Missionary Books for Children

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When I was making a list of Christian missionary biographies that I have read and benefited from and could readily recommend, it occurred to me that I ought to make a similar list of missionary books written for children. It has been a long time since I read missionary books for children, but I read several both for my own and for gifts for nieces and nephews. But though many of these are still in print, they are not recent, so if you have any to recommend, please feel free to list them in the comments. Some of these are true stories, some are fiction based on true stories, some are biographies, a few may be totally fiction.

These I haven’t read personally but I know enough about the publisher and/or author to believe they would be good:

In addition, though these aren’t written specifically for children, I think they’d be easily understood by children. An older child could probably read them alone, but these books might be especially fun to read together as a family:

  • Cowboy Boots in Darkest Africa by Bill Rice (I read this to my boys during the brief time we home schooled and they enjoyed it quite a bit.)
  • Mimosa by Amy Carmichael

In fact, probably a great many on my original list could be read as a family, but I would definitely hold off on Peace Child and Spirit of the Rainforest as they are quite graphic, though not gratuitous.

There are probably some I have forgotten, and there may be some newer ones that are good as well. Most of these are as adventuresome as any fictional story your children might read with the added benefit of examples of Christian faith and action that glorifies God and draws people to Himself.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some profitable reads from the last week or so:

Of Linen and Grace. “I am not their God. I am their mother.” For moms who feel they haven’t done enough.

Is All Sin Equal in God’s Eyes? Yes and no.

Whatever Happened to Bible Study? HT to Challies. Bible studies by others can be helpful, be we need to hear from the Word directly.

6 Reasons Not to Abandon Expository Preaching, HT to Bobbi. My favorite type of preaching for all the reasons mentioned.

Joy, or “Just Wait?” Do we encourage or discourage young moms by our throwaway comments?

10 Errors to Avoid When Talking About Sanctification and the Gospel. I am not of the Reformed faith and would prefer an appeal to Scripture rather than catechisms and confessions, but this gives some helpful perspective about sanctification.

Chasing Success (as a writer). When do you know you’ve got it, especially as a Christian?

5 Reasons you should write in your books.

This made me smile, HT to Kathie. The little boy and his accent are so cute. We were big Lego fans around here as the guys were growing up, and this brought back memories.

And you’ll need tissues for this one, HT to Susanne.

Friday’s Fave Five

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FFF delicate leaves

Welcome to Friday’s Fave Five, hosted by Susanne at Living to Tell the Story, in which we can share five of our favorite things from the last week, a wonderful exercise in looking for and appreciating the good things God blesses us with. Click on the button to learn more, then go to Susanne’s to read others’ faves and link up your own.

I can’t believe a whole week of November has gone by already! Here are some fave parts of it:

1. Date night! Last Saturday night my husband and I went with my son and daughter-in-law to see pianist Emile Pandolfi. I have been listening to his music for ages and for some years I’ve been wanting to see him in concert. We had seen this coming up a long time ago, but with Jim’s mom here now, I figured we wouldn’t be able to go and decided not to mention it as the time got closer. Then my husband called me saying he just remembered that was coming up and did I still want to go? Sure! We asked his mom’s caregiver if she could come in the evening instead of the morning, and she said yes. Emile entertained with funny stories in-between his lovely piano pieces. All in all a great night!

This isn’t from our concert – we weren’t supposed to take photos or videos – but it gives you a sample of what his concerts are like:

2. Dinner at a 50s-style diner called Hot Rods before the concert.

3. Cheddar potato soup at home this week. It was from a Bear Creek mix rather than homemade, and I added some hash brown potatoes to give it a little more bulk,  but it was very good.

4. A better-than-expected dentist’s appointment. I thought I’d be having three things done, a filling, a bond, and a gingivectomy. They put the last one off for a few weeks, which was a relief in some ways, though in one sense I would have liked to have gotten it over with. I asked a little more about the outcome of it (I thought maybe I’d be in pain and eating soup for three days afterward, but they said with the lasers there is not much post-operative pain at all) which helped me to dread it a bit less. Then before they started working on the filling and bond (fortunately in the same section of my mouth), they put some gauze with a topical anesthetic against my gum for a bit before the shot to numb it, and I didn’t feel the shot at all. That’s the first time that’s ever happened.

