“The children are always ours, every single one of them, all over the globe” (James Baldwin)
travel
A Child Headed Household in Zimbabwe
Photo by Deanna Heyn Let’s say you travel from one of the richest countries in the world. You take 3 flights and land more than thirty hours later at Harare International Airport. Then you head out on an increasingly pockmarked tarmac for two hours, turn on a washboard dirt road, and drive another hour. Next…Read more A Child Headed Household in Zimbabwe
An Invitation to an Upside Down Kingdom
The Beatitudes Joy of Kenya; 2013; 21" x 28 1/2"; mixed media: watercolor, pastel, charcoal. Many years ago, in 2002, I stumbled across an old, out-of-print book about the Beatitudes in a used bookstore on the outskirts of Nairobi. Starting my first day in an unfamiliar environment, displaced from my usual frame of reference, I…Read more An Invitation to an Upside Down Kingdom
An invitation…
Flight of the Kambu; 2024; mixed media: watercolor, acrylic, chalk, ink. Dear friends, Writing a novel is an interesting journey. There's the writing, and then there's an entirely different process of building "platform." I'm definitely much more interested in the first. Nevertheless, my process of signing with an agent a few yeas ago felt like…Read more An invitation…
Jerusalem
Jerusalem; 2024; 19.5" x 25.5"; mixed media: watercolor, ink, chalk, acrylic. Three of us walk its busy streets at dusk, life pulsing all around. Cars revving, children laughing as they swing in a park, light fading over a vast city. We follow our map down a quieter lane to an obscure gate in a wall,…Read more Jerusalem
Unspeakable Treasure, Tucked Into the Cracks
Photo used by permission. (c) 2023 Keenan Morgan, Hope's Promise Kenya Connection Trip, Mathare Valley treasure. We walked their community where half a million people live in six square miles of abject poverty. We slipped in its sewage-laced mud; ducked under its live, pirated-electricity wires; crowded into its one-room, windowless homes; gazed over its garbage…Read more Unspeakable Treasure, Tucked Into the Cracks
Hope and transformation in Vietnam
Our friend tells our team that we will visit a village in the mountains where two kids started their lives who are now members of a Hope's Promise family for orphaned children and where Hope’s Promise implements a Thrive scholarship group for thirty orphaned and vulnerable children who live with relatives. That’s about all we…Read more Hope and transformation in Vietnam
Unquenchable
When I was young, I consumed missionary biographies like candy. These people seemed so daring, brave, other-worldly. Pressing to the ends of the earth with a message more valuable than their very lives. I read of men and women who lived for years with unreached people groups, simply to learn the language so the Bible…Read more Unquenchable
Be Bold
Even before 2020, the poorest of the poor in Zimbabwe faced seemingly insurmountable odds. Some of those people, like Linda*, lacking even a home after her husband died, fled to unoccupied stretches of land and constructed mud huts by hand. Even as Linda lost so much, though, she accumulated grandchildren as their parents died or…Read more Be Bold
Across the World
Across the world, we assume we are so different. Separated by geography, customs, food, governments, and economic and class status. And then the unimaginable happens, chaos encompasses the globe in a universal experience. And we realize we have so much more in common than we ever imagined. Unemployment and scarcity, vulnerability to disease, loneliness, death.…Read more Across the World
Colleen Briggs Images & Writing 