Wisdom of the Sadhu---Teachings of Sundar Singh

Wisdom of the Sadhu---Teachings of Sundar Singh is a great book. This is the true story of Sundar Singh who was a young boy who grew up in a wealthy Sikh home.  He was well loved by his parents.  Sundar was a sensitive boy who always cared for the plight of the poor around him.  One time as an 8 year old he wanted to help a poor woman in the streets.  He spent all of his money on buying her food but he didn't have enough to buy her a blanket.  He begged his father for more money but because he had already given her money before he refuses and says that it is time for others to help her so Sundar steals some of his fathers money to buy the blanket.  His father finds out but Sundar denies that he has done this theft.  Sundar is racked with guilt until he confesses to his father but his father surprises him by praising him for doing what was right and good and apologizes to him for refusing him the money in the first place.  From this brief story the reader sees that the father dearly loves his son.  He sends him to a Christian school because that is the best.  Sundar hates going to school there.  He even tears up and burns the Bible.  He gets into so much trouble from the school and his father for destroying the Holy book even though it is not his religion.  A few days later in much confusion Sundar prays to God to show himself to him if He is true.  Then Yesu (Jesus) comes to him right after the prayer and talks to him, then Sundar sees the marks on his hands and feet.  Sundar falls on his knees before the Master and feels the great peace that he has been seeking all his life.  He runs to his father to tell him of the experience and his father tells him he is confused and to go to sleep.  Sundar goes to sleep but he does not forget and spends his next few days in meditation and solitude.  Sundar decides that he must declare his new faith in Christ publicly since he had declared his insults publicly and does so.  This makes the Sikhs very angry and they eventually get the Christian school closed and the teachers have to escape for fear of reprisal.  The loving father has just lost his other son and his wife to death and is patient with his son.  He tries everything to get him to renounce his new faith but Sundar will not.  Sadly the father is forced to reject his son and send him from the house in disgrace.  And 15 year old Sundar who is only used to luxury is cast out into the world with only what he had on.  No food, no clothes, no shelter.  Sundar had the one thing that he had been seeking though--he had peace in his heart.

I loved this story of Sundar's teachings.  Sundar considered himself an Indian Holy man.  He rejected many if not most of the western Christian beliefs but those of Jesus Christ he believed and more importantly he lived and taught it to others.  He did not understand professing love for Christ but not loving your neighbor which many who profess Christ do.  He continued to love even those who did not believe with him. He was beat repeatedly for his beliefs.  He never forgot the love and peace he received from Jesus as a boy.  When the teacher at the mission school predicted to his father that Sundar would become a great man of God or .....go insane he was correct.  Sundar became a great man of God.  This is part of his story.

I received this book from Handlebar for this review.

Becoming Bea by Leslie Gould

Becoming Bea is the 4th installment of the Courtships of Lancaster County series.   These novels can easily stand alone or be read in any order.  Beatrice Zook, Bea only to her family and sometimes Ben Rupp, has been hurt bad by Ben and will barely speak to him.  Surprisingly though lately Ben has been very nice to her.  Bea is not so sure she can trust him though.  Will he just up and hurt her again after just a few dates?  She cannot deny though that even though Don has been just as nice as he can be she is still only attracted to Ben.  Ben whom she has known since grade school years.  Ben who can match her scholarly as well as in wit.  Can she take a chance on him again?  Then just to throw a monkey wrench into the whole thing her sister Molly seems to have decided that the whole family should go on vacation with her family to Montana.  Molly knows she hates to travel.  Her mom agrees that Bea can stay if she finds a job.  Bea has never wanted a job til now but there is the Miller family who needs help since Nan had the triplets.  Bea had never until now taken care of children but really how hard could 3 premature triplets be?

Love this book.  Who could not?  This writer helps the reader see the Amish as normal people with normal personalities who have the same problems with life that people of other religions have.  I like that Ms Gould does not make them out as goody goody.  These folks have to fight the same urges to sin that does everyone else and deal with many times much worse consequences from their community when they mess up.  Bea and Ben must to learn to trust  each other for their love to be a blessing to each other.  They must learn to accept each others shortfalls and forgive.  If they can learn all this their life will be blessed.  This book can be read by all ages and would probably be more enjoyed by girls and women.
This book was provided by Bethany House for this review.

