YWAM Publishing Heroes of History Captain John Smith: A Foothold in the New World and Unit Study Curriculum Guide Review

My family had the privilege of reading the Heroes of History - Captain John Smith book from YWAM Publishing for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Homeschool Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

YWAM (YOUTH WITH A MISSION) Publishing is a nonprofit organization that produces and distributes books that help Christians make a difference in the world by giving a portion of every dollar spent to buy books through YWAM Publishing to children and adults in other countries that are in need. Their books focus on evangelism, educational training, prayer, discipleship, and mercy ministries.

YWAM Publishing has two popular book series; one called Heroes of History and the other called Christian Heroes: Then & Now; in which true stories are told of real people that lived in our history. In the Heroes of History series we learn about great men and woman who changed the course of history. In the Christian Heroes: Then & Now series we learn about ordinary people who have put their trust in God and in doing so accomplish extraordinary things. Both of these book series help us as: parents, teachers, and caretakers; give our children wholesome biographies to read or be read to that teach good character traits, values, and virtues.

Captain John Smith: A Foothold in the New World Book

Captain John Smith: A Foothold in the New World by Janet & Geoff Benge is part of a series of 28 biography books called Heroes of History by YWAM Publishing. This series covers the years 1451 to 1951. This book tells the true life story of Captain John Smith who was enslaved by Turks, captured by pirates, saved by a princess, fought in wars, and helped establish Jamestown in the New World. This Christian biography book from YWAM Publishing about Captain John Smith teaches great character traits, values, and virtues too. This book covers the years 1580-1631. It chronicles his life from his birth to his death in 1631. It is a total of 16 chapters and 192 pages long. I had previously heard bits and pieces of his life and his adventure in history class at school while growing up and watching Pocahontas before I read this biography book.

John Smith Unit Study download page tab.

The Unit Study Curriculum Guide that is paired with the Captain John Smith: A Foothold in the New World book that I received was in the digital downloadable format and opened as an executable file. The digital version is downloadable in a zipped format, so you will have to unzip before you use it. After selecting where it will go on your computer, unzip it, and find the folder it placed it all into. Find the file version you need: __MACOSX for Macintosh and the other for PC. Click on the file that has START HERE in its title and it will open in a new window in your browser. You can then read a very short synopsis of the biography under the John Smith tab, download the unit study under the Unit Study tab, etc.

The Unit Study downloads in PDF format. It also has a 24-25 page guide for classroom and homeschool as well as a 12 page guide for a small group that tells you how to best use the unit study. This shows how flexible you can be with the unit study. You can do the whole study or just parts of it. It is all up to you how you use it. The unit study goes in depth to help you go above and beyond the book and explore other areas that pertain to the material like: crafts, cooking, art, and writing assignments; has questions to ask your children to see if they comprehended the reading, and quotes to use as copywork to enhance handwriting or memorization. The unit study is broken into two parts.

Here is the Unit Study Curriculum Guide Contents:
Part 1 -
Introduction (how to use the study)

1. Key Quotes (great for copywork, memorization, theatrical presentation, or art display)
2. Display Corner (an area designated for hands on display of items relating to the reading)
3. Chapter Questions (questions that enhance the reading: 1 vocabulary, 1 factual, 2 comprehension, and 2 open-ended)
4. Student Explorations (essay questions, creative writing, hands-on projects, audio/visual projects, arts & crafts)
5. Community Links (field trip ideas)
6. Social Studies (places, journeys, terms/vocabulary, geographical characteristics: mapping, timeline: plotting historical events, conceptual questions)
7. Related Themes to Explore (cultures, math, literature, history, current events, science & medicine)
8. Culminating Event (sort of a show and tell ending, ideas include: invitations, clothing, competitions, presentations, food, displays)

Appendix A: Books and Resources
Appendix B: Answers to Chapter Questions
Appendix C: Social Studies Reproducibles

Part 2 -
Appendix C: Social Studies Reproducibles (continued)

Teela reading YWAM Publishing Heroes of History Captain John Smith: A Foothold in the New World.

How We Used This and Our Thoughts:

I read the book to my daughters who are 7 and 10. I read it to my 7 year old daughter Zari so we could have time to get through some of the study guide too. My daughter Teela who is 10 and my sons who are 15 and 17 have been reading it to themselves and doing some of the projects from the study guide on their own time. Zari enjoyed listening to me read about Captain John Smith. We learned more about John Smith's adventures and mishaps from reading this book than any textbook we had read or movie we had watched previously. It was quite refreshing to learn more about this important man.