5. A fire averted and new appliances. I was thankfully standing right next to the toaster oven while waiting for it to cook my breakfast when I noticed a sudden bright light in it, which turned out to be the heating element about to flame out. We’ve had that for ages. I was able to get a new one pretty inexpensively, and in white, even, to match my other appliances (not always easy to find these days – everything is black or industrial grey). Plus I found a new little mini blender (like the Magic Bullet but much less expensive) that is working well for my m-i-l’s pureed foods. We had been using a little hand blender which works well for most things, but this helps with others.

All in all a good week. I hope yours was as well!

Book Review: A Severe Mercy

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Severe MercyThere are several tracks of interest in A Severe Mercy by Sheldon Vanauken. The first is his love story with his wife, nicknamed Davy, her death, and how he dealt with it (no spoiler there: it’s mentioned up front and the whole book is colored by her death). The second is their journey from condescending atheism to Christianity, and the third is their friendship with C. S. Lewis.

The book begins, of course, with their meeting and falling quickly in love. They had a penchant for naming everything: cars, houses, events, periods in their history. They constructed what they called the Shining Barrier around their love:

The Shining Barrier – the shield of our love. A walled garden. A fence around a young tree to keep the deer from nibbling it. An fortified place with the walls and watchtowers gleaming white like the cliffs of England. The Shining Barrier – we called it so from the first – protecting the green tree of our love. And yet in another sense, it was our love itself, made strong within, that was the Shining Barrier (p. 36).

They promised to share everything in life, even to the point of deciding not to have children (because they couldn’t share in that experience equally and a child might divert their love for each other) and declaring that one would not die without the other.

They called this their pagan love, this era their pagan days, either because they were not believers at this time, or they made idols out of each other and their love, or both.

They had the opportunity to go to Oxford for a time and there met some fellow students who were Christians. They had been rather scornful of Christianity to this point, but these friends were kind, intellectual, wonderful to talk to, and they decided perhaps they should study Christianity out just to find out for themselves what they believed about it and to be fair. They read Pilgrim’s Progress, Augustine’s Confessions, and a multitude of other books, but the ones that impacted them the most were C. S. Lewis’s, who “could…swiftly cut through anything that even approached fuzzy thinking” (pp. 108-109). Vanauken wrote to Lewis a couple of times with questions which Lewis graciously answered. The book details their thought processes during this time, with Davy coming to believe first and Sheldon a couple of months later.

They thrived and grew for months, but eventually realized that Christianity itself was a breach to their “Shining Barrier.” After a while Sheldon “wanted life itself, the colour and fire and loveliness of life. And Christ now and then, like a loved poem I could read when I wanted to. I didn’t want us to be swallowed up in God….But for Davy, to live was Christ…His service was her freedom, her joy” (p. 136). He was jealous of her relationship with God and resented the intrusion of love for Christ for a time but, admitting one “cannot be only ‘incidentally a Christian.’ The fact of Christianity must be overwhelmingly first or nothing,” he eventually came to the point of realizing and being willing for full surrender himself.

Then vague symptoms Davy was having became a serious illness and then a terminal one, and the author shares the details and struggles of that time. He felt the “severe mercy” was God’s taking Davy from him in light of the fact that he still had a tendency to idolize her and their love. Perhaps. We don’t see the whole picture as God does, nor can we know all of His purposes for what He does. Davy was willing to go, even offered up her life to God for Sheldon, and God’s answer to that prayer was evidently what was best for both of them. “[Her death] saved our love from perishing in one of the other ways that love could perish. Would I not rather our love go through death than hate?”

They had visited with C. S. Lewis several times while in Oxford and their correspondence with him continued. It was interesting viewing him as someone’s friend and the impressions he made when he came to their apartment. Some 18 of his letters are included in the book. I enjoyed seeing a dashed-off note sprinkled with abbreviations yet still full of razor-sharp wit and clarity. His encouragement in Sheldon’s grief came full circle when he married Joy Davidson, came to love her, and then saw her through illness and death. Though grieving, Sheldon and Lewis both saw death as “an act which consummates, not…merely stops, the earthly life” (p. 183).

