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Instant winner!

Being a subscriber to Deb’s Book Blast automatically qualifies you to be in the draw to win the Kindle version of A Million Miles from Home by Mike Delloso. This relationship novel is the last 5 star book I’ve read. I’ll announce the winner at the end of this Book Blast.

This month my husband, Art, and I celebrate our anniversary. We married at age 22. Do the math and you find we married at 22, 44 years of marriage makes us 66 years old. Don’t know where we’ll be when we’re 88, but I wouldn’t mind being in heaven by then.

Secret to Happy Marriage

Our lives are so much richer for our marriage. Lots of people talk about secrets for a happy marriage. A cornerstone for our marriage is our faith in Christ and seeking to please him. Compatible ministry goals certainly help that. But the more I think about our marriage and peek into other marriages, I believe two things make marriage happy. Are you ready for this big secret? Here it is: kindness and consideration. I have a kind husband who considers my wants and needs and that makes me want to be kind and considerate right back. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it works for us.

Of course, marrying the right person is a great start. Wondering what that means? Here are 15 questions a Christian girl should ask before she says, “Yes, I will marry you.”

A Bit of Art/Marriage Humor

I learned to appreciate art and art humor as I wrote my Art Spotlight Mysteries. I love the patterns in M.C. Escher’s “Relativity.” Here’s some art/marriage humor based on that piece.

Escher’s “Relativity”

Escher’s Wife

A Song of Hope

I hope you are weathering the ups and downs of 2021. During these days I like to remember that my hope is not in circumstances, but in Jesus. “My Hope Is Jesus” is a song that reminds me of this truth.

Now for the free drawing.

I have randomly picked a winner from my subscribers list to receive the Kindle version of A Million Miles from Home by Mike Dellosso.

And the winner is … Becky Canfield.

My review of A Million Miles from Home

Ben and Annie grow up together in abusive homes and later marry. They have a daughter and are determined to leave their past behind and build a loving home. But tragedy forces Ben for face his past and work toward forgiveness.

I seldom give 5 stars to books, but Dellosso’s book deserves the high rating for telling this emotional story. The story is told from Ben’s point-of-view and goes back and forth between the past and present, but the author handles this well so that you feel like you are with Ben, feeling what he is feeling. A couple characters seem to have no flaws, but generally his characters are well-rounded and realistic.

A couple of times the author talks about baptism “washing away a person’s sin,” which clashes with my personal viewpoint. But the book is moving and well-written, though fairly sad throughout.

Merry Christmas 2020!

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Instant winner!

Being a subscriber to Deb’s Book Blast automatically qualifies you to be in the draw to win the Kindle version of Mistletoe and Murder: A Christmas Suspense Collection. I’ve already read about half of these novellas by Christian authors. I’ll announce the winner at the end of this Book Blast.

Because of Covid 19 my husband and I were not able to return to the States for Christmas 2020. New Zealand remains one of the safest countries of the world from Covid. Our country here continues to have near zero cases of community transmission. We were due for a furlough from our mission church ministry this year but it didn’t seem like a wise time for us to go back.

We were disappointed not to be able to see our family who we have not seen since 2017. So we planned a virtual Christmas. From Thanksgiving to Christmas we met online for weekly Zoom calls with our daughters and their family. We used these advent calls to share memories and photos from the past, seasonal crafts, share brief devotionals, and even play a short game. We planned activities that could involve everyone in some way. Several times we talked about the ways God has provided for us during the last year and during difficult times in the past. These have been positive calls that helped us be together in a year like 2020.

I have many things for which to be thankful. Today I’m especially thankful for social networking like Facebook and Zoom which allows us to be connected to friends and family even when many miles (or kilometers) separate us.

What Christmas tradition are you changing because of Covid-19 this year? What special blessings have touched you during this unusual year? What have you learned to appreciate more because of the effects of the pandemic?

I hope you have a lovely Christmas full of awareness of all life’s blessings.

Now for the free drawing.

I have randomly picked a winner from my subscribers list to receive the Kindle version of a book with a cross cultural theme.

And the winner is … Jenny Leavitt from Florida.

Dealing with Disappointment in 2020

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Chances are good that Covid has caused you significant disappointment this year. I went through several stages of lockdown in New Zealand where I serve as a missionary. Locking down with my husband in my comfortable home was not terribly difficult. In fact we enjoyed our time together. We did eight jigsaw puzzles in a couple of months and I was able to work extensively on a book I’m writing. New Zealand locked down quickly and extensively, with good result.  As far as Covid is concerned, I find myself in one of the safest places in the world. New Zealand’s closed borders, however, made the June-to-November furlough to the States we’d been planning impossible. We had found a couple from the States who were willing to fill in for my husband and me in our church planting ministry, but Covid meant they couldn’t get into New Zealand.

