I will be at The Lighthouse Christian bookstore Tuesday September 25th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM signing Grandparenting Through Obstacles: Overcoming Family Challenges to Reach Your Grandchildren for Christ.
Twenty true stories depict challenges grandparents face in influencing their grandchildren with their Christian faith and how they are overcoming those challenges.
This book addresses four specific challenges grandparents face:
The Challenge of Parents Not Walking with God;
Long-Distance Relationships;
Non-Traditional Families (blended families, single-parent parents, and more);
Challenges in Partnering with Parents
Each chapter includes, "Grandparents in the Bible," "Points to Ponder," "Steps to Take," "Scriptures to Study," and "One Way to Pray." Also includes resources, discussion questions, ideas and more.
For every grandparent who longs to share his or her faith in Jesus Christ with their grandchildren but needs inspiration for the "how-to," ideas, suggestions, or simply to know they are not the only one who struggles with challenges. Makes a great gift for a grandparent!
I hope to see you Tuesday at The Lighthouse is at 215 Colorado Avenue in La Junta, Colorado.
There's a new blog trying to reach people who are thinking about suicide.
www.ThinkingAboutSuicide.com is rising to the to of Google searches for information on suicide. Often, when someone is contemplating taking their life, they turn to Google to find ways to carry it out.
That's where Thinking About Suicide comes in, offering information, help, and hope to the hopeless.
I think a lot of people are afraid to visit or share the information about this blog, possibly because they are afraid people will think they are thinking about suicide themselves. But the fact is, someone you know, or someone in your social networking circles, might be thinking about suicide. How many times have we lost someone to suicide and everybody says they had no idea this person was struggling! So here's how you can help:
I'm very excited that my publisher is working on the book cover art for my next book:
Prophecies Fulfilled in the Birth of Jesus
Wish I could share the cover with you, but nothing is finalized yet. You can bet I'll be sharing it here as soon as it's available.
As I was writing it, I found 35 prophecies fulfilled in Jesus' birth. You may find more (or less!) or count them differently. But this book will have 35 short chapters, each on a prophecy fulfilled in the birth of Jesus. It will make a great devotional for the Advent season.
If you're looking for a way to deepen your faith as you celebrate the birth of Christ this Christmas, or if you're looking for a small group or individual study for the Christmas season, I think you'll find Prophecies Fulfilled in the Birth of Jesus will fill that need nicely.
Watch for it to release just before Thanksgiving for the Christmas season.
Today I'll be leaving for the Rocky Mountain Conference. This is a conference especially for the staff and volunteers of pro-life pregnancy centers.
I'm hoping to talk with these staff members and volunteers about my book that was created especially for them: Deliver Me: Hope, Help, and Healing through True Stories of Unplanned Pregnancy.
Deliver Me came about because of my work on a board of directors of a small town pregnancy center. I found so many people, including my Christian friends, had no idea what we were doing in that center. They had a lot of misconceptions: that we were referring women for abortion, that we were encouraging promiscuity...
I wanted to gather true stories to showcase just what we were doing in that center. I wanted people to know the truth of what we were accomplishing. The stories of people who come to pregnancy centers are often hard stories filled with heartache, but so often through the help they receive these stories become beautiful.
That's what I wanted to share! That's what I want people to know. I wanted women and men to know that they could find caring, compassionate help. I wanted Christians to know they could confidently support their local pro-life pregnancy center. If you'll read these stories, I think you'll be convinced.
Those hard and beautiful stories fill the pages of Deliver Me. Fifty-four stories about women who want to keep their babies, men who have lost a child to abortion, women who have given a child for adoption, and more, each has a connection to a pro-life pregnancy center, a connection to compassionate help people found there. They show the picture of what pregnancy centers are really doing in and for our communities. Their story--that of the pregnancy centers--is beautiful. I hope you will check it out.
So I'm off to the Rocky Mountain Conference hoping to convince pregnancy center workers that Deliver Me is a valuable resource, both for their clients and their supporters.
It's for the local Colorado station KPJR, Channel 38, which is Trinity Broadcasting Network. I will be a guest on the local Praise the Lord TV program.
I will be talking about my life story and what God has done and is doing in my life.
The show will air a few weeks later -- I don't know when yet. If you miss it or don't get that channel (which I don't here at my house) don't worry, eventually I'll get a link where we can watch it online.
Just like that morning in 2001, September 11th occurs on a Tuesday on this 11th anniversary. As painful as it might be, it is only right that we remember September 11, 2001, and those who died, or whose lives were forever changed, on that day.
It was in the days and few weeks following the Terrorist Attacks on the United States that I wrote my first book. I, I'm sure like so many, wanted to do something. But we felt so helpless. What could we possibly do?
This little book is still available in print. It was published 6 months to the day after September 11, 2001 -- on March 11, 2002. This year, for its tenth anniversary, Dear America was republished on Kindle.
Renee and I were privileged to have Cavin Harper, executive director of the Christian Grandparenting Network, write the foreword for our book.
Cavin is also the author of Not On Our Watch!: Courageous Grandparenting in a Turbulent World, which is a call for “grandparents and parents to rise above the conventional view of grandparenting to embrace radically courageous life that stands apart from the politically correct crowd. It’s a call to intentionality—not settling for simply being good parents and grandparents, but choosing to stand in the gap and live as conduits of grace and truth for the next generations.”
Another hat Cavin wears is radio host of his own show on a mainstream over-the-air station in Colorado Springs. Cavin invited Renee and me to be his featured guests on his radio show called “Not on My Watch: A Call for Radical Grandparenting in Turbulent Times” on September 2nd. We talked with Cavin about our book, Grandparenting Through Obstacles.