After each chapter my girls and I did the first three questions from the study guide which are geared toward the younger students. They include a vocabulary question, a factual question coming from the reading, and the first comprehension question. The study guide is geared toward ages 10+. So I had to help them with the some of the vocabulary because of its advanced nature. We would look up the words in a dictionary and thesaurus as well, for more understanding. My boys, Jaedan and Delbin, who are 15 and 17, had no problem with the reading and vocabulary, but that is because they are voracious readers. I had my boys do all of the chapter questions. Besides the chapter questions I had my girls do copywork from the key quotes and I had my boys memorize them and say them back to me. I will have my sons do an essay as suggested in the study guide under the student explorations and essays. They also will be doing some creative writing.

We also went to other websites in the books and resources section of the study guide to learn more about the Captain John Smith, Powhatan Indians, Pocahontas, the New World, Chesapeake Bay, Jamestown, Williamsburg, Yorktown, Potomac River, Colonial America, etc. We especially loved going through the Jamestown Interactive website and seeing the artwork depicting the Indians and their town. We also loved the basket weaving website and want to try our hand at making baskets when we get more time. The mosaics from Constantinople were also very cool to see online.

There was so much to learn and explore in this unit study. We were amazed at the very complexity of it all. We didn't even begin to scratch the surface and were still very engaged in the lengthy unit study.

The YWAM Publishing biographies are historical and true. These true stories along with the unit studies are great for homeschooling families. We hope to get to read about Daniel Boone or Davy Crockett next in their extensive biography list. I highly recommend these!

Follow Them on Social Media:

• Website - http://www.ywampublishing.com/
• Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/YWAM-Publishing-482973445102/
• Twitter - http://twitter.com/YWAMpublishing @YWAMpublishing
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• YWAM Publishing Blog - http://www.ywampublishingblog.com/
• Suggested Hashtags - #hsreviews #ywampublishing #christianheroes #christianbiographies #truebiographies #HeroesofHistory #christianheroesthenandnow #herobiographies #TrueStories #homeschoolcurriculum #homeschooling #americanhistory #americanhistorycurriculum #Teachthemwell

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YWAM Publishing Heroes of History - Captain John Smith: A Foothold in the New World book:
Regular Price: $9.99 YWAM Price: $7.50

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YWAM Publishing Heroes of History Meriwether Lewis: Off the Edge of the Map Review

My family had the privilege of trying the Heroes of History - Meriwether Lewis from YWAM Publishing for this review to use in conjunction with our own homeschool curriculum. This is a Homeschool Review Crew Review. All opinions expressed are my own or those of my family.

YWAM (YOUTH WITH A MISSION) Publishing is a nonprofit organization that produces and distributes books that help Christians make a difference in the world by giving a portion of every dollar spent to buy books through YWAM Publishing to children and adults in other countries that are in need. Their books focus on evangelism, educational training, prayer, discipleship, and mercy ministries.

YWAM Publishing has two popular book series; one called Heroes of History and the other called Christian Heroes: Then & Now; in which true stories are told of real people that lived in our history. In the Heroes of History series we learn about great men and woman who changed the course of history. In the Christian Heroes: Then & Now series we learn about ordinary people who have put their trust in God and in doing so accomplish extraordinary things. Both of these book series help us as: parents, teachers, and caretakers; give our children wholesome biographies to read or be read to that teach good character traits, values, and virtues.You can read more about them at: http://www.heroesthenandnow.com/.

Meriwether Lewis: Off the Edge of the Map Book

Meriwether Lewis: Off the Edge of the Map by Janet & Geoff Benge is part of a series of 28 biography books called Heroes of History by YWAM Publishing. This series covers the years 1451 to 1951. This book tells the true life story of Meriwether Lewis, President Thomas Jefferson's private secretary that was sent by him to be the leader and Captain of the Corps of Discovery (The famous Lewis and Clark Expedition of about 33 men) to explore the lands West of the Mississippi. With the help of his friend William Clark and later Sacagawea/Sacajawea and Sacagawea's husband, Touissant Charbonneau, they made the journey to the Pacific Ocean. This Christian biography book from YWAM Publishing about Meriwether Lewis teaches great character traits, values, and virtues too. This book covers the years 1774-1809. It chronicles his life from his birth to his death in 1809. It is a total of 18 chapters and 231 pages long. I had previously heard bits and pieces of his life and the expedition in history class at school while growing up, when I was visiting the Louisville Kentucky Frazier History Museum "The Lewis and Clark Experience" with my son, Jaedan; and reading about the history of Oregon and Washington before I read this biography book.

Meriwether Lewis Unit Study download page tab.

The Unit Study Curriculum Guide that is paired with the Meriwether Lewis: Off the Edge of the Map book that I received was in the digital downloadable format and opened as an executable file. The digital version is downloadable in a zipped format, so you will have to unzip before you use it. After selecting where it will go on your computer, unzip it, and find the folder it placed it all into. Find the file version you need: __MACOSX for Macintosh and the other for PC. Click on the file that has START HERE in its title and it will open in a new window in your browser. You can then read a very short synopsis of the biography under the Meriwether Lewis tab, download the unit study under the Unit Study tab, etc.

