My family and I are going to Ocean City, Maryland tonight after my sister's softball game, so I probably won't be writing anything for a week or so. Anyway, to answer Alison's question...


The Poisonwood Bible is a book (fiction) about this missionary family that goes to the Congo for a year in the 1950's. The family consists of a Baptist minister, his wife, and four girls--all from Georgia. So think back to the 50's (or I mean, what we've heard about the 50's) and you pretty much can figure the minister is pretty racist (the family is really)--but he's more sexist than anything, which totally makes me want to puke. The story is told from the viewpoints of the four daughters and the mother, all in turn. It's very interesting because the one girl is five, one is 15/16, and the other two are 14...but the one twin has a severe disability where one half of her body is paralyzed, including her brain, but she's really a genius! AND guess what?? She thinks and spells and thinks forwards and BACKWARDS! It's really cool. She's always "saying" things backwards. It's amazing. So it is really, really neat to read things from her point of view. The mother, of course, is totally stressed and worried about her little kids living in the Congo, and she pretty much resents her husband for being a jerk. Two of his girls are straight geniuses and he doesn't believe in sending women to college. I want to rip his name right out of the book for that.

The backwards girl is always making up palindromes. I'll write some for you sometime later.

So far, the Baptist minister is getting NOWHERE with witnessing to the Congolese, but the little girls are becoming pretty successful with games like "Mother May I." It's really good since I just took this Global Christianity class--where we talked a lot about accepting people's cultures. The minister, on the very first DAY he was there yelled YELLED at the women for being topless, but his wife and girls wear pants, which is totally, totally unacceptable there. WOW missions have come a looooooong way! But I imagine there's a lot that can still be done.

I'm sorry...I didn't mean to talk about that quite so much. It's really a great book--I think it could be a classic someday...but I'm not even 1/4 of the way through yet. It's pretty popular, which is why I couldn't get it for a while from the library. Read it!!! It's a must read.