In March, I went to visit Kenya. I kissed my husband goodbye and left him at home. Or so I thought. But when I got to Kenya, I found him all over the place.

At Moffatt Bible College in Kijabe, for example, the librarian gave me a tour. One set of double doors opened to the textbook closet. Most students can’t afford to buy books for their classes, so here they can check out the required texts for the term. In the center of the center shelf was a stack of The Supremacy of God in Preaching.

Later that week, at a workshop in Old Kijabe Town, Peter heard that I was John Piper’s wife. He turned his smile on me and said, “Missions is not the ultimate goal of the church. Worship is. Missions exists because worship doesn’t. . . . Worship, therefore, is the fuel and goal in missions,” quoting from Let the Nations Be Glad.

Peter is a graduate of Moffatt Bible College and is now the Assistant Pastor at Kijabe Mission Church. I wouldn’t have been surprised by a former student telling me that he appreciated my husband’s book. But I was blown away that a couple of years after Peter completed his missions class, he still could quote word for word from the textbook—that’s impact.

“Did you know your dream has come true? There's a book of Lilias Trotter's art now—A Blossom in the Desert,” I emailed a friend last week. Miriam Rockness, who edited this book, earlier wrote the book that introduced me to Lilias Trotter, A Passion for the Impossible. I was so inspired by her story that I included it in Faithful Women and their Extraordinary God.

We who admire Lilias Trotter have waited a long time actually to see her artwork. Until now, it was hidden away in the Ashmolean Museum of Oxford University and in the archives of the Arab World Ministries.

Lilias Trotter was an upper-class English woman of the Victorian era whose drawings and water colors were admired by John Ruskin, the art authority of the day. He foresaw for her a life of glory and fame if she devoted herself to her art.

Instead, she turned her back on that dream and followed the calling of God to Algeria, arriving in 1888 and dying there 40 years later. As so often happens, she discovered that God wasn’t asking her to give up her talent, but to use it in a different place for different purposes.

Among other things, she often illustrated her journal entries and the letters she sent home with her artwork, a visual treasure of North Africa as it was then. She also wrote several small books of meditations, often springing from her observations of nature and always illustrated with her drawings.

A Blossom in the Desert is filled with Lilias Trotter’s love of God and of the place and people he gave her in Algeria. With the eye of a true artist, she sees God’s fingerprint everywhere she looks.

Oh, the desert is lovely in its restfulness. The great brooding stillness over and through everything is so full of God. One does not wonder that He used to take His people out into the wilderness to teach them.

I find here a passage that remains with me years after first reading it:

“I am come into deep waters” took on new meaning this morning. It started with perplexing matters concerning the future. Then it dawned that shallow waters were a place where you can neither sink nor swim, but in deep waters it is one or the other: “Waters to swim in”—not to float in. Swimming is the intense, most strenuous form of motion—all of you is involved in it—and every inch of you is in abandonment of rest upon the water that bears you up.

Our neighbors can attest that we don’t use dandelion poison. We recycle. One showerhead has a water saver shut-off valve. Beyond that, I don’t give much thought to ecology. I’m scared off by people who tend to treat the earth as god, rather than as God’s handiwork. So I have avoided considering my responsibility as a steward of God’s property.

I had a one-week crash course last month when Talitha and I were guests of Craig and Tracy Sorley, BBC missionaries with Care of Creation Kenya...

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I got a letter recently from someone who hopes to be a writer. She says:

I get so frustrated with myself because even as I am typing, I think, "What am I doing?  I can't write!" I would like to get published some day, but I don't even know how to start.

No 7-step list will guarantee a writer is formed out of a non-writer, but here are some suggestions, things that have been helpful for me.

1. Write!

The cliche answer is probably the best one—if you want to write, write. Don't think about publishing at first. And quit examining yourself and your ability. Don't worry about grammar and spelling at first. Just write. Anything. Journal. Letters. Blog. Keep a writing notebook or computer file. In it, write random paragraphs describing something you've seen or imagined. Jot down ideas or connections that have come to your mind when you're reading your Bible.

All of this is good practice and good source material for you. Sometimes I happen across a random piece of paper where in the past I briefly wrote a thought that I'd now completely forgotten. Without the paper it would have been totally lost. Now it slips into something I'm writing as if it were totally fresh today.

2. Immerse yourself in what you admire.

When you find an author you love to read, read everything you can find by that person. Think of authors whose writing grabs you, then soak yourself in their work. For me, there have been all sorts. It would be hard to pick out just a few, but here's a very random sample: George Eliot, Charlotte Bronte, Edith Schaeffer, Elisabeth Eliot, P.D. James, Alexander McCall Smith.

A practical and surprisingly helpful way to get a feel for the quality of another author’s writing is to copy down well-turned phrases of theirs that you find as you read. Then, not only are you passively taking in good writing as a reader, you are also practicing putting it out yourself as a writer.

3. Practice improving other people’s writing.

I think editing other people's work has helped my writing a lot. As an exercise, you might take random paragraphs from other writers or yourself and see how much you can cut out and still leave a good paragraph. Shortest is not always best, but long is often weak. See what other ways you might improve the paragraph.

4. Join a writers’ group.

In college, I should have majored in Lit because I love reading. But Lit required a lot of writing. So I majored in Speech, so I could just talk, because I didn't like to write.

When I was in my late 30's, someone at Bethel College asked me to write a very short piece for the alumni magazine about an Alumna of the Year (or something like that), a person in our church. And I was probably 40 before I started thinking I might enjoy writing and began to do it because I liked it.

About that time I joined the Minnesota Christian Writers Guild. At the monthly meetings, even if the speaker is talking about a kind of writing I'm not interested in, somehow it's still good fertilizer and watering to whatever I am interested in.

Look for a writers' organization near you. Whether or not it should be a Christian group depends on what kind of writing you’re doing. As you look for a group, keep in mind there’s some pretty goofy stuff out there (both Christian and non-Christian), stuff that won't advance your thought or writing or your faith very well.

5. Start a writers’ group.

Later I started getting together monthly with a small group of other aspiring writers. Each of us brings something and we take turns reading to each other. Then we encourage each other and make suggestions. That has been really helpful. And you should recognize that comes from me, who doesn't take criticism easily nor want anybody telling me what to do.

Round up your own group of writers or would-be writers. Needing to have something fresh each month is good motivation to keep writing.

6. Participate in events for writers.

Find conferences you want to attend. American Christian Writers, for example or Christian Writers Guild. These are big conferences and will have tracks for beginners. Look around those websites for other helpful info, too. Another good annual conference is Write to Publish, always in Wheaton, though not associated officially with the college.

Same thought here as above about deciding whether to go to Christian conferences or others.

7. Ask yourself what you want to say and who you want to say it to.

Before moving eventually toward publishing, probably most important is getting past the general idea of writing, and getting down to asking yourself, “What do I have to say? What do I want to say? What are my great burdens that won’t let me be content until I deal with them on paper? Who do I want to write this for?”

Over time this sense will grow, perhaps from your random writing notebook. You’ll start to notice what gets most of your word count, or what raises the strongest emotions in you, or what you've been learning as you've written. Writing is one of the best ways (besides talking to yourself!) to know what you really think . You realize how unfinished your thoughts have been when you try to get them out of your head and into something cogent on paper.

Keep learning!

Really, what we're talking about here is continuing education. I was surprised to discover that my education wasn't finished when I finished college. I realize now that I learned to learn in school. And I've gotten my real education since then.

So, if you want to grow in writing, that means you want to continue your education in writing, and that means WRITE!