The Unit Study downloads in PDF format. It also has a 12 page guide for classroom and homeschool as well as one for a small group that tells you how to best use the unit study. This shows how flexible you can be with the unit study. You can do the whole study or just parts of it. It is all up to you how you use it. The unit study goes in depth to help you go above and beyond the book and explore other areas that pertain to the material like: crafts, cooking, art, and writing assignments; has questions to ask your children to see if they comprehended the reading, and quotes to use as copywork to enhance handwriting or memorization. The unit study is broken into two parts.

Here is the Unit Study Curriculum Guide Contents:
Part 1 -
Introduction (how to use the study)

1. Key Quotes (great for copywork, memorization, theatrical presentation, or art display)
2. Display Corner (an area designated for hands on display of items relating to the reading)
3. Chapter Questions (questions that enhance the reading: vocabulary, factual, 2 comprehension, and 2 open-ended)
4. Student Explorations (essay questions, creative writing, hands-on projects, audio/visual projects, arts & crafts)
5. Community Links (field trip ideas)
6. Social Studies (places, journeys, terms/vocabulary, geographical characteristics: mapping, timeline: plotting historical events, conceptual questions)
7. Related Themes to Explore (science, literature, folk culture, geography, history)
8. Culminating Event (sort of a show and tell ending, ideas include: literary, clothing, music, food, oral presentations, displays)

Appendix A: Books and Resources
Appendix B: Answers to Chapter Questions

Part 2 -
Appendix C: Social Studies Reproducibles


How We Used This and Our Thoughts:

I read the book to my daughters who are 6 and 9. Teela, my 9 year old wanted to read it herself, but we needed time to get through some of the study guide too. My sons who are 15 and 16 are reading it to themselves on their own time and have been doing some of the projects from the study guide. My girls enjoyed listening to me read about Meriwether Lewis.

After each chapter my girls and I did the first three questions from the study guide which are geared toward the younger students. They include a vocabulary question, a factual question coming from the reading, and the first comprehension question. The study guide is geared toward ages 10+. So I had to help them with the some of the vocabulary because of its advanced nature. We would look up the words in a dictionary and thesaurus as well, for more understanding. My boys, Jaedan and Delbin, who are 15 and 16, had no problem with the reading and vocabulary, but that is because they are voracious readers. I had my boys do all of the chapter questions. Besides the chapter questions I had my girls do copywork from the key quotes and I had my boys memorize them and say them back to me. I will have my sons do an essay as suggested in the study guide under the student explorations and essays. They also will be doing some creative writing.

We also went to other websites in the books and resources section of the study guide to learn more about the Indians, places the expedition traveled, food, etc. I loved especially learning about Meriwether's journal entries about plants and animals from these other resources. I love botany and this was great to see pictures and read about the first specimens of these plants preserved within the pages of his journal.

Sunrise Over Lewis and Clark Bridge, taken on March 13, 2015.

The town of Rainier Oregon, where I live, is across the Columbia River from Longview Washington. The bridge that connects our two cities is called the Lewis and Clark Bridge. It is of course named after the two explorers. In Longview there is a Lake Sacajawea Park which has a very nice statue of Sacajawea and Pomp. We visited there to learn more and have a homeschooling field trip.

Lake Sacajawea Park in Longview Washington

There was so much to learn and explore in this unit study. We were amazed at the very complexity of it all. We didn't even begin to scratch the surface and were still very engaged in the lengthy unit study.

The YWAM Publishing biographies are historical and true. These true stories along with the unit studies are great for homeschooling families. I highly recommend them!


Follow Them on Social Media:
Website - http://www.ywampublishing.com/
Facebook - http://on.fb.me/o9VOMN
Twitter - @YWAMpublishing http://twitter.com/YWAMpublishing
Pinterest - http://www.pinterest.com/YWAMpublishing
YWAM Publishing Blog - http://www.ywampublishingblog.com/
Suggested Hashtags: #hsreviews #christianheroes #christianheroesthenandnow #heroesthenandnow #christianbiographies #herobiographies #heroesofhistory #homeschoolcurriculum #homeschooling #americanhistory #americanhistorycurriculum  #ywampublishing #truebiographies #truestories #teachthemwell #MeriwetherLewis

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YWAM Publishing Heroes of History - Meriwether Lewis: Off the Edge of the Map book:
Regular Price: $9.99 YWAM Price: $7.50

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Simple Pleasures: Stories from My Life as an Amish Mother Book Review

I love reading books about the Amish, Mennonites, Hutterites, and Plain People. I used to live in Ohio and we would go to Lehman's Hardware store in Kidron often. Lehman's sells non-electric alternatives and a whole slew of really neat products that I loved perusing every time I was there. I was captivated by the Plain People that lived there. I would see them shopping at Lehman's with their families too, on the road with their horse drawn buggies or trying to make a living selling their wares on the side of the road. I always fantasized about how simple and perfect it might be to live like them. They seemed so much apart from my own life in the city.

