Hard-face in my kitchen I am standing in my kitchen looking at a man who has, no doubt, killed. He is Ukrainian Mafia and he is yelling...

A Dead Mouse and a New Life My wife was looking at a dead mouse on the ground. We were in Odessa, Ukraine visiting. I was convinced that...

For the next three days, over the weekend, I was in a daze. I didn’t know what to do. I was paralyzed with fear. This definitely was...

Part 1 <> Part 2 It was nine days after 9/11. I was watching the evening news. In fact, I think the whole world was watching—what would...

Part 1 <> Part 3 A Moving Ritual On September 11th 2001 my two younger daughters were let out of school early. They were eight and ten...

The phone rang. “Something terrible has happened in America!” The voice on the other end was Marcela Goldstein’s, the wife of Jorge...

Dasvadanya Tolyatti The next day we packed and prepared for the trek back to Moscow. As we gathered at the bus that would take us to the...

From Hooker to Heaven When Irina got off the floor and began to worship the Lord, we were overjoyed. It was the hand of God. She looked...

The Outreach Begins One of the saddest things about Soviet era Russia is that creativity was killed. Miles and miles of massive apartment...

Reports of spiritual hunger in Russia in the early 90s deeply moved me. The Iron Curtain came crashing down in the Former Soviet Union...

Rude American As I entered the tiny matchbox apartment, where my wife and her three siblings were raised, I was greeted by Elana’s mother...

We all have life-changing moments. Moments that according Jeff Goins’ new book Wreck us. We are not the same afterward. We are ruined in...

My Arrival There is nothing that compares to those first few seconds in the Holy Land. You feel as if you have gone back in time. Not...

Going Home 1991 In between my bathtub revelation and my actual visit in June of 1991, Saddam Hussein decided to send 42 scud missiles to...

From Beirut to Jerusalem, to my Bathtub! Thomas Friedman changed my life. You may have heard of him. He is the left-leaning longtime...

It wasn’t merely that I was Jewish. I didn’t fall in love with the sites or the cities, but the people—the characters in his book. He...