It took me a while to get into the book. My more left-brained practicality couldn’t quite fathom some of the more right-brained conversations they had at first. But after a while much in the book resonated and inspired me, especially their journey to faith and its implications on their lives. I wouldn’t agree with every little point in their theology and doctrine but I don’t feel the need to dissect that here: most of my quibbles were minor. I did enjoy each of the tracks of interest.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Book Review: The Chance by Karen Kingsbury

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The ChanceIn The Chance by Karen Kingsbury, teenagers Ellie Tucker and Nolan Cook have been best friends since grade school. He says he is going to marry her some day, but she just laughs. Tragedy strikes when Ellie’s parents separate because her mom has been unfaithful and her dad decides suddenly to move himself and Ellie from Savannah to San Diego. Ellie and Nolan decide to write letters to each other about their true feelings, bury the letters in a tackle box under the tree in the park that is their special place, and plan to meet together in exactly 11 years to unearth to contents. They assume they’ll be in touch in the meantime, but just in case, they’ll have this last chance to connect with each other.

As it happens, they do lose touch. Ellie’s letters don’t get to Nolan and he doesn’t have an address for her. In the years that follow, Nolan realizes his dream of playing NBA basketball and Ellie becomes a single mom, barely supporting herself and her daughter as a hair stylist, all thought of college and writing a novel long gone. Ellie has also lost her childhood faith. As their 11-year rendezvous approaches, Ellie assumes Nolan has forgotten her and wouldn’t be interested anyway since their lives are so different from one another’s now.

You probably have an idea where this plot will go (especially if you’ve ever read Kingsbury), but that’s not all bad. After all, in movies like An Affair to Remember, you know, or at least hope, it will end up as you think it’s going to, and you still enjoy the ride.

I hadn’t expected, though, the depth in the subplot with Ellie’s parents and the exploration of the hard work that is involved in forgiveness and taking the first steps toward restoration. Even though the ending is maybe a bit happily-ever-after-ish, none of the characters gets there easily. If you’ve ever known anyone with these kinds of breaches in relationships, this is how you’d wish it would end.

Some readers might object to Ellie’s mother’s adultery as a catalyst for the plot-line, but I’d just say this happens all too often, even in Christian circles, and the hard consequences are clearly spelled out. Though the author tells a bit more about it than I would personally care to know, there is nothing explicit.

If you’ve read The Bridge, also by Kingsbury, the two main characters from it make an appearance in this book, though it is not necessary to know their story to understand this one.

Though there are some unlikely and mildly problematic plot elements, overall I did really enjoy this book. I listened to the audiobook version, and the narrator was okay: I’ve heard better and worse.

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)

Tense anticipation

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When my mother-in-law first started losing muscle strength and tone, going from a walker to a wheelchair to not being able to feed herself to “total assist,” in the physical therapist’s parlance, it seemed as if her muscles were getting limper and weaker. Now some of them are getting strong in the wrong way. When muscles are disused, they can get contracted. She received physical therapy for a few weeks in the nursing home until she “plateaued,” got to a place where they felt they were not going to see any more improvement. The aides were supposed to continue range-of-motion exercises, but being overworked and understaffed, this was neglected, especially during time she developed a pressure sore and had to remain in bed for weeks. We didn’t realize the extent of the need nor the neglect until she already started contracting. We didn’t know to keep on top of it because we thought they were doing everything they were supposed to do. When she was released from the nursing home, her legs would no longer straighten out completely and both arms tended to be drawn up to her chest.

Grandma's hands

She received physical therapy at home for four weeks, which helped, but the PT told us it was unlikely that her limbs would get completely uncontracted. They did improve, but she still keeps her left arm pulled up tightly to her chest most of the time. That makes changing clothes and cleaning hard for both her and her caregiver.

A new problem developed in the last few weeks: two fingers on her right hand began contracting, called Dupuytren’s contracture. It is extremely painful to even have the fingers moved. We have a home health nurse who comes out once a week, and she arranged for an occupational therapist to work with her fingers and arm. Of course, he has to gently but persistently open her fingers, try to stretch them out, and massage the offending tendon in her palm, and of course this about sends her through the roof in pain. She was cooperative the first time he came and even laughed and joked a little, but each visit seems to get a little harder. When she sees him she knows it is going to hurt, so she tenses up in anticipation, which makes it worse. The OT and the aide spend most of the therapy session encouraging her to relax. She can relax her arm and fingers, and when she just relaxes and lets him work and works with him, the whole session goes much better and isn’t nearly as painful. But it is hard for her to understand that or to remember it in the midst of discomfort and pain. The last time the OT was here, her muscles were tensing before he even got started.

