It's with a mixture of sorrow and gratitude that we celebrate the completed life of our colleague, Rob Duffy. His was a presence that stayed true to the mission in some of the most extraordinary circumstances. I once had the honor of traveling with him on a tour of Southeast Asia Human Development Projects, and these were some reflections from that trip: *24 April 1979* This is being written in the village development project of Bontoa, South Sulawesi, Indonesia. We’re in the meeting room, which is a shelter in a field in the center of the village. We are in a driving rainstorm, with fifty to one hundred kids running around playing soccer outside and twenty or so more milling around and chattering inside the shelter; mostly girls inside, mostly boys outside. A mangy dog, ants, and mosquitoes also populate the dirt-floored, slat-sided, thatch-roofed structure. Rob's talk is going on in sentence-by-sentence translation. And somehow it all feels perfectly normal. At least one fourth of the little boys are stark naked. Most of the young women – who are village leaders – wear heavy coats of rice powder on their faces giving what to Western eyes is a ghastly pallor to otherwise attractive features. It's not the look of a prehistoric culture – the dress and the eyes (bright, lucid, and alert) deny that. It's just other. The rain is pelting now, and it sounds like a tin roof. Rob is yelling at the top of his voice and is barely audible. If it weren't for the fact that all ten of us around the table are furiously taking notes and the fact that Rob is profoundly serious in dealing with the project issues, you'd say that this is an impossible situation in which to conduct business. But it's not. It's just other. Rob's presence made it clear that Otherness is no enemy. Our thoughts and prayers are with Ann and the family. John & Ann Epps