I stumbled into adventures most grandmas couldn’t imagine

All I ever wanted was to live a quiet, secure life in a little white house with a picket fence and a rose garden, but my husband Dave—a free spirit who seldom limits himself to coloring within other people’s lines—and our adventuresome God (ditto) had other plans. Just when our youngest finished college, both Dave and God hollered, “Africa!”

Stunned, I asked myself, How can we leave our kids and parents and live on the other side of the planet?

For months, I waited for God to convince me that He really wanted us to move to Africa. I gave Him every opportunity to either show us green lights and send us to Africa or red lights and keep us home—and He gave us only green. So I sighed, and turned, and took a radical, outrageous, blind leap of faith.

A year after we moved to Africa with Wycliffe Bible Translators, our daughter-in-law Jill gave birth to our first grandchild and I discovered I was not the traditional, quaint little grandmother I always envisioned. No, I had stumbled into adventures most grandmas couldn’t imagine—a hippo charged me, a baboon pooped in my breakfast, a Maasai elder spit at me, and I drank tea from a pot cleaned with cow’s urine.

I decided to write those stories, and more, in letters to my granddaughter, Maggie. I knew she was too young to understand them then, but I also knew that someday she, and my future grandchildren, would grow up and enjoy my tales.

When the right time arrived, I gathered my old letters and emails and compiled them for the grandchildren—six of them now—and for Grandma’s Letters from Africa, a memoir about my first four years (of eight) in Africa working as a missionary journalist.

But Grandma’s Letters from Africa is not merely an account of adventure. And, unlike many missionary stories, this is not a record of saving lost heathens. This is my story about balancing God’s call with responsibilities toward my husband, children, grandchildren, and aging parents.

It’s my record of everyday life in a behind-the-scenes, yet important, role.

It recounts hilarious incidents and frightful ones, joys and heartaches, answered prayers and those God seemed to leave unanswered.

Grandma’s Letters from Africa is my story about falling in love with Africa, its people, and the work—both official and unofficial—God gave me.

Above all, it’s a chronicle of God’s heart, His delightful creativity, and His amazing power to help those in need.

You can buy Grandma’s Letters from Africa through your local independent bookseller, through Books-A-Million, Barnes and Noble, Amazon, and other booksellers. Powell’s Books in Portland currently has a special sale on the paperback (only $7.95).

Also be sure to click on and “like” the Facebook Page for Grandma’s Letters from Africa: AMemoir. You’ll find additional sharing going on there.