“To Africa and Beyond: Walking Through The Storms of Life With a Thankful Heart” is a book about pilgrimage: physical, psychological and spiritual. It is about travel, adventure and personal fulfillment. It is about helping people on three continents through their challenges of discouragement and confusion while experiencing violent mental and emotional storms in my own life. More importantly it is a book about choices and consequences and lessons learned throughout a life of high adventure coupled with gut-wrenching grief which could easily have pushed me into mistrust of God & people, or cynicism & skepticism, or fear, or self-pity. It is a book about how God’s Love, Grace and active Sovereignty in my life was able to pull me through the knot-hole of suffering that at times threatened to engulf my soul (will, emotions & intellect), and rather to help me stand on my feet through Faith in God. I was enabled to hold on to the concept that God is a good God and the Devil is a bad devil in this broken world, as well as the internal choice not to quit because quitting would be worse than continuing. This I know, the most important, most faith filled prayer anyone can pray is, “Lord, not my will but yours be done in my life.” I know this, too, that God will usually not act sovereignly in our lives unless we have invited Him to do so. All of this was done while living in North America and West Africa, as well as extensive travel and ministry in Thailand, India, Cambodia and Vietnam. My hope is that what you read in this book will help you in your own pilgrimage through life on earth.