I have to admit it’s very hard to watch her in pain, especially when she looks at me like, “WHY don’t you do something?! Why are you letting him do this to me?” I’ve even wondered, “Is this worth it? Should we just let her be?” But without some intervention she would get more contracted and in more pain. Plus the crease in her elbow and her closed hands are more prone to skin breakdown and infection if they are not opened up. Even now the aide has to be careful to wash her hands often because she gets a sour smell in them from their being closed up.

A brace is supposed to be on order (sometimes it takes a while to get things through the doctor, insurance company, and Medicare) which will help keep her hand open naturally and hopefully help over the long haul.

I’d appreciate your prayers for her about this, especially for her OT sessions.

There were some lessons for me, though, in my mother-in-law’s latest therapy session. My mind often goes into, “What’s the worst that can happen?” scenarios. If I am catching a cold, it’s probably going to turn into strep throat and lay me out for a week: if someone is late coming home, maybe they were in an accident, etc. I’m much better about that kind of thing than I used to be, but my mind still runs in those tracks sometimes, scaring myself to death with “What ifs?” I wrote an earlier post titled “When Afraid to Surrender” about the fear we sometimes have that if we truly surrender everything to the Lord, He might ask us to undergo some great trial. He does do that to people sometimes. Just ask Job, or Joni Eareckson Tada, or any number of other people. Even knowing that God has many purposes for allowing suffering doesn’t make us look forward to the prospect.

But He doesn’t want us to live in rigid anticipation, waiting for the other shoe to drop. Whatever He allows – and I am convinced every Christian undergoes trials of some kind, whether physical ailments, relationship or family issues, financial struggles, or something else – we know He has a purpose in allowing it and has promised to be with us and to give us His grace as we need it (not before it is needed).

Perhaps you’ve heard of someone who fell or was in an accident that was made worse because they threw their arms straight out ahead of them to brace themselves, and their arms or wrists were broken. I had a tumbling class in college P.E., and our teacher said if you are about to fall, the best thing you can do is roll with it. That tense rigidity only causes harm. It lessens the joy in life we should be experiencing now. It hinders whatever God is trying to do. Like the occupational therapist, He has to gently, patiently, and persistently work with the very areas that are the most painful in order to accomplish the needed good. Tension against His working only makes it harder and more painful: relaxing into His care allows Him to accomplish His purposes with much less pain and fear. He is not just a therapist: He is a loving Father who wants our good.

“Knowing this, that the trying of your faith worketh patience. But let patience have her perfect work, that ye may be perfect and entire, wanting nothing.” James 1:3-4

(Sharing with Tell His Story)

New lyrics to “So Send I You”

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When I was a teenager, the hymn “So Send I You” was sung sometimes when a missionary was there to speak at a service or, more often, at a service when the emphasis was a call to “full-time” Christian ministry. I didn’t think the lyrics  were depressing at the time: they just seemed like a serious and sober look at a calling that would probably be hard. But they do seem to emphasis the hardships and neglect the joys:

So send I you to labor unrewarded,
To serve unpaid, unloved, unsought, unknown,
To bear rebuke, to suffer scorn and scoffing-
So send I you to toil for Me alone.

So send I you to bind the bruised and broken,
O’er wand’ring souls to work, to weep, to wake,
To bear the burdens of a world aweary-
So send I you to suffer for My sake.

So send I you to loneliness and longing,
With heart ahung’ring for the loved and known,
Forsaking home and kindred, friend and dear one-
So send I you to know My love alone.

So send I you to leave your life’s ambition,
To die to dear desire, self-will resign,
To labor long, and love where men revile you-
So send I you to lose your life in Mine.

So send I you to hearts made hard by hatred,
To eyes made blind because they will not see,
To spend, tho’ it be blood, to spend and spare not-
So send I you to taste of Calvary.

As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.

