NORTH AFRICA – Midway through a sweltering Mediterranean summer, the mission is cloaked in secrecy. As usual, the outcome is in doubt.

Two Avant missionaries are quietly sweating out a long journey beneath the watchful gaze of Muslim minarets, posted like sentries overlooking the marketplaces, cedar groves and rolling backcountry that conceals the world’s largest export of hashish.

Carrying a contraband message of freedom, Boaz and Nabil are intersecting invisible smuggling routes patrolled by warring drug barons. The hillside marijuana crop is flowering. It’s harvest season, and these men have an urgent appointment.

After 18 years as a missionary, followed by 18 years pastoring missionaries, John Malone has one thought: I want to finish well.
For the past 18 years in the business world, Larry Conrad has wondered: When can we start, Lord?

The poet Robert Frost mused about two roads diverging in a wood, but this tale turns the fork around: it’s a story about two journeys converging on one mission field. About a less-traveled missionary couple joining hands with a couple of well-heeled veterans. One can hardly believe they’re finally going – the other is surprised to be going back.