Thief of Glory by Sgmund Brouwer

Thief of Glory by Sigmund Brouwer is a novel but very much based on factual events that happened in the author's grandpa's life and others who lived with him or helped  the people survive as a Japanese concentration camp survivor during the Japanese occupation of the Dutch East Indies now know as the Island of Java.  The story is also told of the heroics which happened as every day life in the Jappenkamp.  It tells of those who were thought of as traitors who it is later found were actually saviors of the many Dutch and American women and children  forced to live and many to die in the camp.  The men and older male children had already been taken into forced labor and many died in that fashion either worked or starved to death.  The story follows the life of Jeremiah and his family.  Jeremiah and his little brother Pietje were the only survivors of this very large Dutch family.  This story does not tell a pretty story.  The survivors had to do many things for which they were later ashamed in order to survive.  This book tells of great sacrifice as well as the corruption that happens during war.  It is a difficult read but one must know history or we will be descended to repeat it.

 Most of history and even novels tell the story of World War II as if the entire war was fought in Europe.  This novel tells the story of the war fought in Burma.  I am grateful to this author for telling this story.  My father in law fought in the Burma part of World War II and he says that most don't even know of all that happened there.  It is the forgotten part of the war.  This story needs to be read by all.   Most of us do not know why the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor and this tells in part of why it was so important to them to destroy our military.
This book was provided for this review by Waterbrook Press.

Forever Christmas

Forever Christmas by Robert Tate Miller is a new novel by this well known author.  Forever Christmas revisits the 3 days prior to Christmas that Andrew Farmer is being privileged to get to relive.  Andrew has loved his wife Beth for as long as he can remember but he has since becoming an important person in his firm begun to take her for granted.  He has started taking his importance more seriously and his wife's love for granted.  On this Christmas Eve Beth and he had an argument and Beth had run out thinking that he had spent the weekend on a trip with his beautiful associate not just working as he had stated so many times before but instead in each other's arms.  Andrew had not but he had known that he could have if he had wanted for he knew that the beautiful Kimberly was willing and ready.  But was it enough that he had not done anything with Kimberly?  Beth believed not only that he had but worse that he didn't love her anymore and had run out into the street to rescue the neighbor's dog and been hit by a car and died believing that Andrew and her love was over.  Andrew as he held the dying Beth knew that he had taken for granted the most important person in his life and that she had not deserved his treatment of her.  Upon returning home after Beth's death Andrew meets the angel, Lionel, who gives him one more chance to relive the 3 days before Christmas.  As Lionel explains Beth still must die but Andrew is given a chance to make things right between himself and Beth before her death.  As Lionel's final admonition, Andrew went and tried very hard not to, "screw things up".  When he entered his apartment there he was on December 22 with his wife planning Christmas again.  This time he would make things right and do the things that Beth liked to do.  He would make her last 3 days perfect and maybe if he was good enough maybe Lionel would let her live.  But those 3 days even though he tried his best were not perfect, Andrew though tried his best.  He tried to live as Beth would have wanted him to.  He would for her last Christmas would take her back to their home town where they both grew up.  Beth loved it back there but they almost never went back because Andrew held such bad memories of his life there.  But this Christmas was not about Andrew like usual this last Christmas was going to be about Beth and all the things that she wanted and never got.

I loved this book and I think that all readers that grew up loving Its a Wonderful Life will love this book as well.  It has many of the same features: a chance to relive a portion of your life and make things right, a loving wife and an upwardly mobile husband who loves her but takes her for granted in his quest to make money.  Forever Christmas reminds all of us of the important things in our life and making money rarely is as important as it seems.  This book reminds us of how important forgiveness of the wrongs done to us by others is good for not only them but good for us also.  Forgiving and forgetting allows us to become the good people that we were made to be.  It keeps us from becoming the people that we won't forgive.  This book would be good reading for all ages and both men and women.
This book was provided by Booklook for this review.

Destined for Doon by Carey Corp and Lorie Langdon

Destined for Doon by Carey Corp and Lorie Langdon is the sequel to   Doon by the same authors.  Mackenna is visited by Duncan, her old boyfriend from Doon, in her dressing room onset of her newest production just one short year after her return to modern day.  Mackenna has spent the past year acutely aware that she has made the mistake of her life by leaving Duncan on the bridge leading to Doon.  Doon is a community in the Scottish past.  The only way to Doon is to cross the Brig O Doon at just the right time.  Duncan requests Mackenna's return at the request of her best friend Veronica who happens to also be the Queen.  Both Mackenna and Veronica crossed the bridge at the same time but only Mackenna returned to modern Chicago in order to pursue her career hopefully to Broadway.  She is certain that Duncan must hate her for leaving him but she is also aware that she loves Duncan every bit as much as she ever did.  Mackenna agrees to return with Duncan for Veronica's sake to help her rescue Doon.   Mackeena and Veronica must figure out a way to save the land of Doon from the limbus which is destroying all vegetation, replacing it with a dark petunia-like flower and turning the wildlife and humans into a form much like zombies.  Will the rings that Mackeena and Veronica wear have enough power to save the Scottish land of Doon? Will the Doonians ever accept Veronica as their true queen and not just a figure head leader?  Read this next installment of Doon for all these answers and more.

