Apr 5, 2012
Posted by Lora
Big and pregnant, waddling from my car and through the automatic sliding door, I crossed into the world of “baby”. From front to back and top to bottom and everywhere the eye could see, baby products greeted me with vivid thoughts of my soon-to-be-born son… how I would take walks with him and what it would be like to carry him around in Madagascar. Seeing the rockers, I imagined myself sitting in...
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Mar 3, 2012
Posted by Adam
In our small upstairs apartment, we had just started our language lesson for the day and began by asking our teacher for the answers to some puzzling questions. Matimu was having fun playing in his walker, right next to Lora, grabbing at our teacher’s purse dangling from her chair.
A couple seconds later we heard a thump from just outside. Matimu was no longer in the room with us.
For me, time sort...
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Feb 6, 2012
Posted by Lora
After a long walk down a rugged dirt road, we arrived at the main road into town and climbed on a “taxi be.” At our old house here in Antsirabe, we were able to walk just about anywhere we needed to go because of its close proximity to the major markets. After our move to our new home, we regularly take the public “taxi be” for getting to the middle of town.
On this particular ride, as Adam and...
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Jan 3, 2012
Posted by Adam
In a large, 4-bedroom house, a small family lives. Each bedroom has a well-constructed bed-frame, a soft mattress, a nightstand, and large wardrobes and dressers. They have a nice large garden full of flowering plants and trees, even a gazebo to relax outside in during the sunniest hours of the day. They have a large living room full of comfortable sofas and chairs and beautiful paintings and...
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Dec 23, 2011
Posted by Adam
“Mirary Krismasy sambatra!”
We’re wishing you a merry Christmas from warm and sunny Madagascar! Though there may not be a white Christmas for us this year, we’ve been enjoying the great weather here and we’re excited to celebrate Matimu’s first Christmas with him.
Our first few months in Madagascar have been great overall and we’re learning the Malagasy language...
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Dec 4, 2011
Posted by Lora
During our first few weeks in Madagascar, we had some Malagasy friends staying with us. As we sat down for dinner with them one night, I looked at the amount of food that had been prepared and wondered if there was enough. There were five of us including our friend, his wife and child. I took my portion first and kept it small. I continued to watch as each person took a portion for their first...
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Nov 3, 2011
Posted by Adam
We stepped off the taxi, three of us this time, back in our village in South Africa. We began walking down the dusty road, towards the small house where the new Peace Corps Volunteers are staying in Dumphries. We saw a couple of girls a ways off and they looked in our direction. Immediately they started shouting “Matimu!” and pointed excitedly. In the ¼ mile it took to get where we were going,...
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Sep 10, 2011
Posted by Adam
In just a few short weeks, we’ll be about 10,000 miles away, on the other side of the world – nearly the direct opposite of where we are now (in more ways than just geographically). As kids we often think that if we dug straight through the earth from where we are, we’d pop out somewhere in China. But in reality you’d be in the Indian Ocean, with Madagascar as your nearest landmass. They...
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Sep 4, 2011
Posted by Adam
I’ve had the opportunity to visit or be a part of many different churches in many different states and several different countries by now. It’s been a real privilege to see the churches, meet their members, and many times join in myself, in places such as Rome, France, South Africa, Madagascar, and of course Arkansas, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Oregon and a few other states whose churches I’ve only...
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Aug 7, 2011
Posted by Adam
It’s finally time! After more than a decade of waiting and preparing, it’s now time for us as a family to move to Madagascar and join God’s work there. We’ll be leaving in late September or early October at the latest.
It was 1999 when God gave me a vision to go to Madagascar. At that time I had no idea where in the world it was or what I was supposed to do there or even when to...
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May 19, 2011
Posted by Adam
It is with incredible joy that I announce the long-anticipated arrival of Matimu Lee Willard! After 32+ hours of labor, Matimu was born in Tulsa, OK on May 17, 2011 at 12:04 pm and he weighs 8 pounds (3.62 kg) and is 19 3/4 in. (50.16 cm) long. He’s a very healthy baby boy and it’s simply amazing for the both of us to be parents to him. It turns out he was a bit too large for Lora as a...
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Nov 8, 2010
Posted by Adam
Our time is up. We extended a couple of months, but those are finished now too. After nearly two and a half years here in South Africa, it’s time to call it quits and head back home to America. We’ll be there to see all of you (or at least most of you) any day now.
But we’re not coming back with all of us. There’s quite a lot we’re leaving behind. We don’t have a choice really. In...
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Oct 26, 2010
Posted by Lora
We arrived in South Africa on July 17, 2008 knowing we had committed ourselves to a two-year volunteer service with the United States Peace Corps. Emotions were high as we left everyone and everything we knew back home and embarked on a new way of life. We had no idea all the challenges and joys that South Africa had in store for us. Now we are preparing ourselves to leave, having completed a few...
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Sep 27, 2010
Posted by Adam
Nothing is static with us. Everything is moving and changing, transforming from one thing to another, or even just developing subtle variations, but nothing is still. Blaise Pascal, the famous French mathematician and theologian, wrote: “Our nature is in movement, complete rest is death.”
In the same way, Dumphries, our village where we’ve lived and done development work over the last two years,...
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The Willards are missionaries to Madagascar, the world's fourth-largest island, located off the southeast coast of Africa. They strive to work for the Kingdom of God where it's not yet known, spreading the abundant life of Jesus through church planting, rural clinics, and educational development. 
