“Calcutta eats missionaries for breakfast, lunch, and dinner,” the missionary from Chenai warned us. Huddled together in the dark basement of a ministry building in San Francisco, our team of 12 women and two men received our Calcutta briefing from a veteran of over 25 years in India. He told us of Koli, the goddess  Read more »

If a year ago you had told me — a semi-normal guy born and raised by missionary parents in the ways of the American evangelical — that I’d abandon my church of fifteen years, no longer be attending regular church services and entertaining Catholicism, well… I might have believed you, actually. That’s because last year, on Easter Sunday of all days, I became an atheist in the pew of my own church.

Millions of people pass through Howrah train station in Kolkota, India, but there is an invisible life that few travelers actually see. Around 200 orphaned children live at the train station, huffing glue to suppress their appetites and living a violent, tragic, almost animalistic lifestyle. Most of the kids have no idea how they even  Read more »

Reverence for an earthly king inspires reverence for the Heavenly King in Jessica Mock’s latest column.

“Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen: 
to loose the chains of injustice
 and untie the cords of the yoke, 
to set the oppressed free 
and break every yoke?
 Is it not to share your food with the hungry
 and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
when you see the naked, to clothe him,
 and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
”

What do you do when you can’t think of anything to write? You turn it over to the folks who do the reading every week! This week’s discussion focuses on standing up for our beliefs. Feel free to join in the discussion in the comments section!

This is the second story in a series about Pattaya, Thailand. Betsi Clark travelled to Thailand with Lauren Nelson, Phil Porter and Sarah Paulk, and found much more than she bargained for on the sometimes scintillating, sometimes sad, always interesting streets of Pattaya.