Stories Of Real Hope

The essential pocket primer on climate change that will leave an indelible impact on everyone who reads it. “Hope Jahren asks the central question of our time: how can we learn to live on a finite planet?" (Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction). “Hope Jahren is the voice that science has been waiting for.” —Nature Hope Jahren is an award-winning scientist, a brilliant writer, a passionate teacher, and one of the seven billion people with whom we share this earth. In The Story of More, she illuminates the link between human habits and our imperiled planet. In concise, highly readable chapters, she takes us through the science behind the key inventions—from electric power to large-scale farming to automobiles—that, even as they help us, release greenhouse gases into the atmosphere like never before. She explains the current and projected consequences of global warming—from superstorms to rising sea levels—and the actions that we all can take to fight back. At once an explainer on the mechanisms of global change and a lively, personal narrative given to us in Jahren’s inimitable voice, The Story of More is “a superb account of the deadly struggle between humanity and what may prove the only life-bearing planet within ten light years" (E. O. Wilson).

You wouldn’t believe it, but . . . James Earl Jones, the voice of Darth Vader, grew up mute. Michael Jordan was cut from his high school basketball team. Albert Einstein was bullied mercilessly in school. Beethoven’s mom almost aborted him. Life takes the strangest sharp turns—and sometimes, U-turns. Robert Petterson—popular speaker, storyteller, and author—has been a student for his entire life of what God is teaching us through those real-life U-turns. In this short book, he compiles amazing stories that teach lessons you won’t easily forget. Each entry is written in the rest-of-the-story style popularized by Paul Harvey. Marvel at how God has used the lives of these ordinary people to change the course of human history. (Adapted from The One Year Book of Amazing Stories)

When Wayne Gordon and his wife started a Bible study for high school kids in North Lawndale, Chicago, people warned them that a white couple moving into a black neighborhood as a recipe for disaster. That was twenty-five years ago. Today, what began as the Gordons' seedling Bible study has become the Lawndale Community Church. It has a staff of 150, has renovated more than 100 local apartments, has helped more than 50 young people graduate from college, runs a medical clinic that treated 50,000 patients in 1994, and has become a vital part of rebuilding an inner-city neighborhood into a community of faith and hope. Real Hope in Chicago is Wayne Gordon's inspiring account of how people, white and black, rich and poor, old and young, worked together to transform a decaying neighborhood into a place where love is lived out in practical and miraculous ways. It offers an exciting model for interracial cooperation, urban-suburban church partnering--and real hope for the inner cities of our nation.

A Photojournalist Risks Her Life to Save a Very Special Child Full of intrigue, adventure, and romance, this series celebrates the unsung heroes—the heroines of WWII. Journalist Nellie Wilkerson has spent the bulk of the war in London, photographing mothers standing in milk lines—and she’s bored. She jumps at the chance to go to France, where the Allied forces recently landed. There she enlists Jean-Paul Breslau of the French underground to take her to the frontlines. On the journey, they stumble upon a great tragedy, leaving a girl with special needs being orphaned. Can Nellie and Jean-Paul see the child to a safe haven while being pursued by the Nazis, who are pressed by the advancing Allies and determined to destroy all they can before they flee?

For years, I have heard real-life stories from women in the midst of a storm. Their stories have been heart-wrenching because of powerful feelings of hopelessness. They have experienced tragic losses, severely broken childhoods, rebellion of many kinds, abortion, sexual abuse, abusive relationships, broken marriages and many other desperate situations. So often, hearing someone elses story with similar experiences created hope. These ladies show with Gods grace, no situation is beyond restoration and healing! Some familiar questions I consistently hear from broken hearts are: Where is my hope? Will I survive this? Am I being punished by God? Will I ever be able to trust again? Will my children and family survive this? How do you forgive God and the one who hurt you? How do you forgive yourself? My shame is overwhelming. How do you overcome it? Did you feel angry? Did you get mad at God? How did you get out of bed in the morning? Where is God in all this mess? How can a good God let this happen? Do you hear me God? What do I do about all the gossip? How can God use this tragedy for good?

