Today all my subscribers can get two free books from me as well as free books from nine other authors! You can find Christian cozy mysteries and suspenseful thrillers here. See details at the end of this Book Blast for a second free book you can get, just for being my subscriber.
If you’ve been a subscriber to Deb’s Book Blast for any length of time, you probably know that my husband Art and I spent about 45 years serving in Taiwan and New Zealand in church planting ministries. In New Zealand, many internationals came to our church. Connecting to them gave us lots of contact with significantly different cultures. We feel so blessed to have extensive multi-cultural experience.
Now we live in Altoona, Iowa where many of our church friends have lived in Iowa all their lives. Living near a Bible college, however, gives us opportunities to hang out with international students. Our cross-cultural experiences help us:
- Understand the missionary kid who doesn’t know what country to call home and is struggling to fit into American culture
- To relate to the American who has just finished an extended time in a foreign country and suddenly sees his home country in a different light than he ever has before
- To give ear to the person who has hidden the multi-cultural part of herself deep inside, waiting to meet someone she can share her stories with
Our cross-culture experience has also helped us teach new concepts to mono-cultural Iowans. In June, Art and I got to serve as camp missionaries at a smallish junior camp in rural Iowa. Each day we presented a different mission field and taught the juniors a few phrases in the corresponding language. We talked about our experiences in Taiwan and taught campers how to eat with chopsticks. As we shared the need to reach the world with the gospel, we explained the practice of animism in Taiwan and how similar it is to the Maori stories in New Zealand. We shared incidents from the lives of Hudson Taylor and Amy Carmichael and the way they changed the way they dressed to look more like the culture around them and have a bigger impact on their lives.
Best of all, we brought some Bible college students from South Africa to our Friday session. Azola Nqulequ and Ntutu Maseyimane shared the unique sounds of their Xhosa language. I can’t even pronounce the name of this language because Xhosa is filled with distinctive clicks like no other language I’ve heard before. Azola and Ntutu held the campers spellbound as they shared their testimonies and cultural differences from our American culture. They enabled us to bring a bit of black African culture to white rural Iowa kids and broaden their worldview a bit.
So, our cross-cultural experience has given us a special ministry with people we meet. But it also colors so much of my writing. Many of my books have strong cross-cultural themes or elements. Throughout the month of August, I’m giving away my book Broken Windows, the first in my Art Spotlight Mysteries. My lead character in that series has grown up as an MK in Taiwan.
Since you’ve already subscribed to my Book Blast, you may have already read Broken Windows, the book I’m featuring in this group promotion, but I encourage you to go to the promo anyway. That will allow you to see books from nine other Christian writers who write cozy mysteries and suspense. If you like my book, you may like theirs as well. Each author is offering a free book in exchange for joining their newsletter.
Because some of you may have received Broken Windows in an earlier promo, and because I want to reward my subscribers who get my newsletter and read it, I’m going to give away another free book. I’ve never given this book away before. Déjà Who? is the second in the Art Spotlight Mysteries. You can get your free copy here. Please don’t share this link with others. It’s for my subscribers only.
Leave a comment. If you’ve spent time in a foreign country, how has that experience changed you? Leave a comment to share with my readers.