As time went on we began to see that a regular furlough might not be possible for quite some time ahead. As people who travel from state to state and meet with big groups of people, missionaries pose a significant health risk to churches. Also many of our supporting churches were not functioning as usual. Most probably only had virtual services for an extended time.

When a regular furlough wouldn’t work for the foreseeable future, we began to consider a quick trip to the States for Christmas to visit our family. The first obstacle was finding someone who could fill in for us for a number of weeks. The fill-in couple pretty much had to come from New Zealand since our borders remain closed. In August we found a couple who would consider the idea, but couldn’t let us know right away. In October, just when we had begun to get excited about seeing our family for Christmas, the couple said they couldn’t come. Then within a week, it seemed like a miracle had happened. We found a well-qualified couple who were New Zealand residents who were happy and eager to fill in for us during the time needed. We decided the Lord was leading us forward, the time was right for a number of reasons, and we would go back. We started looking for airline tickets and planning a schedule. Within a week, however, some feedback we got from trusted sources made us feel that it would be significantly safer if we waited until the middle of 2021 or so. Our daughters and their family had started to plan for a family Christmas and we were all excited about it until this new development made us feel like we had to reverse our decision.

But we’re missionaries so we don’t get disappointed, right? Wrong. So wrong.  For a number of reasons, we had decided we really needed to go back at this time. It seemed the Lord had answered our prayers and provided a couple to fill in so we could go. Yet in the end, it didn’t feel right to go when waiting another half year or so would make it significantly safer for us and the people we want to visit.

What have you lost during 2020 that left you feeling disappointed? You may have lost a loved one or your health or your job. We missed a hundredth anniversary celebration for our mission and a seventy-fifth anniversary of our sending church that we had planned to attend.  Almost everyone has had plans changed and church attendance curtailed. We’ve just experienced a national election in New Zealand and will experience another in America in the coming week. Both involved critical moral issues.  Racial unrest, wildfires, hurricanes. What a year!

What do you do with your disappointment? You know God is in control, that he’s working out his best for you, but you’re still disappointed.

Here are some things that helped me:

This song sung by Ben Everson spoke to me right away. We have the CD of this so the words were so familiar that they were the first song that came to mind after our second decision.

The chorus goes, “You know better than I. You know the way. I’ve let go the need to know why for you know better than I.” I admit that I’d like to know why God seems to be saying no to this Christmas trip, but I am still working on letting go of that.

I filled in for a Sunday School teacher this morning in church. The story was about Cain and Abel. The lesson talked about warning signs. Sometimes God gives us a green light to do something. Sometimes a thing is definitely wrong and we get a red light from God. And sometimes he gives us a yellow light, telling us to use caution or to wait and listen to God’s warning. Cain was angry God didn’t accept his sacrifice and that anger was dangerous. God told him sin was crouching at his door like a wild animal, waiting to overpower him. Disappointment, discontent or anger can quickly turn to sin if we listen to it, wade through it or wallow in it.

Then a character in the current novel I’m writing was struggling with a similar issue. Long ago I had plotted out the book, but as I came to the disappointment of missing Christmas with children and grandchildren, I was just working on the part where my character faced a similar issue. I couldn’t expect my fictional character to be more spiritual than I am, could I?

So when disappointment rears its ugly head at me, I need to remember I have some choices.

  • Refuse to listen to what God is trying to tell me
  • Do what’s asked, but wallow in self-pity
  • Conclude that nothing good ever happens in 2020 and expect the worst to happen
  • Step forward in faith, knowing God is good and in control, and choosing to trust him

“Just two choices on the self: pleasing God or pleasing self.”  (by Ken Collier)

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Dear Reader,

How are you doing today?

2020 has been a year for the record books. Covid-19 brings uncomfortable restrictions and uncertainty about the future. In New Zealand, where I live and minister, Covid was eradicated in June but has come back to haunt us in August. Then add protests, riots, and elections with every kind of opinion about how we should respond and what we should do. Even when you’re trusting the Lord, sometimes you just want it all to stop.

