Liz Burns returned to Tanzania with CMS in January, 2004, after spending two years as a short-term volunteer. Here is her account of a typical journey to a remote parish in the country's mountainous north...

This week we have remained in Mumbai staying with a cruisy brother called Pastor Roy. We were primarily here to collect our second motorbike - a Yamaha XT600, sent from Australia. We have been staying with Roy while we wait for the Yamaha to clear customs - a frustrating process that will end up costing as much as it actually cost us to ship the bike in the first place

Tonight we write from the house of some Catholic brothers who literally took us in from the street. After arriving from Jaipur on an overnight train we were somewhat tired and smelly. It has been a hectic couple of weeks - riding over 1000km, chased at one point by a drunk truck driver, getting an engine rebuilt, seeing a dual fatality road accident, getting a puncture and to top it off almost getting rolled...

This week we're based in Srinagar the capital of Kashmir, entrenched in Muslim culture. You cannot escape it. Muslim prayers belt out of the loud speakers 5 times a day, ladies wear burkahs, men wear prayer caps, and we're forbidden to wear shorts outside!!! This being during the holy month of Ramadan means people are feeling extra sensitive (mostly due to fasting) - it was cool to meet and chat with some of these people about what they believe.

The good Lord has definitely been with us this week. After a close call - almost signing up with a militant Hindu group masquerading as an aid organisation - we hit the road to Kashmir. It was a 2-3 day ride that turned into a 5 day epic. Our contact in Shrinagar (capital of Kashmir) was a brother known as 'Titus'.

Ans van der Zwaag is a CMS missionary in Hillbrow, a poverty-stricken inner-city area of Johannesburg, South Africa. She shares what a day's work amongst Africa's poorest city dwellers means to her...

Nathan Brown and Julian Price have begun an epic journey by motor bike which will take them from India to England, crossing some of the world's most desolate and dangerous territory along the way. The point? Encouraging Christians doing it tough for God. Click here to read their first blog as they pick up their wheels in Dehli...

'A day in the life...' is a new Insight series that looks at what the real day-to-day grind is like on the mission field, one country at a time. First up is CMS missionary Tim Swan, writing from Santiago, the capital of Catholic-dominated Chile...

Jan Rees is a poet and an associate minister at St Augustine's, Neutral Bay. The following verses are her reflections on the devastating terrorist attacks on the city of London over the past weeks. In it she poses the crucial question, what has become of the Christian distinctiveness in a world rent by innocent deaths?

I grew up in England. My family, from as early as I can remember, used to get together each evening to share Mum’s beautiful home cooked meal - which we would eat in complete silence. Perhaps this flowed from a staunch retention of Victorian values? I’m afraid not. Rather, without fail we would sit transfixed in a quarter circle, plates on our laps, with our eyes glues to the TV.

James Morrison is regarded as Australia’s best known jazz musician. Besides the trumpet, the multi-instrumentalist plays trombone, euphonium, flugel horn, tuba, saxophones, and piano. Morrison tells Joseph Smith that his introduction to the genre was through what he calls ‘gospel jazz’...

While many churches participated in events held on the National Day of Thanksgiving (NDOT) recently, a good many didn’t. Perhaps, like most other Australians, many Christians in this country don’t like to ‘institutionalise’ virtue. They would rather express their feelings on their own terms than in an orchestrated fashion. I can sympathise with that!

Some people say Christians shouldn’t get depression. Some people say that Christians should just snap out of it, or just have more faith. There’s nothing less helpful. I was inspired to write this after talking on one of the forums about unemployment and the debilitating effects of being without a job.

If the ANZAC Day ceremony is reduced to nothing more than a sentimental ritual, or a mark of civic duty, it will have lost both its soul and its power to change our future.