I was a missionary for many years.

Often, missionaries find writing newsletters home to be one of the more difficult parts of their life. It can be hard to find topics that will interest and inspire your supporters.

I never had that problem.

I was raised in a wonderful Conservative Baptist Church in Oregon. I love my childhood church. They were consistently supportive of me, and my church's membership funded a large majority of my ten plus years of missionary service.

They always loved my newsletters home. I worked in several "difficult access" countries: religiously difficult, politically difficult, and economically difficult.

I wrote stories about the risks we took to fulfill our missionary calling. In many locations we had to find creative ways to get in and out of countries just to fulfill our work.

In one country, we were labeled "false believers." The government would never give us a religious visa as missionaries, so we lived as "tourists." To do this, we had to leave the country every ...