Evidently the author, Margaret Clarkson, eventually recognized the lack of balance in the hymn and penned new lyrics later in her life.

She was born into an unhappy home, was bed-bound with juvenile arthritis when she was three, and suffered migraines and vomiting. Pain was a constant companion, but she was able to attend school and become a teacher. She couldn’t find a position until she accepted one at an isolated mining camp, where general loneliness was a factor, but spiritual loneliness especially overshadowed her as she said she had no real Christian fellowship for about seven years. “So Send I You” was written at this time, colored by her loneliness and pain, and probably pretty accurate for her circumstances at the time.

Some years later, though still battling pain, she found other teaching positions and began having her writing published. She came to believe “So Send I You” was one-sided, and wrote new lyrics that she felt were more biblically balanced between the trials and joys of the Christian life under-girded by God’s grace:

So send I you-by grace made strong to triumph
O’er hosts of hell, o’er darkness, death, and sin,
My name to bear, and in that name to conquer-
So send I you, my victory to win.

So send I you-to take to souls in bondage
The word of truth that sets the captive free,
To break the bonds of sin, to loose death’s fetters-
So send I you, to bring the lost to me.

So send I you-my strength to know in weakness,
My joy in grief, my perfect peace in pain,
To prove My power, My grace, My promised presence-
So send I you, eternal fruit to gain.

So send I you-to bear My cross with patience,
And then one day with joy to lay it down,
To hear My voice, “well done, My faithful servant-
Come, share My throne, My kingdom, and My crown!”

“As the Father hath sent Me, so send I you.”

It does make a difference where our focus is.

A longer biography of Margaret is here.

I found a simple but nice rendition of the new lyrics here (I’m not familiar with the singer):

I had wanted to include this in the 31 Days of Missionary Stories, but ran out of days. 🙂 I hope it’s a blessing to you.

Laudable Linkage

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Here are some good reads from the last couple of weeks:

The Hard Work of Getting Along. “If it’s hard work, it doesn’t mean you’re doing community wrong. In fact? The hard work might be a sign that you’re doing community as God designed.”

Parents, Require Obedience of Your Children.

Pray for the Persecuted Church, and not just for deliverance.

The Underrated Adventure of Coloring Inside the Lines. This one really resonated with me.

We Can Stop Apologizing For Who We Are.

Why I Am Against the Family.

How Do You Handle Public Tantrums: Part 1 and Part 2.

The Christian Traveler. Not just for traveling.

Help Wanted: Older Women to Serve as a Reliable Guide.

10 Ways to Encourage a Missionary, HT to Kim.

What you need to know about 6-foot trick-or-treaters.

Holiday Bake, Craft, and Sew-Along.

Writing Tip: When the Deadline Looms.

I admit I am not a math person. I probably did my share of “When am I ever going to use this?” lamenting while in high school algebra. I can add up the same list of numbers three times – WITH a calculator – and get a different answer every time. But I am glad there are people who like and “get” math, like my husband. It does affect our everyday lives in multitudes of ways, as this short video shows:

Have a great weekend! Don’t forget to set your clocks back tonight!

31 Days of Missionary Stories: Pedestals?

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We’ve come to the 31st post of this 31 day series (I started a day late, thus ending Nov. 1), and I am feeling a little like the writer of Hebrews in chapter 11, verse 32:  “And what shall I more say? for the time would fail me to tell of” David Brainerd, David Livingstone, Ida Scudder, William Borden. Henry Martyn, Ann Judson, Margaret Paton, and many more. Maybe from time to time I’ll post some of their stories, although I am sure you could find some information about them online.

I’ve tried to bring a variety in this series of “classic” missionary stories and newer ones, some from the jungle, some from the city, etc. I suppose if I had thought and planned for this enough ahead of time, I could have done them in chronological order. As it was I just went from day to day with whichever one was on my heart.

mission_biosI wanted to leave you with a list of missionary biographies I have enjoyed. Some are older and out of print, but I have had great success buying used books for just a few dollars via Amazon.com (this isn’t a commercial for them – I am not in their affiliate program, though I should probably check into it, as much as I link to them!) Any links in this list are to previous posts here on this blog.