The morning Arlene Brown read in her hometown newspaper about the abandoned children in the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide, she did what few retirees would ever consider doing. She joined with a mission group to make the long journey to Africa. Her memoir, Hope Made Real, is filled with rich experiences and courageous actions. Her writings reveal that the most important journeys we make can't be measured in miles, but in the strength, wisdom, and love found along the way. Woven throughout the pages, Arlene shares stories from her childhood that help the reader make sense of her life-changing decision. Her years of raising a family of five, working as a practical nurse, volunteering in the prison system, and her many years laboring in a high-tech factory suddenly come together. All of this, and none of this, prepared her for what was ahead. The book draws in the reader as she tells of her escape from an erupting volcano, is smuggled out of the country with the aid of the United States Embassy and runs from angry African bees. Her story reads like a detective novel as she unravels the secrets that lie behind the façade of some of the early players. Hope Made Real is filled with memorable stories of the children whom she touched with her love and from whom she in turn received so much more. Eight pages of pictures illustrate her life from childhood to Founder of Urukundo Foundation and Executive Director the Urukundo Learning Center, Muhanga, Rwanda -- its primary school of over nine-hundred children, the Sewing Center to train seamstresses and tailors, as well as the Dental Clinic, farm and so much more.

This is the inspiring true story of my life. I was a 5 year old foster kid who eventually found light at the end of the tunnel. I have fought for my existence. I have lived a life in which abuse, loneliness, and dark nights of despair rattled the very bones of my body, drained the tears of my spirit, shattered my mind into a million fragments, and left me for awhile plodding through life as an empty shell, a lost and helpless soul. I have breathed the air of the unloved, and suffered deep psychological and spiritual wounds due to abandonment at an early age by my mother and father. I have blamed myself for a past over which I had no control. My trust in people was displaced with hostility and anger. And yet, my spirit would not be broken. I have fought for survival in the name of love, powered by a dogged will whose voice never stopped telling me to NEVER GIVE UP! I would like to share my story with you so that you may be determined to win life's battles and finally have peace with your past.

Disease Reversal Hope! is a collection of compelling testimonial stories from people who discovered that a whole food, plant-based diet reversed serious chronic diseases such as cardiovascular and autoimmune diseases, cancer, diabetes and obesity. These were people who were told they only had a few months to live, or that they would be in wheelchairs in their 50s, or that they would have to take medications for the rest of their lives. Instead they converted to a whole food, plant-based diet and are living many years disease free, with no medications. Instead of being in a wheelchair, they ran marathons. Instead of suffering and dying, they are living and thriving -- all because of whole plant food lifestyles.

It's obvious from the bookshelves and the big screen that heaven is on everyone's mind. All of us long to know what life after death will be like. Bestselling author John Burke is no exception. For decades, he has been studying accounts of people who have had near-death experiences (NDEs). While not every detail of individual NDEs correlate with Scripture, Burke shows how the common experiences shared by thousands of survivors clearly point to the God of the Bible and the exhilarating picture of heaven he promises. Imagine Heaven is an inspirational journey through the Bible's picture of heaven, colored in with the real-life stories of heaven's wonders. Burke compares gripping stories of NDEs to what Scripture says about our biggest questions of heaven: Will I be myself? Will I see friends and loved ones? What will it look like? What is God like? What will we do forever? What about children and pets? This book will propel readers into an experience that will forever change their view of the life to come and the way they live life today. It also tackles the tough questions of heavenly reward and hellish NDEs. Anyone interested in NDEs or longing to imagine heaven more clearly will enjoy this fascinating and hope-filled book.

“[A] landmark book . . . Solnit illustrates how the uprisings that begin on the streets can upend the status quo and topple authoritarian regimes” (Vice). A book as powerful and influential as Rebecca Solnit’s Men Explain Things to Me, her Hope in the Dark was written to counter the despair of activists at a moment when they were focused on their losses and had turned their back to the victories behind them—and the unimaginable changes soon to come. In it, she makes a radical case for hope as a commitment to act in a world whose future remains uncertain and unknowable. Drawing on her decades of activism and a wide reading of environmental, cultural, and political history, Solnit argues that radicals have a long, neglected history of transformative victories, that the positive consequences of our acts are not always immediately seen, directly knowable, or even measurable, and that pessimism and despair rest on an unwarranted confidence about what is going to happen next. Now, with a moving new introduction explaining how the book came about and a new afterword that helps teach us how to hope and act in our unnerving world, she brings a new illumination to the darkness of our times in an unforgettable new edition of this classic book. “One of the best books of the 21st century.” —The Guardian “No writer has better understood the mix of fear and possibility, peril and exuberance that’s marked this new millennium.” —Bill McKibben, New York Times–bestselling author of Falter “An elegant reminder that activist victories are easily forgotten, and that they often come in extremely unexpected, roundabout ways.” —The New Yorker