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Madagascar, October 2000 My face was pressed against a steamy taxi window, staring at moving images while I tried to spirit my mind halfway around the globe. This place was, by map miles, the farthest location on the planet away from my home. My time in Madagascar had been difficult. I was physically exhausted from…

Continued from https://shawnsmallstories.com/an-amazon-adventure-part-i/ A few days downriver, we stayed in the small village of Oran. The village mayor greeted us as special guests and allowed us to set up our tents on his elevated porch. The deck, like the rest of the houses in Oran, sat on stilts ten feet off the ground, leaving a…

As I disembarked from the airplane into the jungle-walled town of Iquitos, Peru, I wrote in my journal: This is insanity. I’ve finally tipped over the edge. I’m about to vanish into the Amazon jungle for two weeks, be exposed to God knows what, and be out of range of any modern communication. If I…

When the worship began, I broke. I am talking about that full-blown, sobbing, tear-soaked, sloppy kind of crying. I was in Honduras watching Antonio, my adult adopted son, speaking in front of a hundred people gathered for church.  I met Antonio when he was twelve.  He showed up at the church where I was a…

This year, Wonder Voyage Executive Director Shawn Small entered his first children’s book I Dream of Water into the Children’s Picture Book category of the Independent Publishers (IPPY) Awards. He and illustrator Jenny Robbins had previously won IPPY bronze and silver for their devotional guides The Via Crucis and Via Advent. “I had a good feeling about I Dream of Water taking…

One of the elements that separate a good pilgrimage from a great one is a team's willingness to delve into the story of the location. In this introduction to Narrative Voyages, Executive Director Shawn Small shares why story is so powerful.