This is my buddy and his family at their home:



No, they don’t live in the St. Louis ghetto. They live in the nicest house in a remote village in Papua, Indonesia. T (can’t use his name here due to the nature of what they’re doing), who I’ve known since we were college freshmen in 1994, is a Christian missionary. I believe his family has been overseas for most of the past six years. Anyway, he’s back in the United States for the next six months.

I organized a picnic this past Saturday in which a bunch of us Fontbonne and Deaconess grads, and our families, got together. T’s stories are nothing short of amazing. He told us about their decision to eat the family cat (and others in the community enjoying the head), women breastfeeding their children and their pigs, men trying to take T’s son, T’s wife’s recent medical care adventures, and a man who swears he was shot in the ribs by Satan’s arrow when he really just pulled a muscle carving out a canoe and needed some Tylenol. Really fascinating stuff.

T and I both participated in a brief missionary trip to the jungles of Brazil the week after we graduated, 11 years ago this month. I was never cut out for religious stuff in general, and I didn’t have the medical background that T possesses (he’s a trained nurse, among other academic accomplishments), so most of my time in Brazil was spent playing soccer with all the kids. Overall, it was fun. But I never would choose to make a life out of it. But T and his family have done just that. And I admire him for it.

To learn more about what they’re doing and to see some other pretty cool pictures, visit the family blog at http://tandtfamily.blogspot.com/.