Recent Columns

Me: “Good morning Captain Underpants!” Kid 1: “Morning Dad.” Kiss. ++ Me: “Hey Little Lady!” Kid 2: “Hi Dad.” Neck snuggle. ++ Me: “Good morning Pretty Girl!” Kid 3: “Uhhh.” Kiss (attempt). ++ Me: “Babe, you’re such a better surgeon that I am. Any way you could fix my watch band with some Crazy Glue?” […]

So the kids’ school, an international school in Kampala, has after-school clubs. They’re very handy to give Mom or Dad a bit of extra time to finish one chore or another before kid pick-up and that 45-minute drive home through the (ugh) Kampala traffic. Yes, the clubs are life-savers. Not. Take the baking club. My […]

I don’t know how we get on these enlightening talks at the dinner table, but the other day we – the kids and Mom and I – got onto hell. Yes, hell, home of Satan. You know, Satan, the entity who prowls around the earth looking to wreak one sort of havoc or another. (Not […]

So over the weekend Hannah and I did a little dance because Hannah wanted to dance in her new birthday bathrobe, this during an intermission of The Sound of Music, the first time all five of us sat down to watch it together. Maybe Hannah danced too because we’re still basking in the glow, that […]

It’s just past 6 in the morning and Hannah is eating her toast and yoghurt, and from behind her I put my one hand on her shoulder, and then my other hand on her head, and I throw my own head back and then in a sort of bellowing loud voice I start into it all. “And […]

We were in the car and Liz was looking rather thoughtful, the sort of look that kids have when you know they have something important on their minds, and she finally looked at me and said, “What if you and Mommy had a big fight. What would happen?” “We’d forgive each other,” I said. “Okay,” […]

Every good parent needs to scream at their kids regularly – I recommend five times a kid before lunch – and so I’ve given my son Jon a good tongue-lashing over what he brought on all of Toronto and Hamilton and beyond this last little while. Jon is the member of our family who wished […]

I don’t really believe in New Year resolutions or those Bucket Lists either, but I guess if I were to drop dead today I’d be content. More or less. Well, you know, within reason. I realized this right around the time my eight-year-old did a face-plant in the snow while we were skiing yesterday. Jon went down […]

She kept all these things in her heart. This is what the ancient Scripture tell us. Mary kept these things in her heart, and she pondered it all. She pondered that the shepherds came to her and Joseph and their newborn to see with their very eyes; pondered the astounding news that angels had somehow […]

(The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday, December 21, 2013) ENTEBBE, UGANDA ✦ It’s the end of another year of words. Words that have routinely informed us and words that have even sometimes, like summer snow, given a fresh look at everyday things. Like what happened recently in Africa during my children’s nightly reading, a story both troubling and reassuring. “You know,” I said, after, “things will happen in your life. Bad things. And nobody will be able to save you from them. I won’t be able to and neither will your mother. But let me tell you something. God loves to take these sorts of things and turn them into something good.”

It’s 5 am and still dark outside, but with a bit of jet lag this is apparently the best time for an 8-year-old to find his way downstairs to eat his breakfast Corn Pops and talk about snow. It is at Papa and Granma’s after all, and more so, it is Canada, which means, yes, snow, […]

It’s Entebbe, Uganda’s port of entry and departure, and we’re almost on a plane over the ocean and back to our home, the one where you can’t wear a t-shirt outside during this time of year. And on the table in front of me is an African news magazine with a picture of Nelson Mandela, […]

When you go through a red light and get stopped for it in a foreign country, you should always pretend that in your home country red means ‘Go!’ Then gesture wildly with your hands and speak jibberish in your native language. Unless your native tongue is English and you’re in Uganda, where pretty well everyone, […]

(Christian Week - December 2013) DAEJON, SOUTH KOREA ✦ It was on the tenth floor café of a mega-church of 10,000 in this South Korean city, beside a floor-to-ceiling window, where a young man greeted me with a “sir,” and oh, by the way, did I have a word for him, any nugget, anything to help his future? He knew I was involved with a missions’ conference some floors below and his spirit was so genuine – this is the beauty of Korean culture – that I was and wasn’t surprised when he asked particularly what I thought “success” was.

We’re waiting for the morning bell to start the school day yesterday, Jon and I, him bouncing on my knee, and a school mate comes over with the news that his family is soon leaving Uganda to fly home for Christmas, to California, but he’s worried about his dog. You see, the other day his dog got a hold […]