I want to tell you about my trip to China, and I will, but it's hard to know where to begin. I'm still processing. And I don't want to write a whole blog post about what the smog is like, although I can't say I haven't considered it.

In the meantime, here are some other things I've written around the web.

The Missionary Myth (behind a paywall for Books & Culture subscribers - check it out in print!)

I reviewed Miracle on Voodoo Mountain: A Young Woman's Remarkable Story of Pushing Back the Darkness for the Children of Haiti by Megan Boudreaux. Incidentally, this book is currently the #1 Bestseller in the Christian Missions category at Amazon. It is a remarkable story. In my review, I placed this book in the context of the history of this genre of missionary narratives, and, of course, I took issue with some of the rhetoric that is often used in and about such books.

Prophetic Imagination for Church and Mission at the Englewood Review of Books

Scott Bessenecker's Overturning Tables: Freeing Missions from the Christian-Industrial Complex is a thought-provoking look at the history of missions in America, and a series of suggestions for ways we might imagine changing our sending structures. This book really made me think and excited me.

Some of my friends at Our Daily Bread have started a new website called Off the Page. I'm contributing a few short posts there focusing on what I've learned from starting to plant roots on a couple of country acres in the midwest. Here's how my most recent post begins:

Cutting the grass is a kind of prayer.

Last summer we moved to a house on two acres of prairie in rural Indiana, and we bought a riding lawn mower. It was embarrassing, really—we’d moved from Seattle, where all our eco-friendly neighbors used gas-free, hand-push mowers. Now we drove a gas-guzzling tractor mower for two hours each week, all summer long.

When we’d first moved to Indiana, we’d smirked at the sight of women in bikinis riding tractor mowers, muffin tops jiggling as the machines bounced over uneven lawns. Now I claimed the job and decided to follow suit, mowing in a tankini and shorts. Might as well work on my skin cancer while I released toxic fumes into the atmosphere.

But it quickly became my favorite chore. (Click through to finish reading.)