I really do like these Doon stories.  I am not usually a fan of fantasy but I do enjoy the stepping back into the  history of Scotland of a thousand years past in order to read a good love story.  These love stories are good wholesome love stories than anyone including those of Junior high age and above could enjoy.  I think that this story could stand alone but the reader would definitely benefit from reading the series in order to get the background of the story.  I recommend this book as good reading for any who enjoy love stories and/or soft fantasy.
I received this book from Booklook for this review.

Never Ever Give Up: The inspiring story of Jessie and her JoyJars by Erik Rees

Never Ever Give Up by Erik Rees is the awe inspiring book about the life of his family in the year following the diagnosis of his 11-year-old daughter, Jessie's brain cancer.  This book takes the reader from Jessie being an average normal little girl who had a vision problem to being a girl who had an incurable brain tumor in a matter of days.  This book tells of how Jessie during a time in the hospital noticing that some of the children had to stay in the hospital and not get to go home as Jessie did to her family.  After spending time at the hospital preparing for the treatment Jessie asked the simple question, "How can we help them?"  Her parents teared up and didn't answer and quickly placed that question on the back burner as they contemplated how they were going to handle family life with a child with cancer but Jessie continued to ponder how to help them.  That night when the parents entered the kitchen to start dinner there was Jessie surrounded by brown paper lunch bags decorating them with stickers and markers and filling them with small toys which included her entire prized beanie baby collection.  Jessie was prepared to give away what she prized in order to help out other children who had cancer.  Erik, pastor at the Saddleback Church, was in the business of helping people and knew there would be rules governing gifts to children so he told Jessie he would help her by checking into what those rules were and then they would go from there.  They decided that the gallon plastic jars that pretzels came in would make a better container that the lunch bags and requirements stated that the gifts had to be new.  Jessie lost her battle with cancer in the following 10 months but during those 10 months Jessie's goals would go from trying to make a JoyJar, which is what she ended up calling her gifts, for each child in the Children's hospital in Orange County California to supplying a JoyJar for each child in America.  By her death the Never Ever Give Up movement started by this young girl in California went world wide.  This is what one person can do.  Jessie did not let a death sentence stop her from doing good.

I loved this book though I often couldn't see it because I was so teary eyed.  This book makes the majority of us ashamed of what we do with our time when such a sick child could do this in the short 10 months that she lived from her decision to help others until her death.  This book is well written by her father.  He also includes how the family functioned as a unit though the bad times and tips on treatments for children's rare cancers.  This is a difficult book to read because it is a true story of a little girl's fight with cancer and her eventual death but if you can make it through it is a book well worth reading.  This review could have been done a few days earlier but I needed to mull over the emotions of the book.
I received this book from Handlebar for this review.

Into the Canyon by Michael Neale

Into the Canyon by Michael Neale is the 2nd book in the River series.  This book closely follows The River in time as in the main part of the book is told set in the 1970's but there is a difference in the time switches.  The River flashes back to the time of Gabriel Clarke's childhood of the time when he lost his father to the river and he watched his father drown.  Into the Canyon starts out in 2010 and flashes back to the 1970's but mostly tells the story following the time of The River.  In this book Gabriel is in his 60's and helping a young married man who has recently separated from his wife and family find his way and learn what is important in life.  Gabriel does this in much the same manner as Ezra Buchanan and Jacob Fielding had done for him, accepting him in the place that he was but knowing that he was capable of so much more.  Gabriel's story of loving Tabitha and starting their life together is told throughout the rest of the summer which started in The River.  He learns the background of Ezra and his reason for living at the Camp.  He learns the story of Jacob and how he came to be in the river and nearly drowning if it weren't for Gabriel's father.  He learns of the mysterious man he keeps seeing in the trees of the mountain and his story and how all of this has been preordained by the Lord and how it fits into his story and the making of the man Gabriel is to be.  He learns that we all come into this life and we have our life saved by others as we learn our place in making the future of the ones who come after us become better.  We all are put on this earth for a reason it is up to us to find out what that reason it and fulfill it.

Read this book.   It is on my favorites list.  I hope that Mr. Neale continues writing in this series as he is such a good writer.  This book needs to be read by the young so that they will be inspired to find their niche in life.  It needs to be read by the old so that they will appreciate all that has been done for them to make life better and inspire them to be the leader for the young who are looking to them.  Thank you Mr. Neale for writing this book and keep on writing for us.   Now let us all, "Go out and make some history".
I received this book from Booksneeze for this review.