Simple Pleasures: Stories from My Life as an Amish Mother by Marianne Jantzi is a collection of journal entries from her own Amish family. The book is the 4th part of a series called Plainspoken by Herald Press. This series gives readers an inside scoop of the life of a Plain Person with actual accounts from the Anabaptists themselves. Each book includes "A Day in the Life of the Author" and the author's answers to FAQs about the Amish.

While reading Simple Pleasures I couldn't help but notice how similar the author's challenges and parenting struggles were with mine. She struck a chord with me. I had been fed, for the most part, only half truths about the Amish. In the media their lives were portrayed as somewhat idealistic. Marianne Jantzi opened my eyes to a more revealing and honest account of how the life of an Amish mother really is. Her book is an authentic and true-life tale from slices of her life. She is very open on what she feels and she tells her story how it actually is.

I was glad though that in the first few pages (Author's Note) of Simple Pleasures Marianne introduces everyone in her family and how the book was going to be laid out, so for me there were no surprises, but I do wish that each entry had a date so I wasn't guessing at that. The book is laid out in 8 parts that are categorized by a main theme. Each part has chapters under it that goes into even more precise themes. Each chapter has snippets of  Marianne's life that are separated by three dots. These are not in sequence of how they happened in her life, but rather by the themes.

My favorite parts to read were Winter Blows Cold and Garden of Plenty. When I lived in the city I really hadn't noticed how much I took for granted, but living in the country shows me how thankful I am for the very food on our table and the fact I helped grow some of it! In Thankful Hearts on page 49 I love how she writes about the fall season. "Once again, late autumn speaks-urging us, warning us. Time is running out. Frosty days are just around the corner. Gather those apples, cabbages, pumpkins, and squash. Fill the woodshed. Stuff the cracks. Hurry, hurry through the golden autumn days." It was also so nice to read about Marianne's garden in Five Rows of Peas (chapter 29). I love gardening and now that I am a certified Master Gardener I expect to be doing a lot more of it. I also love the "instructions for planting a garden" she included in this chapter. Such great advice! I've also never heard of "Kiddie Packets" (page 189) and will have to try these out with my youngsters if I can find which seed company offers them. I thought her seed apron was a fantastic idea and although it sounded fairly simple to make I still wish I was better at sewing to make myself one.

I love that at the end of the book the Jantzi's include their favorite family recipes. I will have to try Sister Kathryn's Salsa this harvest season when I have enough tomatoes, peppers, and onions from my garden collected. My kids will love the easy treat recipes that are also included too because they love to make goodies to eat.

About the book (from the publisher):

Simple Pleasures: Stories from My Life as an Amish Mother (MennoMedia, March 2016)

Young Amish homemaker Marianne Jantzi invites readers into her family's life on the snowy plains of Ontario.

The mother of four young children and wife of a storekeeper, Jantzi writes about her daily routines and heartfelt faith with equal measures of wit and warmth. Sewing, cleaning, cooking, gardening, and helping to manage the store take up most hours in her day, but Jantzi finds time to pen columns for the Connection, a magazine beloved by Amish and Mennonite readers across the United States and Canada. Never sugarcoating the frustrations of motherhood, Jantzi tells it like it is, broken washing machine and bickering children and all. But through her busy days, Jantzi finds strength in simple pleasures of family, fellowship with her Amish community, and quiet time with God.

About the author (from the publisher):

Marianne Jantzi is an Amish writer and homemaker in Ontario, Canada. Formerly a teacher in an Amish school, Jantzi now educates and inspires through her "Northern Reflections" column for The Connection, a magazine directed mainly to Amish and plain communities across the U.S. and Canada. She and her husband have four young children and run a shoe store among the Milverton Amish settlement of Ontario.

BUY IT
This would be a wonderful gift for Mother's Day. Purchase a copy: http://bit.ly/1p0SQvJ

DISCLOSURE/DISCLAIMER: I received this product for free to review. My thoughts are mine and my family's own opinion and have not been altered by anyone else. I did not receive any other compensation for doing this review.

My Amish Childhood by Jerry Eicher FWCT Book Review

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Today's Wild Card author is:

Jerry Eicher

and the book:

My Amish Childhood

Harvest House Publishers (February 1, 2013)

***Special thanks to Ginger Chen for sending me a review copy.***

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Jerry Eicher’s bestselling Amish fiction (more than 210,000 in combined sales) includes The Adams County Trilogy, the Hannah’s Heart books, and the Little Valley Series. After a traditional Amish childhood, Jerry taught for two terms in Amish and Mennonite schools in Ohio and Illinois. Since then he’s been involved in church renewal, preaching, and teaching Bible studies. Jerry lives with his wife, Tina, and their four children in Virginia.


