An American (Hoping To Be) In Paris

If Babbel, the airlines, and other factors cooperate, I plan a triumphantly selfish return to the City of Lights — eventually

I didn’t go up in the tower in 2016, but had to get a photo.

Much of my adult life has involved mission trips.

In 1993, I first attended a week-long Mountain T.O.P. Adults In Ministry (AIM) camp. I joined the Mountain T.O.P. board the next year, and there was a period when I was doing two separate AIM weeks every summer, so that I could spend a week in the Summer Plus program, working with teenagers, and a week in the Kaleidoscope program, working with younger kids.

Mountain T.O.P., faced with shifting markets, stopped doing that particular week-long AIM program a few years ago; they still do a number of AIM weekends, but all but one of those are focused on home repair, which is not my strong suit. I still do it, occasionally.

In 2003, I first did a foreign mission trip, to Nicaragua, with LEAMIS International Ministries. For several years, I took a two-week (or nearly two-week) trip every summer. I went to Kenya five times, as well as to Costa Rica, Bolivia and Sierra Leone.

By 2010, the year of my last Kenya trip, I could sense that there was a little “donor fatigue” with the friends and family who had so generously supported this…