Category: What I Read

What I Read – Books About Missions

I have been working really hard on my new book, and it is going to be released soon. 🙂 It will be titled How to Bless a Missionary. I am so excited that it will be released and ready for everyone to be a blessing to the missionaries that they know for the holiday season. I can’t wait to tell you more about it!
Today, though, I’m going to let you know about a few of the books about missions that I have read in the last few months. I’m going to share my opinions and an honest review of the books so that you can choose whether or not they might be helpful to your interest in missions.  These links are affiliate links to Amazon (which means that if you click them and then purchase something, familiesformissions.com will receive a small commission at no expense to you.)
One book I read was called Missions: How the Local Church Goes Global by Andy Johnson, and it’s part of the 9Marks series of books for Building Healthy Churches. This book talks about how the local church can have the vision for World Wide missions, and it also talks about how your local church can send and support missionaries well. The author of this book really emphasizes that the local church should invest deeply in a few missionaries and not widely in many, many missionaries supported at low rates. He advocates for the church to get to know their missionaries on a more personal level, and he also encourages the local church to consider themselves as the primary source of support for the missionaries. He also talks about the benefits or detriments of short-term mission trips. He emphasizes the need for pastors and elders to visit missionaries, which I fully support. This was a great, short little book, and it is easy to read in one afternoon. It would be great to pass on to your pastor or local Mission leader.
One of the next books that I read is called The Reentry Team: Caring for Your Returning Missionaries by Neil Pirolo. This is a really great book about learning about the returning missionary and the challenges each may face. I highly recommend this to anyone who has a missionary that they support overseas. This is a great book for mission committees and Mission leaders to read as well.
The beginning of the book is written as an introduction and then the remainder of the book is written as a compilation of notes, letters, and first hand accounts of missionaries or missionary kids who returned from serving overseas to their home country (or their parent’s home country). The author then gives some commentary after each short story, and tries to help the reader see the downfalls, errors, and problems the missionaries experienced.  He addresses how the missionary could have had a better reentry into their home society.
Another book written by the same author, Neil Pirolo, is called Serving as Senders Today: How to Care for your Missionaries as they Prepare to Go, Are on the Field and Return Home. Written years ago, it talks about the need for churches and individuals to send missionaries well. It describes the missionary who is going overseas and talks about what they need from their team at home (moral support, the logistics that they will need help with, the financial support, communications support, and then reentry support). Churches and small groups are encouraged to invest in a missionary family and to help them no matter what the need. While it has some great information and good points, I did not enjoy the writing style. I feel like the editing could have been tightened up a little bit. One good thing in this book is that it gives action steps and ideas for your personal involvement at the end of each chapter. This will help you as the reader if you have gotten lost during the chapters to really hone in and focus on what’s important.
   Dispatches from the Front Boxed Set: Episodes 1-5
Another book that I recently read was called Dispatches from the Front: Stories of Gospel Advance in the World’s Difficult Places. This book was written by Tim Keesee, and there is also a video series that can be purchased separately from the book. This book and video series document this man’s journey as the person from the mission agency that went to visit workers overseas in difficult or hard-to-reach areas. The book is written as a journal along his journey, so you read short snippets from each step along the way as if you’re reading his journal or diary. But it gave me a big-picture view of what it would be like to try to spread the gospel in places like China, Southeast Asia, Africa, and India. You can see firsthand from his writings the challenges that the mission workers in those areas are facing and the dangers they confront every day. I would highly recommend this book to mission leaders as well as those who feel that they are interested in serving God in hard-to-reach and dangerous places.
Well, I think this post is long-enough for my first installment of books about missions.  I’ll pick other books for me next update on what I have read and what you might like to read.  What books have you read?  Can you recommend some to me?

What I Read in February 2018

I have continued my resolution to read more this year, and I am so excited that I have been able to do this.