Visit the author's website.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Bestselling fiction author Jerry S. Eicher recounts his childhood in the Amish community of Aylmer, Ontario and his parents’ decision to move to Honduras. Jerry also tells of his eventual conversion to Christ and the reasons for his departure from the childhood faith he knew.

Product Details:
List Price: $12.99
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: Harvest House Publishers (February 1, 2013)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0736950060
ISBN-13: 978-0736950060

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

I can still see his face. Lean. Determined. Framed by his lengthy beard. I can see him running up the hill toward our house. He was carrying his bag of doctor implements.

Mom was having chest spasms, and any real doctor was miles away—across four hours of the broken, rutted, dusty Honduran road we took only as a last resort.

The running man was my Uncle Joe. The smart one of the family. The older brother. The intellectual genius. When Uncle Joe walked by, we stopped talking and listened intently when he spoke. On this day, he rushed by, not paying any attention to us children.

I knew he was coming about Mom, but I recall experiencing no fear for her life. Perhaps I wasn’t old enough to have such a fear. To me, Uncle Joe’s haste seemed more entertainment than emergency. After all, Mom had looked fine to me a few minutes earlier.

When Uncle Joe left the house some time later, he issued a favorable report that I never questioned. Nor did anyone else. The mysteries of the Englisha world of medicine were even further removed from us than the four hours to town. Uncle Joe studied the books, and we trusted him.

Years later, when our little Amish community in Central America was on its last legs and held in the grip of terrible church fights over cape dresses, bicycles, singing in English or Spanish on Sunday mornings, and other horrors that the adults spoke of with bated breath, it was the look on Uncle Joe’s face as he talked with Mom and Dad by the fence on Sunday afternoon that made things clear to me. If Uncle Joe thought something was over, then it was over.

Uncle Joe lived below us, across the fields, in a house smaller than ours even though his family was much larger. How they managed, I never thought to wonder. Their house never looked crowded. It was kept spotless by his wife, Laura, and their oldest daughters Rosanna and Naomi. We didn’t visit often on Sunday afternoons. Mostly we children dropped by on weekdays, sent on some errand by Mom or we wandered past on our meanderings around the countryside.

They kept goats in the yard, all of them tied with long ropes to stakes. One of them was named Christopher. We didn’t have goats. Dad ran a machine shop, and Mom took care of the garden. Goats were foreign to us. Smelly creatures. Mom scorned goat’s milk, even when Uncle Joe said emphatically it was far superior to cow’s milk.

We all lived near each other in those days—part of a grand experiment to see if the Amish faith could survive on foreign soil.

My grandfather, Peter Stoll, an Amish man of   impeccable standing, had taken it upon himself to lead an Amish community to the Central American country of Honduras. He wasn’t an ordained minister, and I don’t remember seeing him speak in public. Still, the integrity of his life and his ideas so affected those around him that they were willing to follow him where few had gone before.

At the height of the experimental community, we ended up being twenty families or so. We all lived on two neighboring ranches purchased in a valley below a mountain. Most of us had come to Honduras from the hot religious fervor of the small Aylmer community along the shores of  Lake Erie in Southern Ontario or from the detached coolness of Amish country spread over Northern Indiana. Plans were for the two to become one in mind and heart. And for awhile we did.

Those were wonderful years. The memories of that time still bring an automatic gathering of hearts among the Amish who were there—and even some of us who are no longer Amish. All these years later, most of us are scattered across the United States and Canada—except for the few of the original group who stayed behind.

Some of the people credit the joy of those days to the weather in our Honduras valley. And lovely weather it was. Balmy. Hardly ever above ninety or below forty. Others credit the culture. Some attribute our happiness to being so far from the States that we only had each other. I don’t know the full reason for our happiness. Perhaps it isn’t possible to know. But I do remember the energy of the place—its vibrancy. I do know the years left their imprints on us all.

This was my childhood. Those hazy years when time drags. When nothing seems to come soon enough. And where everything is greeted as if it had never been before. To me that land—that valley—was home. I absorbed it completely. Its sounds. Its language. The color of the dusty towns. The unpaved streets. The pigs in the doorway of the huts. The open fires over a metal barrel top. The taste of greasy fried beans. The flour tortillas and meat smoked to perfection. In my heart there will always be a deep and abiding love for that country.

Around us were mountains. To the north they rose in a gradual ridge, coming in from the left and the right to meet in the middle, where a distinctive hump rose into the air—officially named Mt. Misoco. But to us it was simply what the locals called it: La Montaña. The Mountain. Our mountain. Which it was in ways we could not explain.

To the south lay the San Marcos Mountains. At least that’s what we called them. Those rugged, jagged peaks lying off in the distance. I never climbed those mountains, but I often roamed our mountain—or rather our side of it—from top to bottom. On its peak, looking over to the other side, you could see lines and lines of ridges running as far as the eye could see.

