Getting Into Your World

Today I was reading a book ordered by a missionary that was delivered to me. I'll take it to him in Uganda next month. He doesn't know it yet, but it'll be a used book when he gets it. Ha! I am loving it; biographies grab me. In this book the man has been changed through trips to Belarus,, USSR, Italy, South Africa, Australia, and India. Does it take personal trips for us to be changed by a people? Is it possible for me to go back to Africa next month and report back in such a way that others are touched, even though they don't actually walk the paths I do? Today I wrote a "prayer letter" asking friends to pray for Sarah and me while we are gone, all three weeks. Those of you who have followed my blogs for a while know that I get brutally honest when I write. So here I go again, admitting that the quality of my prayers when "you" ask me to pray for your mission trips has often been lacking. Should I expect anything different from you, my friends? Are these "prayer letters" important? What is it I want? What is IT that I want? Do I expect others to care more than I do when you go to parts of the world unfamiliar to me? So, before I leave on October 18 will some of you pray for my heart? I have shared a part of it that I am not particularly pleased with. I want to enter into your worlds as much as I want you in mine. Will you help me?