Home Is Where The Heart Is

If home is where the heart is,

Then I have many homes.

I long for my eternal home

Wrapped up in Jesus' Arms

Enjoying His great bounty

Where love and praise abounds.

Isaiah eleven, six through nine,

Paradise restored.

Glorious future free from sin,

Rejoicing in the Lord. ~


I love my home in Kosovo

Where God will build His Church.

He has put a call

Deep in our hearts,

A desire we can't deny

To live and work with people there

And overcome each trial.

Among the towns and villages,

We live and work and teach,

And share the news of Jesus,

The Gospel message preached. ~


I love my hometown

-always home-

the place I grew

And played

As a child and with my own kids,

A home I'd never trade.

I miss and love my family there

And all my dear sweet friends.

It's a place I always can return

until the visit ends. ~


Erseka is a kind of home

with welcoming arms wide,

They've housed and loved and cared for us

Through good and harder times.

The place Hasan and I first met

We often will return

To learn a little more again

And sometimes teach in turn. ~


Yes, we've been blessed with many homes,

It's wonderful and hard,

To have so many that we love,

All spread out wide and far. ~

My Sheep Hear My Voice

"My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father's hand. I and the Father are one.” ~John 10:27-30

The horizon is a hazy turquoise blending higher into deeper and deeper blues, colors so vivid they make my eyes hurt. The mountains behind us are smokey gray and an unseasonably warm breeze ruffles the brown curls bobbing up an down in front of me as my daughter jumps excitedly at the fence. A herd of sheep is grazing behind the school. Shaddowy figures in the dusk, moving placidly between tufts of waving grass and piles of wood.

We call to them. We snap our fingers and click our tongues. They are within feet of us, yet not a single one so much as glances in our direction. They are very focused on their grazing, the sweet grass they have been led to.

All of a sudden we hear a strange noise. "Brrr! Brrr!" A tiny woman pops up over the hillside. "Brrr! Brrr! Hajde!" She is the shepherdess. Immediately woolly heads snap to attention, bells jangle as the flock bleat and maa and begin to trot merrily after her. "Hajde!" She calls them to come,

"Hajde Lako! Hajde Kiki!" She calls them by name.

I realize that I have never actually seen a shepherd calling to their sheep before. New images connect themselves to verses which begin to flood my mind, verses I had always known, but never really had a picture of.

The flock head over the hill and we share a wave. I consider it no accident to have witnessed this little scene only two days before the women's Bible study in which we are going through the "I Am" statements of Jesus. This weeks lesson? "I am the the good shepherd."