A party of courageous Amish boys, along with a few visiting Amish youngsters from stateside, once decided to tackle the San Marcos Mountains. They threw their forces together and allowed two days for the trip. I was much too young to go along—and probably wouldn’t have anyway. But I waited for news of their adventure with interest. They came back soon enough— defeated and full of tales of dark jungles and multiple peaks that disoriented the heart. No one even caught sight of the highest point, let alone the other side.

In the summer, around five in the morning, the Southern Cross—that symbol of Christianity—hung over the San Marcos Mountains. Its haunting figure made of stars swung low in the sky. I would stand for long minutes gazing at the sight, caught up in the glory of it.

I was eight when we arrived in Honduras. We were one of the first families there after Grandfather Stoll had purchased and settled on the Sanson ranch. Dad seemed driven to the move by motives other than adventure. He was unhappy with the ordnung rules in the Amish community at Aylmer, and he wanted change. Change that didn’t include the great sin of joining a more liberal Amish church, of course.

In time Dad came to love the land along with the rest of us. And strangely, he came to love what he didn’t expect—the old ways, imperfect though they had been. My most enduring memory of Dad in those days is hearing him sing the old German songs at the top of his voice over the roar of his machine shop motors. And in the end, it came down to that question for all of them. A choice between what they loved and what they loved the most.

I grew up surrounded by men dedicated to an old faith. I saw those men, most of them my uncles, tested to the core. I saw them wrestle with the old and with the new, trying to figure out where everything fit together. I lived among giants of faith. I saw their agony and their sacrifice. I saw their choices, and it affected me deeply. Their faith had been hammered out back in the sixteenth century, in the old town of Zurich, Switzerland. Back during the time Ulrich Zwingli thundered his sermons in the old Grossmunster Church.

But in the days of my childhood, those stories of   long ago were not mine yet. Those gallant tales of deeds done under fire and sword. Of imprisonment in noblemen’s castles. Of narrow escapes into the Swiss countryside from the murderous Berne Anabaptist hunters. Instead, my memories are of men in my own time. Men who believed that life was not worth living if you didn’t believe in something worth dying for. I was surrounded by men of passion. And if someone should make the claim that these men were misguided, I would insist the fault lay not in caring too much about religious matters. For I learned while growing up among them that this is how a person should live. That true believers follow God with all of their hearts and souls.

Megan's Secrets: What My Mentally Disabled Daughter Taught Me about Life by Mike Cope FWCT Book Review

It is time for a FIRST Wild Card Tour book review! If you wish to join the FIRST blog alliance, just click the button. We are a group of reviewers who tour Christian books. A Wild Card post includes a brief bio of the author and a full chapter from each book toured. The reason it is called a FIRST Wild Card Tour is that you never know if the book will be fiction, non~fiction, for young, or for old...or for somewhere in between! Enjoy your free peek into the book!

You never know when I might play a wild card on you!

Today's Wild Card author is:

Mike Cope

and the book:

Megan's Secrets: What My Mentally Disabled Daughter Taught Me about Life

Leafwood Publishers (June 14, 2011)

***Special thanks to Audra Jennings, Senior Media Specialist, The B&B Media Group for sending me a review copy.***

My Review: This book was so wonderful and reminded me of my daughter, Tatiana, that passed at the age of 6 in April of 2010. My daughter taught me so much about life and happiness. She was a gorgeous girl of red curls and bright blue eyes. Her outlook on life was always cheery and she was loved by all that came in contact with her because of her attitude about everything. She had so much love to give and we gave her our love in return. Rest in peace my beloved angel daughter!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Mike Cope is an author, blogger, professor, minister and magazine editor. He has written four books, including What Would Jesus Do Today? and One Holy Hunger. He was a minister for many years at the Highland Church in Abilene and now works with Heartbeat Ministries. He and his wife, Diane, live in Abilene, Texas, and have two surviving children: Matt, a resident in internal medicine at Duke University, and Chris, a junior in high school.

SHORT BOOK DESCRIPTION:

Mike Cope’s best teacher was his mentally disabled daughter—Megan. In her ten years of life, she taught her father secrets more profound than anything he’d learned in college or seminary. In his moving remembrance, Megan’s Secrets: What My Mentally Disabled Daughter Taught Me about Life, Cope shares those secrets in a way that will make readers laugh, cry and find new hope.
Megan was a beautiful pint-sized girl whose only spoken words were “I’m Megan!” Although a child of few words, the best scholars in the world could not teach what she did in her brief life. Her life exposed some of the insanities of the world and revealed some life-giving secrets such as:

We are often fascinated with things that are impressive from the outside but which may not be that important to God.
What really matters has to do with the heart: keeping promises, seeking justice in a brutal world, learning to see those in greatest need and living with courage, joy and unconditional love.
God uses our brokenness to His glory.

