For Your Weekend Reading Pleasure...

/ Whitney @ Journey Mercies

Happy Fourth of July to all my American friends! Hope your weekend is full of fireworks, food, and family - the best of combinations. Enjoy some hot dogs for us! Since we are in Phnom Penh this week, we get to attend the annual Fourth of July party at the US Embassy for the first time! to see how expats celebrate in Cambodia.

Today I have two things to share with you to enjoy over the weekend -

First, the online travel magazine Just Go Places (love the name!) just published their July 2014 edition focusing on Cambodia. And my poem "Cambodia" is featured in the front page. I'm still making my way through the magazine, but I'm already in love with their gorgeous photos and diverse stories. Check it out here.

Also, I wrote about the identity crisis I'm facing as an expat returning home on my friend Rachel's blog The Inspired Story. Here's an excerpt -

"My life abroad has come to define me. I view America as an outsider, laughing at the quirks of my fellow citizens in a way that would probably insult them. I post funny lists of “You know you’re an expat when…” on Facebook. My favorite packaged cookies are from places like Belgium, England, and Canada – countries I’ve never visited but where my fellow expats come from. 
And now that we’re moving back to the States, I find myself in an identity crisis. We hope to move back overseas after a year, but we’re also keenly aware that we need to hold that desire with an open hand. We may never live abroad again."
Read more here.

Happy holiday weekend!

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Guest Post - Tips for Expectant Parents Traveling to Bangkok

/ Whitney @ Journey Mercies
Photo credit - Meagan via Compfight CC

I wanted to post a link to another guest post I wrote for ExpectingExpats.com today - Tips for Expectant Parents Traveling to Bangkok. It's full of helpful ideas for parents traveling and staying in Bangkok to have their baby. You can read it here!


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Guest Post for Djibouti Jones: How Pregnancy Brought Us Together

/ Whitney @ Journey Mercies

Hey friends! Instead of a post today on Journey Mercies, I've written a guest post for the blog Djibouti Jones. The post is part of a series on diversity running on the blog. You can check it out here - What I Learned: How Pregnancy Brought Us Together.

Rachel Pieh Jones, the author, is one of my favorite bloggers. She and her family live in the horn of Africa, and she writes about "life at the crossroads of faith and culture." I think part of why I enjoy her writing is that it reminds me a bit of my time in north Sudan - different country and culture, but lots of similarities.

She is someone I'd love to be like ten years from now - still serving overseas, observing and appreciating her host culture, living out her faith, and writing about it all. Some of my favorite posts on her blog are - 


And one more thing - I'm trying out something new this month with a monthly newsletter. I'll include stories and photos from Cambodia, resources that will encourage and inspire, and the best of the blog. It's a great way to stay updated if you don't want every new post coming in. You can sign up here!

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From Poipet to Bangkok: A Pregnant Expat's Experience {Guest Post for ExpectingExpats.com}

/ Whitney @ Journey Mercies
Waiting for his shots. He has no idea what's coming...

This week, I am in Siem Reap with Andrew, the baby, and all the Samaritan's Purse staff for the yearly retreat. But we had a rough start to a week when Declan got immunization shots Monday morning. And my sweet, happy little boy turned into a screaming monster baby. My mother assures me it's normal, but that doesn't make ME feel any better!

So I might be a tad busy keeping him happy and seeing the SP staff who work in different parts of Cambodia.

(don't forget to enter the summer survival giveaway! it ends on monday night!)

Many of you have already followed us on our journey of getting pregnant in Cambodia and having our baby in Bangkok. But if you're just jumping into our story, you can read about it all on my guest post for ExpectingExpats.com. Here's a quick excerpt:
"Last February, I gave birth to our first child in Bangkok. And it was the best experience I could have asked for.  
My husband and I lived in Poipet, Cambodia for two years before we decided to take the plunge into parenthood. The first year we were here we didn’t even consider having a baby. But living in family-centered Khmer culture changed our thinking, and we decided to let nature take its course. Two months and a pregnancy test later, we found out we were expecting."

Read more on the ExpectingExpats.com post here!

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Guest Post: Africa, Land of Savannas

/ Whitney @ Journey Mercies
Hey, everyone! Today Annie is sharing some beautiful thoughts on Africa - a part of the world I don't really talk about here on Journey Mercies. Make sure you check out her blog, too! - whitney

Africa, land of savannas.


It conjures up a myriad of connotations. Poverty, grasslands, desert, the pyramids. Africa, in the mind of the west.

I was wrong when I boarded a plane for Nairobi last July, blinded, as usual, by my pride.

Africa, I thought, was where Christians went who wanted other people to know they were good Christians. And I, I thought, knew better, knew Europe lay in a spiritual depravity that made Africa look lavishly wealthy. I was only going because He had told me, and I didn't know what He was hiding beneath the blazing red of African dirt, but neither did I hope.

The expectant patience that characterizes our faith was nowhere to be found in me.


How else do I say it but that the Lord blew up my heart?

Africa is rich in spirit, rich in joy. And it's me who was too poor in vision to know what lay before me until it had ripped the cataracts out.

Africa, it seizes you, and it never lets you go. And my stone heart, smashed to smithereens in Kenya, now beats the red of the dirt I walked on.

If we wait to serve Jesus until we think we are good enough, we will never serve. If we go, despite our imperfections, we will find the posturing of our hearts to serve was the Lord working out the transformation from filth to holiness in us.


Mountains fascinate me. They are a symbol of a home I've never known yet feel inextricably connected. And I found mountains in Kenya, and I was a mountain in Kenya, because sometimes when the Lord is faithful to move mountains, the mountain is you, and He's faithful to move it.

He's faithful to posture us in a way that will force us to look outside of ourselves. I like to think of it as a spiritual bending out of shape. It causes me no end of anxiety until I remember it's in my weakness that His strength is shown most gloriously.

I'm thankful for that, even when it hurts, because He never tears off dragon scales but out of love for us.


There's a lion in my heart now, my freshly beating heart, and He is on the move.



Annie Wiltse is an avid reader with a penchant for telling stories and a heart for travel, dessert, and college football. She is the writer and designer of What She Saw, a blog exploring the intersection of faith and the mundane. A native Michiganian, Annie graduated from Grand Valley State University in 2012 with a degree in English Language and Literature.