Here I sit in a popular reposteria, Café Belen, sipping coffee, eating a pastry and writing this in true spoiled gringa fashion. A woman in her late-twenties holding a toddler walks up to the open doors and looks at me imploringly. She is mouthing something and apparently asking for one Córdoba. I shake my head “no,” but feel anguished. Guilty. Uncertain. But by all accounts, it is not good to give money to those begging. It encourages a sense of dependency and a belief in the inferiority of…

My husband, Tobin, our three-year-old son, Micah, & I are stepping off the proverbial treadmill, and spending a sabbatical year in Nicaragua.

2012 was one of the hardest years of our lives. I underwent (and successfully completed!) breast cancer treatment, and Tobin lost his job. Yet, as so often happens, misfortune and crisis gave birth to opportunity and grace. After a long discernment process involving much prayer, weekly mind-mapping sessions, and a clearness committee, we…