This unique inspirational book wraps these secrets and more into stories that will restore hope to those grieving. All readers who long to see modern-day examples of the “little ones” Jesus held on his lap and loved will be inspired and moved to exult in God’s incredible wisdom. What Mike discovers is that life with Megan, who slept only three hours a night, was exhausting, challenging, and even disappointing but also filled with joy and truths.
Max Lucado, best-selling author and minister, says, “The world would look at Megan Cope and her brief little life and see limitations. Imperfections. Inabilities. Her dad, just like her heavenly Father, saw something else entirely. Joy. Big heart. Love. Wisdom. Raising a disabled daughter, and then saying goodbye after a brief ten years of life, Mike knows the struggles, triumphs, pain, everyday miracles. . . and the secrets. Secrets God shares with those who care for the least among us. In Megan’s Secrets, my friend Mike shares the wisdom he learned from loving Megan.”




Product Details:

List Price: $14.99
Paperback: 224 pages
Publisher: Leafwood Publishers (June 14, 2011)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0891122869
ISBN-13: 978-0891122869

AND NOW...THE FIRST CHAPTER:

Looking for a Few Good Eggs

I gave this mite a gift I denied to all of you—eternal innocence. . . . She will never offend me, as all of you have done. She will never pervert or destroy the works of my Father’s hands. She is necessary to you. She will evoke the kindness that will keep you human. . . . This little one is my sign to you. Treasure her!1

MR. ATHA (the returned Christ) speaking of a child with Down Syndrome in Morris West’s The Clowns of God
A while back, I read an essay in Atlantic Monthly by Jessica Cohen, a Yale University student. She told about spotting a classified ad in the Yale Daily News: EGG DONOR NEEDED.
The couple placing the ad was looking for an egg from just the right donor, and they were willing to pay big bucks, to the tune of twenty-five thousand dollars. She learned that they wanted an Ivy League university student who was over 5 feet 5 inches tall, of Jewish heritage, athletic, and attractive and who had a minimum combined SAT score of 1500.

Being a bit short on cash, Cohen thought she might follow the lead. Cohen began corresponding with the anonymous couple. And as she did, she was introduced to a whole world of online ads by such desperate couples. She found one website with five hundred classifieds posted. An eBay for genetic material, she thought. Plus, there were ads like the following from young women wanting to sell their eggs:

Hi! My name is Kimberly. I am 24 years old, 5’11” with

blonde hair and green eyes. I previously donated eggs and

the couple was blessed with BIG twin boys! The doctor told

me I have perky ovaries! . . . The doctor told me I had the

most perfect eggs he had ever seen.

Cohen’s e-mails with the husband were strange. He and his wife were concerned about her scores in science and math. Then she sent a few pictures they had requested. The husband responded: “I showed the pictures to [my wife] this a.m. Personally, I think you look great. She said ho-hum.”
After that, Cohen’s correspondence with the couple abruptly ended.2
What kind of bizarre world is this? Our culture is fascinated with the “accidents” of birth: looks, athletic ability, and IQ. What if volcanic ash suddenly covered the United States, and it wasn’t until centuries later that archaeologists dug down to uncover our civilization, but the only written material they could locate were magazines from the checkout counters of grocery stores? What would those archaeologists assume about us? Maybe that we were the most shallow group of people ever?

This world of genetic engineering would favor my sons. But who—in our success-driven world—would want my daughter’s genetic makeup? She was, after all, mentally disabled. She would never take the SAT test, she wasn’t headed toward an Ivy League school, and chances were really good she wasn’t going to be over 5’5”! She couldn’t produce anything, had no fame to be proud of, and couldn’t brag of any trophies. We have classes in schools for “gifted and talented” students. By that standard, my daughter

wasn’t very successful.
And yet she was the most radical witness to the love of God I’ve ever met. She changed our world. I wonder: What if our society awarded friendliness, forgiveness, endurance, joyfulness, and unconditional love?

Megan was a quiet, loving witness to the gospel. She was an incarnation of God’s love. She received whatever gifts of service we offered to her without expecting more. She embodied the truth of 2 Corinthians 4:7: “But we have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us.”

Let the world search for “the perfect egg.” But our eyes have been opened by the breaking through of the kingdom in Jesus Christ. We’ve heard him say, “God bless you—you who are poor in spirit. God bless you—you who mourn. And God bless you—you who are meek.”

One of Megan’s much older friends was inspired by her life and wrote the following about her:

Megan proclaimed her message in her life. She was a

walking icon of Christ’s admonition to take no thought for

tomorrow, but simply, in faith, to let each day unfold on

its own. I doubt it ever occurred to Megan to make long-range

plans or to fear what the next five minutes might

bring. Megan, like the birds of the air and the lilies of the

field, trusted in the Creator, through his human agents,

to supply whatever requirements she might have. She

knew no other way to live. And in that respect, she sits in

judgment on us all, and leads us toward a more primitive

and perfect trust.

