I remember our first year on the fieldliterally thinking, “No one is ever,ever going to come to faith in Christ, no matter how many years I spend here.” I thought this because for the first time in my life, I was face-to-face with the realities that the story of Jesus was so completely other to the people I was living among.Buddhism [...]
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So I recently wrote about the awkward moments of living on support stateside– the guilt, the paranoia, the un-cool factor that works its way into the monthly newsletters. And, while all of that is true, I also wanted to talk about the positive ways living on financial support has affected me– at home and abroad. [...]
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So, we’ve been back in the States now for 5 months, and we’re still living on full financial support– which we did while living overseas, but somehow seems harder now that we’re back in the ol’ U.S. of A. (Notice our latest “prayer card family picture” above. Cool, but not as cool as the one [...]
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I know, that is the most boring title I could think of, too. Regardless, I’d love for you to take a minute to check out two things I’m excited have come together just this week. 1. First, for any of you who have been here with me any amount of time, you know that I [...]
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It was the dented light saber in the hands of the neighborhood boy that made me cry at 6:30 am this Saturday. Though I loathe yard sales, we decided the best way to scale down before we left the country was to do one. And so last week it was a mess of junk drawers [...]
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This is potentially one of the most difficult posts I’ve had to write in the three years I’ve been blogging. I don’t know how to communicate in my online life the detours, false-starts, apparent-dead-ends, and surprising corners the journey in our real lives has taken– especially in the past year. I don’t know how to [...]
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I’ll be honest, this missions gig hasn’t gone like I thought it would. When I was a teenager, I devoured books on Amy Carmichael, determined to live in some hut rescuing orphans. I wanted to “accomplish great things for God,” and I assumed that meant a dramatic adventure, namely, taking a plane somewhere. When I [...]
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One of my least favorite things about living overseas is raising financial support for our family. Like, I really, really, really hate it. I circle around these haunting ideas that we should be “tent making” and should go learn how to be a doctor or something, that everyone else in our family has “real” jobs, [...]
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I loved reading through the comments and engaging in the discussion last week about the value of Short Term Mission Trips {STMs}, their effectiveness and their costs. And as I answered people and asked others questions back, I think I recognized the quality I’ve been battling since I hit the ground here in Asia- cynicism. [...]
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Consider this: a group of 15 high school students {with four adult leaders} want to go on a missions trip to Africa. They write support letters, hold spaghetti dinners, call up grandma and gramps across the state line. The cost of the trip is 8 days out of their summer vacation and $1800 USD out [...]
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We just said goodbye to our closest family friends here in SE Asia. It was one of those very rare relationships where everyone in the family actually enjoyed each other — the kids, the wives, the husbands. And it was community born of necessity, and desperation, and proximity. We iced Christmas cookies together, we babysat [...]
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LauraParkerBlog.com.
My family has just returned from living overseas in SE Asia, where we were (and still are) involved in counter-human trafficking efforts. This blog is the honest recording of our journey– squatty potties and all. 
