Welcoming Strangers

Welcoming Strangers

My first Christmas in China, my American teammate got sick and asked to be alone. Rather than spend Christmas binge-watching television by myself, I jogged to the outskirts of the city where tarmac turned to orange dust. I ran through dry fields that would grow...

You’d Do the Same for Me

You’d Do the Same for Me

We’ve been invited to a church member’s home for a meal just three times in three years. As an accidental experiment in the Colorado city where we moved three years ago, we visited 17 churches, landing at 2 for about a year, 3 for a month each, and visited the others...

Small Sticky Hands Lead Me to Jesus

Small Sticky Hands Lead Me to Jesus

Last summer, hugely pregnant with my third child, I took my 1- and 3-year-olds on a walk every afternoon. I’d saunter along behind them, absently resting my hand on my taut belly, hoping to receive some communication in the form of a heel or shoulder blade in my palm....

Leslie Verner
Leslie Verner is the author of Invited: The Power of Hospitality in an Age of Loneliness (Herald Press). She traveled widely and spent five years in China before returning to the U.S. to marry an actor in Chicago. A former middle school teacher with a masters in intercultural studies, Leslie now writes before dawn and reads too many books at once. She lives with her husband and their three small children in northern Colorado. Leslie writes about faith, justice, and cross-cultural issues at www.scrapingraisins.com, in her monthly newsletter, and elsewhere on the web. Follow her on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

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