jamie's wanderings

I don't consider myself to be a mystic, but rather a writer. My mom forced us as kids to write, but it wasn't that much of a punishment for me. I've always had my nose in a book. Today I've been reading out of Madeline L'engle's book that is a compliation of her forty years of writing. Its called, Glimpses of Grace. Its divided up into days, and under Sept. 21, part of the reading is this... "As I read the Old and New Testaments I am struck by the awareness therein of our livves being connected with cosmic powers, angels and archangels, heavenly principalities and powers, and the groanings of creation. It's too radical, too uncontrolled for many of us, so we build chuches which are the safest possible places in which to escape God. We pin him down, far more painfully than he was nailed to the cross, so that he is rational and comprehensible and like us, and even more unreal." This month Granada celebrates her patron saint. Named the Virgin of Angu

Yesterday I went to church to practice with the worship team for Sunday morning. Before we began, Esther, the pastor’s wife who helps lead the group, told us two stories. Caleb is a 21 year old Spaniard who’s father passed away 7 years ago. Caleb decided he didn’t want to have anything to do with God and hasn’t come to church since. On Sunday, he came to church for the first time at the insistence of his best friend, Sergio. Apparently the worship band sang a song that Caleb’s dad used to sing, and something happened in his heart. Caleb was planning to move to Granada in January, and because of this church service, he can hardly wait to come and start attending church in Granada . One of the women baptized this summer has begged her husband to come to church for months. The pastor and his wife has met on several occasions with this couple to no avail. This Sunday, he brought his wife and daughter to church and thought he would walk around the nearby park. The singing had a

Fall is slowly creeping into southern Spain. It's horribly hot here in the summers, I tell people living in Granada for the weather is overrated. It scorching in the summers, and bone-chilling to the core in the winters. So why do people live here? Apparently this area has been populated for literally thousands of years. History tells us the Phonecians, Romans, Greeks, Carthians, Moors, and finally Catholics have at one time claimed this to be home. Finally though, the weather is not so hot and we can breathe again. The next blogs I hope to showcase more of my photos regarding Spain. I'll also return to the Africa theme later on this month.

I've been working along with Andrew on pictures and scripts for the Uganda videos. He's just finished the first video, and I am sending if off to the boss for final approval. These pictures grip me. It took me weeks to not look at them and weep. I can hardly believe that little ol' me was able to go to Uganda and take the thousands of shots that are so incredible. Africa is almost too easy for a photographer, shots just beg for you to take them. I"m going to upload a few of them for people to see. I know that some of my friends and family have already seen them, but I want to make some comments and post them. This boy above was a street child in a slum in Kampala. I shot it will taking pictures of Andrew interviewing missionaries and pastors in the street. This one is a self potrait. Again, we were interviewing pastors, and I turned the camera around to show our constant audience. No matter where we went, there was always this group of sometimes rowdy boys and girls. T

As we entered the ACTION Gulu office , the Ugandan staff were already having devotions. I heard them singing, and the words became clearer as I approached the thatched shelter, “There is power today in the house of the Lord, Hallelujah, today, in the house of the Lord.” During our eight days in Gulu, I would hear this simple chorus of praise over and over Again. These words would become the theme God taught me. In November of 2005, my husband Andrew and I visited Jerry and Candis Bingham inGulu, North Uganda . Andrew and I went specifically to take pictures and video in tell the world what God is doing in Gulu. This region has seen war for 20 years in which girls and boys have been kidnapped and forced to become soldiers and child wives. The kidnapped girls who managed to escape or are rescued are called child mothers. They have faced unthinkable abuse and fear during their captivity. Most of them have children as a result of being repeatedly raped. When they

I've had another blog for some time, but it seems its not publicly accesible, and so I've linked this to our website. I'm going to treat it as a diary of events that Andrew and I walk through in the next days, months, years....walk with me as I continue to learn and experience the sights and sounds, friendships, disappointments and struggles of living in southern Spain. Most of you who know me well know that I wear a necklace shaped like Africa around my neck. It many ways it has become symbolic of what is close to my heart. First, we bought it together after we got engaged in Ghana, W. Africa. Andrew and I walked one day into a little shop and he picked out the little pendant on a silver chain. The owner and designer is a Lebanese woman, self exiled from Lebanon in the 80s. The symbol on the Africa pendant is an Akan symbol, meaning Omnipotent God. It is located roughly where Ghana is. I forget that I wear it sometimes, I've worn it almost daily for close to 7 years. T