Where are the Bright Spots in your Life?
My heart aches for the times we live in. The atrocities committed in Dayton and El Paso this past weekend don’t seem like isolated events. They seem like the inevitable result of living in a world consumed with glorifying oneself on social media, with demonizing...
What Coco Gauff and our Scholars Have in Common
Last week, a 15-year-old girl named Coco became the youngest person ever to win three matches at Wimbledon, including an awe-inspiring comeback after being down 6-3 and 5-2 in the second match. The thrill of that victory, and the beautiful bond so evident between her...
Straight Out, Flat Out, and Honest.
One of my strengths is that I never see a glass as half full; I see it as mostly full almost all the time. My natural optimism helps me in my work, but I've learned that it can also hurt me. Sometimes the glass can actually be half empty—or even completely empty...
What’s Most Important in Your Community?
On Mother’s Day in Guatemala, 70 women from a village bordering a dumpsite on the outskirts of Guatemala City gathered to work with our team on the answer to that question. Figuring out a list of needs was the easy part. They need: A school A recreation center Access...
Where do you see God in Life?
What I love about our work at International Samaritan is how often I see and feel the presence of God in what we do. Recently, I had the unique privilege of sitting in on the conversations that our scholarship students in Guatemala were having with a woman who has...
Come Find Out if Trump was Right
In retaliation for what he perceives to be a lack of support from the leaders of Central American nations, President Trump announced last week that he intends to cut $500 million from programs addressing the root causes of migration from those nations. This makes me...
What would you eat on $2 per day?
It wasn’t until I became a father that I realized how important food is to one’s emotional well-being. Growing up, three square meals a day were just always there for me, not much different than having clean water to drink. I just took food for granted. But when my...
What’s the Best Job You’ve Ever Had?
Mike at his old favorite job, taken in 1999. For me, that answer has always been easy. For a couple of seasons before law school, and two glorious seasons after it, I sold ice cream at the Joe Louis Arena for the Detroit Red Wings. I made about a hundred bucks a...
