Litt-World 2009

November 2004 I sat on a beach in the Philippines pouring out my passion for stories for children affected by HIV/AIDS to David Waweru of Word Alive Publications in Nairobi, Kenya. We were both attending the Litt-World Conference sponsored by Media Associates International. Litt-World is a bi-annual conference for Christian writers and publishers from the majority world. My conversation with David Waweru led to the first of three writing workshops in Nairobi. It also led to some pretty major changes in my life. I came home from the Philippines and told my husband that I wanted to move back to Africa to be in the right context to write for these children. He graciously said, “Lets go for it,” and we spent 2005 to 2008 based in Johannesburg, South Africa.

This week I am back in Nairobi for another Litt-World conference. I look forward to getting together with former students who have become friends and to meeting new people concerned with writing for children in cultures from Albania to Zimbabwe. I will be meeting with another publisher who has expressed interest in some of my stories to find out what the next step is. I don’t expect this Litt-World to be quite as life changing for me as my first, but I am praying that I would build relationships that God can use for the Kingdom.