Before I get to that list, I wanted to leave you with a quote of Elisabeth Elliot in A Lamp for My Feet:

Pedestals

A student asked me whether I thought it was a problem that we tend to place missionaries on pedestals. My answer was that indeed we do, but servants of the Lord ought to be models of the truth they proclaim. Paul was bold enough to say, “Be followers of me” (l Cor 4:16).

At the same time let us always remember that the “excellency of the power” (2 Cor 4:7 AV) is never ours but God’s. It is foolish to imagine that the missionary, or whoever the hero is, is sinless. God uses sinners–there is no one else to use.

Pedestals are for statues. Usually statues commemorate people who have done something admirable. Is the deed worth imitating? Does it draw me out of myself, set my sights higher? Let me remember the Source of all strength (“The Lord is the strength of my life,” says Ps 27:1 AV) and, cheered by the image of a human being in whom that strength was shown, follow his example.

Admittedly some of the older missionary books make missionaries look a little more saintly and unflawed. I think perhaps the authors didn’t want to gossip, or perhaps they assumed everyone knew everyone else had flaws without having to lay them out for everyone to see. Perhaps because “love covers over a multitude of sins” (I Peter 4:8), they didn’t feel at liberty to divulge those of their subject (I’ve found many an autobiography to be much more frank about the author’s failings.) But I do understand it does help us to relate better to someone when they seem more real to us, as flawed as we are, and even the Bible tells us how people failed as well as how they followed the Lord. I’ve known some people who didn’t like to read missionary biographies because they thought they were too perfect: just understand that they’re not, they would never claim to be, and be inspired by the rest of their story.

Another thing to keep in mind when you read biographies is that you might come across things you disagree with: for instance, there was a time when most missionaries, especially in more remote fields, would send their children to boarding school at a certain age because there were no other schools available. With the advent of an abundance of home schooling materials and a change in mindset over the years, most would find that unthinkable now. I wouldn’t try to justify, condemn, or defend the practice: just understand that that was the way it was then. Probably some of the very problems and sorrows inherent in that practice led to the changes we have today. Similarly, a lot of older missionaries, especially in primitive areas, would hire servants. This wasn’t so they could live a class above the people they were ministering to: it was just simply to help the missionaries with the everyday tasks that in that time and culture could literally take up all of their time, especially as, being new to the field, they might not know how to do some of the things. Hiring some helpers freed them to minister more. Also, in that way they could help a new convert whose family might have turned against them. In addition, you might find some language we would not regard as “politically correct” these days, but we can’t expect them to have the sensibilities and sensitivities that have developed over hundred of years.

Some years ago when I read 50 People Every Christian Should Know by Warren Wiersbe, I was struck by the fact that the 50 he mentioned, though they agreed on the core, fundamental doctrines, like the inspiration of the Bible, the Deity of Christ, the way of salvation being by grace through faith in Him, etc., they were on either side of a multitude of fences on other issues, yet God used each of them. That doesn’t mean those issues aren’t important: each of us is responsible to study them out before the Lord. But people can differ on some side issues and still be friends and love God and be greatly used by Him.

On the other hand, we can get too enthralled and feel we need to do everything just like they did. When I started reading biographies as a young Christian, I would read how one person had their devotions, think that was a great idea, and then do the same — until I read the next book and saw how someone else did it differently. 🙂 Some of them might have employed some practices that would be good to try, if we feel led, but we don’t need to feel compelled to copy everything they did.

On to the list. I have read all of these (some multiple times) in the last 35 years:

I compiled a list of missionary books for children here.

I know I have also read biographies of William Borden, David Livingston, David Brainerd, and Ida Scudder, but that was before the days that I wrote these things down and I can’t remember which books I read about them. And there are probably some I am forgetting. But there are some wonderful, inspiring, challenging stories there, and I hope you can find and read some of them.

I’ve enjoyed much this 31 day series, but if I do it again I think I’ll do 31 one-liners or quotes or something a little shorter. 🙂 Thankfully some of these were written years earlier for a ladies’ church newsletter and only needed a little tweaking, and some had appeared on the blog before, but some were new or were woven together from a couple of other posts. It has been so good, though, to go back over these stories of how people walked with God and how He met with them and ministered through them. I hope you’ve enjoyed the series as well.

(You can see a list of other posts in the 31 Days of Missionary Stories here.)

(This will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)