2020 has made me dig deeper in God’s Word for assurance that God is still in control. Psalms like Psalm 94:17-19. Uplifting Christian fiction is also a good break from all the noise and confusion around me.  The most interesting character I’ve read recently is Margot De Wilde in The Number of Love by Roseanna M. White. (See my book review at the end of this Book Blast.)

Do you ever tire of formulaic fiction characters? The beautiful model with the troubled past meets the strong but sensitive hunk. Immediate physical attraction (hormones) makes for love at first sight. Constant danger, several car chases, and a rescue from kidnapping assures them they are meant for each other. These elements might make a strong fiction plot, but they aren’t exactly a good way to find a godly partner for life. And these aren’t the kind of characters I write about.

Three characters from Broken Windows:

Jordan Axtell’s faith is challenged by something authors rarely talk about. His missionary parents have been faithfully serving in Taiwan, but have seen few visible results for their efforts. Why doesn’t God bless their ministry?

My husband and I spent sixteen years serving in Taiwan, and at the end of that time we had to close two ministries that weren’t going to go ahead. I know what that feels like. We believe we were in God’s will in Taiwan and God did use us, but we had hoped to see more visible results. We had to leave that in God’s hands. Since then God has brought us to a new ministry in New Zealand that seems like a good fit for us. We now have many Asians in our church and we understand them better because of living in Taiwan. We know God used our Taiwan time in our lives and the lives of others. But we had to come to terms with that part of our lives like Jordan had to.

Zophie Zobel isn’t the kind of girl that many guys long to date, but she has a passion for ministry and a caring heart that drives Jordan in a good direction and causes him to grow.

More than anyone else I know, Zophie is like my oldest daughter. No wonder I love this character so much. To get the perfect look of this character in my head, I chose a photo from a magazine from our mission. Once I saw “Zophie” in a crowd. Now I find she will be working with a missionary friend of ours in Peru. Maybe one day I’ll get to meet the face that inspired this character.

Jordan’s black ’69 Mustang also becomes a character in my book. Jordan introduces her as “Mustang Axtell, the Mrs. Jordan Axtell, my beloved. She’s the only girlfriend I need right now.” If you’ve read Broken Windows you know how the car speaks to him and brings him to the point of significant spiritual change.

Since I’m definitely not a car gal, I had to rely on my brother, Jim, for the details and feel for this character.  Jim told me, “that scene in Chapter Thirteen where Bradley is riding his skateboard close to the Mustang, that’s not funny, you know.” Jim wasn’t joking. He told me how a real car guy would never allow a kid and a skateboard anywhere close to his classic car and the stern warning he would give a kid like Bradley who was anywhere in the vicinity of a classic car. Which told me this scene would resonate with a true car guy.

If you’ve read a book with interesting characters lately, why not leave us a comment and tell us about it?

I’ll end this Book Blast with my book review of the book mentioned above.

My book review of: The Number of Love by Roseanna M. White 

 This book was unlike any book I’ve ever read before. It’s definitely historical and yes, it is mystery and has romance. But the characters are what make this book a 5-star read. The author takes you deep into the mind of Margot, a girl who lives, breathes, thinks, feels and prays in numbers. She counts compulsively and is a genius with numbers. She doesn’t care about fashion and avoids shallow friendships. But the qualities that restrict her social life make her an excellent codebreaker during the Great War. She is intensely loyal to the friends she does have and pushes herself into social situations when she senses the need.

This book demonstrates friendship that looks beyond first impressions and the outer facade of a person to the heart. Unlike the author and me, the characters are Catholic. Salvation is never mentioned, but Margot relies heavily on prayer and learns to trust in God when she doesn’t understand. God speaks to her in numbers and when she doesn’t hear the numbers she doubts that God is speaking to her. I wonder about that. But the characters are unique and compelling. They grow to appreciate the differences of others and learn to work with them, flaws and all. I love that this book is outside the formulaic plots of romance and suspense and yet compelling in a way that is hard to describe. It grows on you until you don’t want to put it down. The most interesting book I’ve read in a long time.

Free Christian ebooks! Great deal for Kobo readers!

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My book, Broken Windows, is featured with ten other authors in this promo. This is known as a list builder because you sign up for an author’s newsletter in exchange for that author’s free book. My newsletter, Deb’s Book Blast, only comes out about four times a year. I give away a free book by another Christian author to someone on my list with every regular post. My subscribers already get any free books I’m promoting to new readers..

July 3-6 Kobo readers can get Edges of Truth: The Mary Weaver Story for 99 cents. God worked in amazing ways in this incredible true story.