At the Edge of the Village: Musings of a Missionary Wife

What is it like being a missionary in Africa? Danger, joy, love, and lots of laughter.

Look Inside the Book

A missionary's life is not just danger, hard work, and culture shock, interspersed with moments of high joys and deep sorrows. In this book consisting of both narrative and letters to her church, Lisa Leidenfrost shows that it also consists of the small, daily things, the quotidian experience which makes life at the edge of a village as familiar as life in America. This book features the ordinary and extraordinary, the solemn and playful, the mundane and exotic—all coming together to create a down-to-earth portrait of the Gospel at work in a family and a society.

From the Book:

"Step into our world, a place of laughter and tears, trials and hopes, events captured and stories told. They are stories of life, lived out on the mission field in Africa where the hand of God is ever present in every situation. They are stories of daily events, of cultural experiences recounted, of friends loved and lost, and of trials surmounted. They are stories of bothersome situations turned to laughter as God gives us the ability to find humor in various hardships—a humor that has kept us sane over all these years. They are mostly stories of the familiar things in life, the little things that lend spice to our daily experience. Not all of missionary life is extraordinary or bizarre. Most of it is just normal, common events that unfold one day into another. And because God is good, there is a beauty in living, a purpose beyond our own mere existence that can make even the smallest things we do burst with life and meaning, laughter and delight. Too often these small, commonplace things go unnoticed unless they are caught and brought to life in words, words which become a lens that can, even if for a single moment, bring this ever-present beauty into focus." -From the book