Now and then,Tuesday afternoon, our little Mission Band would gather on the ocean beach close to our home for an open air service. We would begin by huddling together to sing a few hymns; our voices quavering, carried away by the ceaseless wind coming from over the breakers into the coconut groves behind us. I often […]

At the approach of my first Christmas season on the Island of Ceylon, I felt a close affinity with Irving Berlin, the famous song writer. I shall never forget the poignancy of the moment and the nostalgia that overcame me when I heard the first plaintive strains of the song Berlin wrote many years before: “I’m […]

The house was new, so new that the dusty smell of wet cement still hung about it. The front garden was in shambles, many cabook bricks still thrown about. Rounded discs with dabs of left-over dried cement had not been picked up. A board was pulled up to the cement steps, over an oozy spot. We […]

“Tomorrow morning, early we must go, before the very heavy rains come; the monsoon is ready to break within a few days,” said my husband as he stepped into the room from the front portico. “Remember how I was stalled in the upcountry floods, between two paddy fields, during the last monsoon?” My husband had just […]

Late one afternoon in April found me sitting on the front door stoop of our U-shaped flat in Colombo, Ceylon, which housed nine families. I was out to get whatever evening breezes would come my way from the Indian Ocean after an exceptionally hot and humid day. Exactly twenty feet across from me was an identical stoop […]

One New Year’s morning shall never forget. I had attended a church service, conducted by my husband, in one of our churches centered in the hospital district of Colombo, Ceylon. After service my husband had gone sick-visiting in the general hospital near by. Tired of waiting in the car I made my way to the busy intersection, passing […]