Right now, it is happening all around the world. In coffee shops, homes, roadside rest areas, airports, offices, churches and high mountain campsites people are talking over a cup of coffee. One-on-one they’re sharing individual travel experiences with each other. They’re not talking about the travel industry, grand tour programs, or the latest in destination technology. They’re keeping it personal.

MAP’s goal is to publish articles that don’t just entertain, but will touch your heart and challenge you to follow your travel dreams. We want you looking forward to the next issue. We’ll publish stories that make you laugh as you nod your head, identifying with some of the things that happen to people when they travel. Some stories may contain enough humanness to grow you—to nudge that comfort zone a little. All the stories will give you ideas for mapping your own travel experiences.

Our FEATURE article, Not Just Another Cup of Coffee… has two important stories linked to it that should challenge the toes off your feet. It made me want to do something righteous, something that affects other people’s worlds, not just mine.

Peg Henjum was a photographer on assignment when travel rocked her world. Who she was is not who she is now—it’s an intimate slice of life experience that Peg shares with us.

JOY, that inner calm in the midst of chaos, is the key focus for this issue of our magazine. I don’t know about you, but sometimes maintaining the kind of JOY I read about in the Bible can be the elusive butterfly of life.

Some days, on those moody Mondays…or Tuesdays…it stays far enough away to be just out of reach. When I need JOY the most is when it seems the hardest to snatch it back into my world. Doug Garner’s article in THINK ABOUT IT challenged me to rethink my perspective on what JOY really is and isn’t. The Naked Truth About Joy provides practical suggestions on how to attain it by making it clear that we’re not supposed to sit around and wait for JOY to light on our butterfly net.

Excitement and danger are commingled with HIGH ADVENTURE in Jeff Rasley’s personal story on extreme trekking in Nepal. You’ll wonder why you haven’t bought climbing gear and joined the team he’s taking back with him in October 2008. You still have time!

Jeff’s upcoming trek is geared for the person ready to challenge the mountain, but it’s not an extreme trek like the one in this publication’s article, Trekking Nepal, the adventure of a lifetime.

MAP seeks out “life-changing” destinations. THE FAMILY EXPERIENCE article caused our research team to discover a faith-based camp (Summit Ministries) in Colorado, USA that is unique. If you know a young adult (18-23 yrs) who has a desire to understand what they believe and how to fit that belief into a postmodern culture, this is the camp for them. It’s a two-week conference designed to study, learn, and debate world issues. Plus, they have outside activities that make the camp fun.

Knowing my husband is familiar with the great minds of two Summit lecturers, India-born Ravi Zacharias and J.P. Morland, professor at Biola University, I shared this camp with him. “They have adult conferences?” Last time I saw him, his head was buried in the laptop…you may see that man of mine enrolled there this summer.

Vietnamese-born Son Tung Vu (aka Samuel) shares his travel experiences as a 23-year old university student in South Korea. Visit CULTURAL ENCOUNTER to see how he mapped a trip to include the conference at Summit Ministries in Manitou Springs, Colorado (see Summit Ministries--for information on Summit) and read about his travel across the U.S.

Forty-five minutes from my home in Southern California is a Vietnamese community known as “Little Saigon.” I E-mailed my girlfriend, Sharon Trang, asking if she could give me some information on Vietnam, her country of origin. She answered with a text message, “Can you meet me on Saturday morning?”

We parked in the Asian Village parking lot and after visiting several stores, we walked across the street to the huge “Asian Garden Mall” and spent a full day of shopping in a transplanted corner of Vietnam.

Our stories reflect people like you and me. We all yearn in one way or another to touch the spiritual part of our humanity, looking for God in all the right places. MAP will encourage our readers to continue the search with the expectation of finding Him, especially during your travels.

We'll give you travel tips and suggest travel agencies that people are telling other people about. My husband and I travel with a group of five couples and have visited several interesting, out-of-the-way countries. When MAP highlights countries that I've seen and have pictures to prove it, I will include them in my Editor's Letter.

Let's keep it personal in a sometimes impersonal world. If you have a humorous or laugh out loud travel experience, we've provided a link so you can tell us about it.

See you in the next issue,

Sharron Pankhurst
Executive Editor