from the December newsletter

creme brulee in Paris
c. 2010

2010 has been an incredible journey. So much has happened this year, and I am excited to see what 2011 will hold for all of us.  2011 is just a few short days away, and I am looking forward to sharing updates with you from Texas & Sierra Leone.

This is my last week in California and I have been arranging all of the travel details while still working as a Photographer and Office Manager at Westminster Presbyterian Church. It's a bittersweet time between mini road trips throughout California, having goodbye get togethers, and saying goodbye to so many dear and wonderful people.  

In only a few short days, Continental Airlines will have me as one of their passengers. I'll arrive soon in Tyler, Texas as my training with Mercy Ships will continue throughout the month of January. This will be yet another step in preparation for my long term commitment with Mercy Ships as a Photographer in Sierra Leone, West Africa. 

After years of photography in the bay area, I wanted to do more because photographs can either just take up space on a computer or be a like click on facebook. But, permit me to raise the challenge that photographs can actually help us understand how a group of volunteers can really band together to do something miraculous. For example, in West Africa today, we continue to provide medical care to the local people.  

about the time I realized,
I would love to do this for the rest of my life.
c. 2010

While working with Mercy Ships, I will continue to share with you the daily news in my facebook updates, my weekly news through my blog, and the monthly highlights in my newsletter. Follow along, and let's share this time together. Take a moment to enjoy the gift of life stories that I will share with you in 2011 and explore the photos. Open yourself to a new world and yet an all too familiar world too. We may not all know what it's like to live in a developing nation with a debilitating ailment, but we have all struggled one way or another.

Since the beginning of time we have learned through the illustrative gifts of storytelling. Our grandmothers' grandmothers and their grandmothers have shared life challenging parables with us while going about their daily lives. These audible life lessons are still shared amongst us today. Why? Because everyone loves a good story. I've have the opportunity to be your story teller before, and please allow me be your story teller again.  While in Sierra Leone, my goal is to share photographic parable s with you, to inspire effectual change within our surroundings however difficult it may be. Because it's worth it. Perhaps our stories will be shared with the next generation of children, grandchildren, and their grandchildren. That they too, may know our life lessons and triumph in their very own.

Photographs can change lives. I've seen it happen time and time again. Not only for the people in Sierra Leone, our global neighbors, our country, but it can change us. I know it has from the countless correspondence I have had with so many of you. It's changed me.

There is value in our stories. 

There is power in our partnership and in this... we have the groundwork for transformation. 

Yours, mine, and ours!

Abel capturing a story.
c.2010