Coffee is only dangerous for me after four o’clock. I am guilty of this foolishness today so I’m up late, already read my share of book chapters, and thinking about getting work done around this “house” …. but my feet are aching so badly I can only sit here are write.

My feet ache because I spent all day today moving into our new home for the next twelve months – the dorm at Sahel Academy. This large building is empty (except for our family now), with lots of empty rooms and beds, long dark hallways, all silent for the summer.

There are some unwelcome critters too – I just killed a cockroach in the bathroom!

This got me thinking, yet again, about something I read last year in a wonderful book about the life of Lillias Trotter. (She was a missionary from England, who spent most of her adult life in Algeria) I recall her words so often since it applies fittingly to my new life here! I want to share them with you — trust me, even if you do not live in Africa, this will mean something to you! Especially for those of you who are mission-minded about your lives, no matter where you live — I believe this will ring in your heart and bring an “amen” to your lips!

“How many of us have said and sung with all our hearts ‘Anywhere with Jesus!’, but at the time we did not realize all that it meant for us. Indeed at home, and surrounded by all that home means, we could not know. When the test comes we must not forget that ‘anywhere’  means for missionaries something different from life in England, and let us take very good care not to make a misery of anything that ‘anywhere’ brings us. To us in Algeria it must mean sometime or other, Arab food. Do we object to it? And mice, do we mind them? And mosquitos, do we think them dreadful? In some parts it means close contact with dirt and repulsive disease. Yet if Jesus is there what have we possibly to complain of? It means living among a stiff-necked and untrue people and struggling with a strange and difficult language. And yet let us evermore write over all our miseries, big and for the most part very little, these transforming words: WITH JESUS. And then the very Breath of Heaven will breathe upon our whole being and we shall be glad.”

– Lillias Trotter, Passion for the Impossible

I hope that encourages you today! Go ahead — “write” WITH JESUS over any of your current difficulties. Let’s experience the peace and gladness that only the comfort of Christ can bring.

“For in Him we live and move and have our being.” Acts 17:28a