I will include links to the books which are my affiliate links on Amazon. I am including them so that you can see the covers and click through to get more information, if you want. If you end up making a purchase by clicking on these links, familiesformissions will earn a tiny commission that will cost you nothing extra. 😊 (Please do not feel obligated to purchase, though…I checked out several of these at my local library.)

First, I’ll start off by telling you about the nonfiction books I read this month:

The first book I read this month was At Home in the World: Reflections on Belonging While Wandering the Globe by Tsh Oxenreider. This book was very interesting from a Missionary Kid standpoint, as it featured a family with 3 children that decides to sell their home and spend a year travelling around the world from place to place. It seems they never spend more than a few weeks in one location. I thought it was probably a great experience for their kids, but something I could not ever do. Also, I wondered about whether the kids would suffer from feeling like they were drifting and had no roots or routines.

The second book I read this month was checked out from my church library. It was called How and When to Tell Your Kids About Sex by Stan and Brenna Jones. I have to say I was disappointed by this book. I did like that it encouraged parents to talk about body parts using correct words, and to start talking about our bodies early and often (as the subject comes up at bath time, etc.). I did not feel that it actually told the reader how to tell their kids about sex, though, so I thought the title was a bit misleading. If you are looking for a step-by-step guide for how to talk to your kids about sex, this is not it. The authors kept mentioning some of their other books and recommending them to the reader for more information. This kind of turned me off and was annoying.

One book I listened to this month was More Than A Carpenter Today by Josh McDowell. I had heard of his books before, but I had never read any of them. This was a quick listen, and it was packed with information about Jesus and his deity, life, claims, and resurrection. If you have any doubts about Jesus being God or rising from the dead, I would highly encourage you to get ahold of a copy of this book that millions of people have read around the world.

I also listened to The Inheritance: A Family on the Front Lines of the Battle with Alzheimer’s Disease by Niki Kapsambelis. This was a longer audiobook, but I used time in the car driving back and forth to knock it out. This book peaked my interest because of my family history of 2 grandparents having dementia/Alzheimer’s disease. It was very interesting to hear about the history of Alzheimer’s research, and to hear how families with genes that cause early Alzheimer’s have been instrumental in furthering that research. I felt it was a little long and had many details that were not important to the overall story.

Peaceful Parent, Happy Child: How to Stop Yelling and Start Connecting by Dr. Laura Markham was an interesting read. It gave me some good ideas of how to respond better to my kids when either I or they are frustrated. I have a child that resorts to yelling very quickly, and I find myself losing my patience and responding in kind. I am hopeful that I can put some of this advice into practice in the coming weeks. 😊

In January, I started the book Puppy Training: Owners Week-By-Week Training Guide by Charlotte Schwartz, and I finally finished it this month. This is a Kennel Club Book and walks you through how to begin to train your puppy from the time you bring it home. Now, if I can only put it into practice and manage some consistency. 😉

I’ve mentioned before that I love historical novels, and I think my favorite this month was To Wager Her Heart (A Belle Meade Plantation Novel Book 3) by Tamera Alexander. This book is set in Tennessee 1870’s and helps the reader learn about Fisk University and the Jubilee Singers. I loved learning about how freed slaves were educated and how the Jubilee Singers helped Fisk University in a time of social and financial turmoil. You can learn more (and even watch some videos) by looking at the author’s website.  (This book was recommended by the manager of Faith and Life Bookstore in Newton, KS.) I am going to have to look up the first two Belle Meade Plantation books.

I enjoyed reading the previous book so much, I also read Rekindled (Fountain Creek Chronicles, Book 1 ) by Tamera Alexander. This is the author’s first book in the Fountain Creek Chronicles Series, and is a heartwarming story about a struggling marriage, love, and showing the love of Christ to those less desirable. I’m looking forward to reading the next two books in the series!

Second Opinion (Healing Touch Series #1)  by Hannah Alexander was a Christian fiction, medically-oriented book. I enjoyed reading it, and I thought that the medical aspects of it were pretty realistic.

 

What have you been reading lately? I would love some good recommendations!

