Miracle On Voodoo Mountain

"It took months of God waking me up in the middle of the night before I realized I was the one He was calling to leave my comfortable American life and move to Haiti." Miracle on Voodoo Mountain is the inspirational memoir of an accomplished and driven 24-year old who quit her job, sold everything, and moved to Haiti, by herself—all without a clear plan of action. Megan Boudreaux had visited Haiti on a few humanitarian trips but each trip multiplied the sense that someone needed to address the devastation—especially with the children, many of whom were kept as household slaves on the poverty-stricken and earthquake-devastated Caribbean island. God guided her every step as she moved blindly to a foreign land without knowing the language, the people, or the future. From becoming the adoptive mother of former child slaves, to receiving the divine gift of the Haitian Creole language, to starting, building, and running a school for more than 500 children, "the amazingness of what God did after I made the choice to be obedient is incredible," said Megan. Three years later, six acres on Bellevue Mountain in Gressier is the home of the nonprofit Respire Haiti at the former site of voodoo worship, and in the area that many still come to make animal sacrifices, Megan and her staff of nearly 200 are transforming this community as they educate, feed, and address the needs.

Ellipses is a literary expression that represents an implied ending. In print, it looks like this: "..." In life, on the other hand, when we find ourselves smack dab in the middle of one these implied endings, we find ourselves waiting. It's a pause far longer than a comma and can occur out of nowhere, leaving us asking, "What just happened?" and "What am I supposed to do now?" What do we do when we find ourselves in the middle of an ellipsis? Author Dave Guerrero offers us a glimpse of what to do when we face one of these ellipses in our life. Dave points out that the author and perfecter of our faith has woven these moments into our life, and it's what we do when we find ourselves here in the ellipsis that makes all the difference. Using memoirs from his own life, Dave takes his readers through his "God story" to show how the ellipsis is a crucial junction where our "so far, so God" meets "the best is yet to come." With these memoirs, Dave shows how we must find hope for the unknown and for the darkness and often pain-filled moments of the ellipsis to look forward and proclaim the promises of God who smiles at us and says, "The best is yet to come." Dave's own journey was filled with depression, cutting, cancer, eating disorders, and derailed dreams. But David shows how scripture is clear that God is always in control. As you travel through the ellipsis that he has, his prayer is that you will find hope in looking back at your God story and see the all-loving author and perfecter of your faith smiling and saying, "You ain't seen nothing yet."

No one likes nation-building. The public dismisses it. Politicians criticize it. The traditional military disdains it, and civilian agencies lack the blueprint necessary to make it work. Yet functioning states play a foundational role in international security and stability. Left unattended, ungoverned spaces can produce crises from migration to economic collapse to terrorism. Keith W. Mines has taken part in nation-building efforts as a Special Forces officer, diplomat, occupation administrator, and United Nations official. In Why Nation-Building Matters he uses cases from his own career to argue that repairing failed states is a high-yield investment in our own nation’s global future. Eyewitness accounts of eight projects––in Colombia, Grenada, El Salvador, Somalia, Haiti, Darfur, Afghanistan, and Iraq—inform Mines’s in-depth analysis of how foreign interventions succeed and fail. Building on that analysis, he establishes a framework for nation-building in the core areas of building security forces, economic development, and political consolidation that blend soft and hard power into an effective package. Grounded in real-world experience, Why Nation-Building Matters is an informed and essential guide to meeting one of the foremost challenges of our foreign policy present and future.

Are you truly willing to risk everything? In Believing Jesus, Bible teacher and author Lisa Harper retraces the steps of the apostles in the book of Acts, while throwing in a few of her own crazy adventures along the way. The disciples didn’t have much of a road map after Jesus ascended to heaven, but God’s grace and spirit filled in the gaps as they moved forward. It required their willingness to risk everything to establish a new community that would change the future world. As a regular speaker on the Women of Faith® tour, Lisa has earned a reputation as a true theological scholar and hilarious storyteller—not necessarily in that order! Best-selling author and pastor Max Lucado calls Lisa one of the “best Bible tour guides around.” Believing Jesus will highlight both of Lisa’s strengths as she tackles every chapter of the Book of Acts with biblical wisdom and modern wit. Lisa keeps it real, telling stories on herself and pointing readers back to Jesus, the only one who can truly lead.

This book offers a critical anthropological perspective on contemporary childhood in Haiti. It is based on longitudinal ethnographic fieldwork carried out over a period of 13 years with vulnerable children in Haiti. Diane M. Hoffman raises important questions about how interventions by well-meaning foreigners and 'white saviors' often misrepresent Haitian culture and society as deficient, while privileging their own emotions alongside supposedly universal ideas about children that reinforce their own power to define and intervene in Haitian lives. She argues for a new approach to Haitian childhood that centers children's informal learning and self-education alongside indigenous spirituality and constructions of personhood that can resist the hegemony of neo-colonial and neo-liberal forces. Instead of representing the country and its children as a place of "problems to be solved," the book shows the importance prioritizing aspects of Haitian world-views in order to develop a more culturally-informed understanding of childhood in Haiti that can support genuine social change.

In A VOICE BECOMING, Beth Bruno helps mothers cast a Godly vision for their daughters and chart a course that will prepare their daughters for womanhood. What if you as a mother concentrated on your daughter for one year? Who might she become? A VOICE BECOMING is for moms who want to usher their daughters into womanhood but know they need more than tips, techniques, and programs. This is for moms who to desire to chart a course for their daughters that helps them know the story of God they are entering and the global sisterhood of women they are joining. A VOICE BECOMING is written by a fellow sojourner, still in the middle of the journey, processing her own story as she casts a vision for her daughter to discover hers. Sometimes road maps are too restrictive and a friend is needed who has made the journey already. Beth Bruno seeks to activate moms by infusing them with hope and vision. Readers will join Beth in a yearlong journey of teaching their daughters that women lead, women love, women fight, women sacrifice, and women create. Moms learn how to use film and books, tangible experiences, volunteering, interviewing other women, traveling, and more in a creative and life-altering way to help solidify these important concepts in the mind and life of their young teen.

The star of A&E’s Duck Dynasty and Dancing with the Stars and darling of the third generation of the Robertson family shares a devotional book for young women and teen girls to help navigate their complicated, fun, stressful lives and apply powerful biblical principles to everyday life. Eighteen-year-old Sadie Robertson understands what it’s like to be a teenager and young woman in today’s demanding world. She has managed to “live original” and still uphold her family values and faith convictions. In her new devotional, Sadie shares the principles and values that guide her life, shows how she stays confident and encouraged, and offers helpful advice about living with purpose. This year-long devotional is perfect for today’s teenage girls and young women. Each week has five devotional offerings to choose from, as well as two days “off” to give you some flexibility. Whether you need a personal message from Sadie, a quick Scripture to remember, or space to journal, this devotional allows you to customize and select what you need each day. Sadie covers a wide range of topics including self-confidence, social media, bullying, dating, peer pressure, and more. It’s not always easy to live in today’s culture and hold onto your values and beliefs, but this devotional encourages you to stay positive and live a fulfilling life.

Annotation Details the author's personal experiences with the least understood & often misunderstood aspect of African-American culture, voodoo.