Looking back over 10 years of travel

My journals began as just simple e-mails home to describe for my family what I had done during the week or weekend. It has now evolved to not just an outline of what I have done, but to word-pictures of what I have seen, thought, and felt in the new places I visited. And through word-of-mouth, thanks mainly to my wife’s efforts, I send these journals not just to a dozen or so family and friends, but to nearly 80 family, friends, and co-workers.

What follows is a brief summary of some of the moments that left an impact on me:
• Contemplating a blown out sneaker while exercising, then seeing a shoeless man sleeping on the beach in Rio de Janeiro
• Swarmed by begging children in Cameroon
• An English speaking Christian fundamentalist sitting in a Catholic mass in a French-speaking West African country
• Having dinner with a friend from church who happens to be in Lima, Peru for one night the same time you are.
• Driving through a beautiful mountain valley in Puerto Rico before realizing you made a wrong turn, haven’t a clue where you are, and not sure you will ever find the same spot again.
• Watching people post written prayer requests in a cathedral in Lima along with a photograph so God will see their face and hear their prayers.
• Washing your dishes with hot water in an air-conditioned apartment in Lagos, while watching a woman across the street washing her dishes in the backyard in a rain barrel.

These are some of the memories I have written home about. I encourage you to experience the culture when you travel. And capture those experiences and memories in the way that will best stay with you. I think that it is when you are touched, whether you call it spiritual or emotional, and you take note of that moment that the experience becomes a part of you.

Abigail Adams, wife of the 2nd President of the United States and mother to the 6th, once encouraged her grandsons to keep diaries of their travels overseas. She said that if they did not keep a written record of their journeys through other countries, their trips would not be much better than that of the birds that pass over head and then are gone.

Many of us today remember our journeys not through diaries but through our photographs, videos, and souvenirs. While the photographs capture the memories of what we saw, they may fail to capture what we felt at those moments.

Several years ago, when I began traveling on business, I began to supplement by photographs with written journals of my thoughts and experiences in the new lands I visited.

These are my experiences of what in the world God has shown me on my business trips, and vacations with my wife, Cindy.