 

What I Read in January 2018

I have been inspired to increase how many books I read by several people in my life and online (Crystal Paine from moneysavingmom.com). This will be challenging for me as I have a family with three young kiddos, a blog, and also work on publishing other books. But, I have made up my mind to do it because I love to read and I want to make more time for it!

I thought I would share, from time to time, what I have been reading lately. I know that I love reading posts from bloggers and authors with suggestions and reviews about what they have read. I hope that you enjoy seeing what I have read and that you can possibly get some inspiration to read something new.

I will include links to the books which are my affiliate links on Amazon. I am including them so that you can see the covers and click through to get more information, if you want. If you end up making a purchase by clicking on these links, familiesformissions will earn a tiny commission that will cost you nothing extra. 😊 (Please do not feel obligated to purchase, though…I checked out several of these at my local library.)

I normally love reading historical fiction, but I am trying to broaden my reading interests and incorporate more nonfiction books as well this year. January was very heavily nonfiction for me, which is rare!

Thunder Dog: The True Story of a Blind Man, His Guide Dog, and the Triumph of Trust by Michael Hingson and Susy Flory was a great book about a blind man and his seeing eye dog. It discussed how they were able to escape from the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, but what I really enjoyed hearing was this man’s life story. I learned a lot about the struggles that a blind person faces while growing up, and I loved learning about how guide dogs are chosen and trained.

I was given Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story to read, and I found it to be a very easy read and very interesting. If you love stories about someone overcoming immense odds, I think you’ll find it a good read. I also enjoyed some of the medical cases he discussed and how he has been able to help very difficult and hopeless cases.

I heard about Anxious for Nothing: Finding Calm in a Chaotic World by Max Lucado and decided that I could benefit from reading this since anxiety and worry are a struggle for me. This is also an easy read. I do not know that it contained any information that I did not already know, but it had many great reminders of God’s control and love for me. I’m so glad that I did take the time to read it.

I found the mention of Dog Tales: Inspirational Stories of Humor, Adventure, and Devotion by Susy Flory in the back of the Thunder Dog book and thought reading more inspirational stories about dogs might be fun (we just got a puppy). I have to say I was a little disappointed in this one, but if you like books about dogs you might give it a try. It contains unrelated short stories that feature dogs, but I found it difficult to see why a few of the stories were included.

One of my favorites was an audiobook I happened to walk past at my local library. It is called The Man Who Broke into Auschwitz: A True Story of World War II by Denis Avey with Rob Broomby. I listened to this book after dropping the kids off at school and running errands. It was a bit lengthy, and I’m sure that I could have read it myself much faster than listening to the audiobook but this is one way I can use the “dead” time that I am driving in the car and accomplishing nothing of substance. This story details the life history of a British soldier during WWII, and follows him as he is taken prisoner of war. I learned a lot that I did not know about WWII in locations other than Germany, France, and Great Britain. I loved hearing about people and locations from the wartime as he followed up on them years later. This man had an amazing story and life. There are interviews of him on YouTube as well as interviews of the man who swapped places with him from Auschwitz if you are interested in watching and hearing more. (I loaned this to my husband to listen to on the way to and from work, and he highly recommends it as well.)

I frequently like reading medical information, and I saw The Explosive Child: A New Approach for Understanding and Parenting Easily Frustrated, Chronically Inflexible Children by Ross W. Greene, Ph.D. at the local library and I checked it out. It has a wealth of information about dealing with inflexible and angry children that struggle when routines are changed and things do not go the way they expect. I think this could be very helpful to parents with children on the autism spectrum, such as Asperger’s syndrome, etc. I’m not sure how well the methods he recommends would work, but he offers many example conversations between parents/children, parents/therapist, or parents/therapist/child. Obviously, these families need to be in therapy and should not rely on reading this book alone for help.

What books have you read recently? I’d love some recommendations! I’m hoping to have a healthy mix of fiction and nonfiction in February, as I missed reading some great historical fiction this month.