4 things I love about my mom:

She's intrepid. She's currently in Afghanistan for a month with my Dad. This past week, she needed 2 kilos of apples for an apple crisp she was going to make and despite not being able to communicate and drawing stares from all the passerby, she marched down to the market and found a way to haggle for the apples.

She's a little crazy. On that jaunt to the market, she forgot that she was wearing my Dad's fluffy bedroom slippers. Nor was that all she forgot - here is how she describes the experience: "I confidently opened the gate and stepped out into the great beyond, Isaw that the people who met me on the sidewalk stared as they looked me over from head to foot. Then a group of school girls actually divided when I approached them and walked around me as they continued staring. I knew something was wrong, and felt my head. Sure enough! I'd forgotten my head covering."

She's passionate about Jesus. Growing up in my Mom's shadow, I lived in perpetual embarrassment that she would accost total strangers and begin witnessing to them. Her purse was always stuffed with tracts. During the 60's when my Dad was in Viet Nam and everyone was singing about revolution, Mom would venture into the ghettos of D.C. to conduct Bible studies. My enduring memory is of her praying for hours in the morning. And to this day the legion of women she has discipled remain loyal to her.

She's a rabble rouser missionary. When she and my Dad go to Kenya every year to do missions work for three months, she brings along her accordian and regularly leads groups of women and children in song. She loves people of all stripes and color and is so authentic that cultural barriers just seem to melt away.

I LOVE YOU MOM!!