One Foot In Heaven

This innovative anthropological study, based on biographic narratives recorded during extensive field-research in Darfur, Sudan (1990-95) provides a unique understanding of how, in daily life, working women of different classes negotiate their identities in the context of an Islamist regime.

A brilliantly-written collection of linked short stories presenting the interconnected lives, and world views, of several Mennonite families in Winnipeg and northern Alberta. One Foot in Heaven opens and closes with Prom Koslowski, a character who flees murderous bandits in Russia, gains twin babies and loses their mother on a torturous journey through the mountains into India, and finally makes a life for himself and his children in rural northern Alberta. His children go to Mennonite high school in Winnipeg, and go on to missionary and other work in their adult lives. In various ways, they are both drawn to the South East Asian region of their beginnings. They interact with a host of other characters as they grow - the innocent veterinarian Ab Dueck, the enigmatic Jael Freed, Ab's best friend George, whose own spiritual views differ so oddly despite arising from the same roots. In the fashion of much Mennonite writing, David Waltner-Toews uses both humour and pathos to present his characters juggling matters of the flesh and of the spirit in their quest for the true purpose of their lives and the best way to serve their god.

According to the Bible, when Jesus walked on water, His disciple Peter wanted to join him. Peter did walk on water until he took account of the wind stirring up an angry sea; he sank because he could not put the upsetting sounds of thunder and lightning out of his fears. Cancer is like the storm that caused Peter to sink. The bad news overwhelms us, and though so many strides have been made toward the treatment of cancer, we focus on the bad news. It's almost impossible unless we learn to rely on what we do not hear and cannot always see, the workings of God in our lives. This little book was a gift from God to me during the forty days of Easter of 2012. I had a divine idea to write every day for forty days as my Lenten resolution. On Good Friday, it was finished. What emerged was God's gift to a sinking woman. It's not over until God says it's over, despite the prognosis.

One Foot In Heaven is a testament to the power of prayer and how all prayers are heard and often answered. In 2009 Janice was faith-healed by Jesus Christ of diseases that were killing her and she had subsequent visions of meeting the Archangels, her relatives, Jesus, and God the Father in Heaven. It would take years for some of these memories to emerge in the form of visions. She was told she was being healed by Jesus because of her mother's prayers and her best friend Regina's prayers. She had previously been somewhat skeptical of faith-healing because of how it was projected by the media; that is until she was faith-healed herself. Janice takes you on a journey through her life and writes about the different moments when God has saved her life, kept her safe, or altered her path, like He did prior to 9/11. She talks about how God has even answered the smallest of prayers at times. Janice feels that this day in age, more than ever before, people need to hear and know that miracles still happen and that God is ever-present. Janice hopes this book will inspire people to pray for others, to seek God's guidance in their everyday lives, and to carry them through the difficult times.

People die everyday. While most people in America die in a hospital, many families choose hospice for end of life care. Death, as experienced by hospice nurses, can be beautiful, peaceful, humorous, touching, tragic, disturbing, and even otherworldly. Hospice nurses act as midwives to dying people every day. Death transforms not just the patient and family, but the hospice nurse as well. The stories in this book are presented with the hope that their transformation extends to you, too.

This innovative anthropological study, based on biographic narratives recorded during extensive field-research in Darfur, Sudan (1990-95) provides a unique understanding of how, in daily life, working women in Darfur, Sudan, negotiate their identities in the context of an Islamist regime.