Happy National Grandparents Day! If you haven't found a gift for the grandparent(s) in your life, our new book makes a great gift for Christian grandparents.
Just in time for National Grandparents Day, Renee and I will be at the Mardel Christian Bookstore tomorrow, Saturday September 8th from 10:00 AM to 2:00 PM signing Grandparenting Through Obstacles: Overcoming Family Challenges to Reach Your Grandchildren for Christ.
Mardel is at 4887 S. Wadsworth Way, Littleton, Colorado.
Remember that Sunday September 9th is National Grandparents Day. This new book makes a great gift for any Christian grandparent.
For a description of the book, please see the previous post. This book is for every grandparent who longs to share his or her faith in Jesus Christ with their grandchildren but needs inspiration for the "how-to," ideas, suggestions, or simply to know they are not the only one who struggles with challenges.
I hope to see tomorrow, Saturday, at the Mardel Christian Bookstore. Stop by for a free cookie!
Hey, if you're in the Pueblo area, stop by The Greatest Gift Bookstore tomorrow, Friday 9/7, between 12:00 noon and 5:00.
I'll be there signing my newest book, Grandparenting Through Obstacles: Overcoming Family Challenges to Reach Your Grandchildren for Christ.
Remember that Sunday September 9th is National Grandparents Day. This new book makes a great gift for any Christian grandparent.
These twenty true stories depict challenges grandparents face in influencing their grandchildren with their Christian faith and how they are overcoming those challenges.
The book addresses four specific challenges grandparents face:
The Challenge of Parents Not Walking with God;
Long-Distance Relationships;
Non-Traditional Families (blended families and more);
Challenges in Partnering with Parents
Each chapter includes, "Grandparents in the Bible," "Points to Ponder," "Steps to Take," "Scriptures to Study," and "One Way to Pray." Also includes resources, discussion questions, ideas and more.
For every grandparent who longs to share his or her faith in Jesus Christ with their grandchildren but needs inspiration for the "how-to," ideas, suggestions, or simply to know they are not the only one who struggles with challenges.
I hope to see you Friday afternoon at The Greatest Gift & Scripture Supply, 505 North Grand in Pueblo.
My newest book, Grandparenting Through Obstacles: Overcoming Family Challenges to Reach Your Grandchildren for Christ, coauthored with Renee Gray-Wilburn, released August 17th. Boy have we been busy with marketing it! I'm blaming that for why I haven't been able to put it on this blog until now!
National Grandparents Day is September 9th this year, and this book makes a great gift for Christian grandparents. It's available through all the online outlets (you'll find some links below). Or you can order it from your local bookstore.
Inside you'll find twenty true stories by real grandparents about the challenges grandparents face, including long-distance grandparenting, when the kid's parents aren't walking with God, the challenge of nontraditional families, and partnering with parents.
Based on the true story featured in the chapter, each chapter also includes "Grandparents in the Bible," "Scriptures to Study," application or discussion questions, "One Way to Pray," lots of room to jot your own notes, ideas, and prayers, and more. Also includes resources and ideas. A very practical guide.
Then we spent a day at the Holy Land Experience, which was just plain awesome. If you ever get to Orlando, I hope you'll go. Here are some highlights:
Worship center before the Temple.
Worship starts every day here in front of the Temple. If you know me at all, you know that my passion is studying the Holy Temple, so it was fantastic for me to sit before this replica of it. I'm hoping to write what I've learned about the Temple, and there are some possibilities for doing so on the horizon which I am very excited about.
Me and Hal with a replica of the Jesus Boat at the Holy Land Experience.
Replica of first century Jerusalem with Herod's Temple
Here is a replica of Jerusalem just after the time of Christ. Of course front and center is the Temple where Jesus often visited, known at Herod's Temple. Of course it wasn't to worship Herod at all, but was so called because Herod the Great built it. Herod added greatly to the grounds. I'm sure you know the Temple is no longer standing, destroyed by the Romans in 70 A.D., but the western wall is still there. One day this Temple will be rebuilt, according to Bible prophecies.
One place I couldn't photograph was the Scriptorium. If you visit the Holy Land Experience, you truly must take the hour tour of the Scriptorium. It is a museum of Bibles and their history. Most impactful for me was the Matthew's Bible with the brown stain smeared across it, which is the blood of the owner who was martyred simply for owning it.
It was a great trip and a fun place to visit. I hope you'll make the trip to the Holy Land Experience in Orlando, Florida, some time soon.
No way! Has it really been nearly three months since I posted to this blog?! It has been a busy, busy but exciting summer. Let me fill you in, but it will take several posts.
Waaaay back in my May 28th post I told you I had just learned that my book, Deliver Me, was selected as a finalist for the 2012 Golden Scroll Nonfiction Book of the Year award. The award is presented at the annual banquet hosted by the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association (AWSA). This year the banquet was in Orlando on July 15, 2012. It was wonderful to have Hal there with me for the first time on one of my business trips!
Hal accompanied me to the 2012 AWSA Golden Scroll banquet in Orlando, Florida
I felt so honored to be one of four finalists for the Nonfiction Book of the Year award! The other three finalist books were all published by well-known traditional publishers, so for me to be standing on that platform in front of about 150 agents, editors, publishers, and authors with my self-published book was a wonderful recognition of my book and its quality and worth to readers.
In then end we didn't win the award, but to simply be a finalist was huge. I was awarded a beautiful framed certificate by the founder of AWSA, Linda Evans Shepherd. It was a moment I will truly treasure for a lifetime.
Dianne with AWSA founder Linda Evans Shepherd who presented a certificate to Deliver Me
for being a finalist in the 2012 Golden Scroll Nonfiction Book of the Year awards.