So many people were drawn to Megan. I think many college students in particular were drawn to her because they were being constantly bombarded everywhere else with messages about who they were supposed to be in order to be successful in this life. And the powerful reminder they always received from being with Megan was that success has more to do with internal qualities of the heart than with external circumstances and accidents of birth.
A society reveals a lot about itself by what it esteems and rewards. Apparently, we tend to value accidents of birth that we chisel and hone into perfection, then put on display—and even then we airbrush out the imperfections: how you look in a swimsuit, what you score on your SAT, how fast you can run a forty-yard dash.

No wonder so many people end up feeling bad about themselves. Some express this in self-loathing, others in arrogance. We watch anorexic models on television who’ve had surgical assistance with their shape, and we start feeling bad about ourselves. We often feel we’re too short, too tall, too wide, too skinny, hips too big, hips too small, curve too much, don’t curve enough. No wonder plastic surgery is such a booming business. Convince enough people that they are a mess as they are now, and you have an endless supply of business.

Megan had a way of exposing the insanity of all this craziness. As my friend Thom Lemmons said:

Megan was a flesh-and-blood display of the topsyturvy

economy of the kingdom of heaven. She was one

of the least of us, yet she occupied the apex of our care,

absorbing all the loving service we could offer, and able

to absorb still more. Without any thank you, without any

false reticence, without even seeming to notice, she took all

that we could give her, and still we were left with the sense

that it was not enough.

And yet, to anyone who held her down for a breathing

treatment, or marched with her through the church

parking lot, singing, “I’m in the Lord’s army. Yes, sir!” or

changed her soiled undergarments, or tried in vain to

rescue some semi-edible artifact from her unbelievably

quick hands, or held her as she gasped for breath—to

anyone who ever poured a minute’s worth of love down

the bottomless pit that was Megan, the blessing that

followed beggared any other reward.

Megan taught us all the difference in value between

receiving and giving. We only wished we could have done

more: there was no question of doing less. And all the

while, we were the ones being made over—by her innocent

carelessness and her shattering need—into a closer

imitation of the One who poured out his life as a ransom

for many.

One day, Thom and Cheryl Lemmons were taking care of Megan at a time when she needed oxygen to survive. Thom describes how he thought he’d figured out a secret to Megan’s care.

The trick was to keep Megan within a short enough

radius of her oxygen tank to permit the tubes to stay in

her nostrils and simultaneously remain connected to the

hose. She was also prone to seizures then, but I didn’t

know that. At one point, I remember having her in my lap

on the floor of the living room, and I may have even been

singing to her. For a few moments, the ceaseless thrashing

stopped, the grasping fingers were still, and she stared up

into my face with what appeared to me as a beatific half smile.

Then, after a minute or two, we resumed the Greco-

Roman wrestling match. “What a wonderful, peaceful,

very brief interlude,” I thought, as I put her oxygen tubes

back in place for the 5,357th time, “no doubt, made

possible by my instinctive gentleness and boundless

patience. Surely, even Megan is not immune to my gifts.”

Later, over lunch, I was relating to the Copes and

Cheryl my moment of epiphany with Megan, there on the

living room floor. Diane got a slightly embarrassed look

as I described the scene. Cheryl leaned over to me and

whispered, “Thom, she wasn’t listening to you sing; she

was having a seizure.”

Classic Megan: if ever your sense of “Christian duty”

became self-congratulatory or the least bit inflated by

a sense of its own worth, Megan would simply leave you

holding the punctured bag, and allow you to deal with

your own deflated ego. Megan, how could we ever repay

all that you taught us?

Megan’s simple-yet-profound life reminded us that God is a heart specialist who looks deeper than accidents of birth.

On the day she died, Diane and I were leaning over her praying for her, telling her we loved her, and assuring her it was all right to go. We almost forgot that anyone else was in the room. But the moment she took her last breath in the pediatric intensive care unit, my mother stood up from her chair behind us and began singing Megan’s favorite song:

I may never march in the infantry,

ride in the cavalry,

shoot the artillery.

I may never fly o’er the enemy,

but I’m in the Lord’s army.

Later it hit me: Megan had been preparing us her whole life with her simple little song. It’s like she’d been telling us that there were many things she’d never do, but we shouldn’t worry, because she’s in the Lord’s army. There’s a little grave just outside Abilene that bears her name, the dates of her abbreviated life, and then the words “I’m in the Lord’s army.”

This tiny minister taught me more than I learned in ninety hours of graduate school. She taught me that God will use my brokenness to his glory. She reminded me that the power is God’s, not mine. She made me remember we are often fascinated with things that are impressive from the outside but which may not be that important to God. She taught me that what really matters has to do with the heart: keeping promises, seeking justice in a brutal world, learning to see those in greatest need, and living with courage, joy, and unconditional love.

Now, years later, my diminutive instructor-daughter is still guiding me.