stuck out to me the m

I have always been fascinated with villains, in books and in movies, especially the ones who turn out to be good: Professor Snape, Boo Radley, Darth Vader, T-Rex and, of course, Ebenezer Scrooge. A Christmas Carol in its various versions captures the attention of millions of Americans this time of year. For me, our enthrallment with Ebenezer’s story is deeply ironic. Who is Ebenezer Scrooge? Starfleet commander, tortured hero or 19th-century Ruffian? He’s rich. He wants to stay rich. He wants nothing to distract him from being rich. After all, he has a right to be rich and he wants no one to take it away from him. Left to his own devices, he has no interest in dwelling on the past. He cares

Last October was anything but peaceful for the Peters family. I was pregnant, raising an almost two-year-old, and missing Ike who was already working in Fayetteville. We had to sell our Little Rock house, find a place to live up here and, as if that weren’t a well-shaken stress cocktail, I did not want to move. I grew up moving a lot as a kid, so you’d think I’d be used to transplanting. But something happened during those five years in Little Rock. It became home. In a sense, Ike and I grew up with our friends there. We survived and supported each other through job losses and car wrecks. We found a wonderful mentoring ministry. We started having babies. And I actually loved that Ike’s famil