Our Ebenezer

John and Pam Dysinger started life together with the desire to serve. Young and idealistic, they headed to Kenya with the passion to make a difference in the lives of children and youth. For the next eight years the classroom was their platform for ministry. Then the call came. Like Abraham’s call to leave the comforts of home for an unknown destination, their call was to leave the comforts of employment, for an unknown occupation. In a world of fractured relationships, John was called to come home and join Pam in the raising of their children. Farming was God’s appointed vehicle to unite the family. Together they worked toward common goals and experienced the exhilaration of conquering seemingly insurmountable tasks; together they experienced the fears and struggles of “failure” and the financial constraints of “poverty.” Walk with them through this candid account of their experience as they learned to follow God and depend on Him alone. Grapple with them as they faced the harsh realities of learning to farm; cling with them to the promises of God and the desire to be faithful to His call. Above all, come to know that, while your path may not be exactly the same, God wants this same kind of intimate relationship with you.

"A masterpiece of contemporary Bible translation and commentary."—Los Angeles Times Book Review, Best Books of 1999 Acclaimed for its masterful new translation and insightful commentary, The David Story is a fresh, vivid rendition of one of the great works in Western literature. Robert Alter's brilliant translation gives us David, the beautiful, musical hero who slays Goliath and, through his struggles with Saul, advances to the kingship of Israel. But this David is also fully human: an ambitious, calculating man who navigates his life's course with a flawed moral vision. The consequences for him, his family, and his nation are tragic and bloody. Historical personage and full-blooded imagining, David is the creation of a literary artist comparable to the Shakespeare of the history plays.

The book is about growing up in a small town with an abusive alcoholic father. It contains ways how I was motivated to overcome these obstacles and have a life-changing experience that led me to missions world-wide and to view supernatural events.

Ebenezer Le Page, cantankerous, opinionated, and charming, is one of the most compelling literary creations of the late twentieth century. Eighty years old, Ebenezer has lived his whole life on the Channel Island of Guernsey, a stony speck of a place caught between the coasts of England and France yet a world apart from either. Ebenezer himself is fiercely independent, but as he reaches the end of his life he is determined to tell his own story and the stories of those he has known. He writes of family secrets and feuds, unforgettable friendships and friendships betrayed, love glimpsed and lost. The Book of Ebenezer Le Page is a beautifully detailed chronicle of a life, but it is equally an oblique reckoning with the traumas of the twentieth century, as Ebenezer recalls both the men lost to the Great War and the German Occupation of Guernsey during World War II, and looks with despair at the encroachments of commerce and tourism on his beloved island. G. B. Edwards labored in obscurity all his life and completed The Book of Ebenezer Le Page shortly before his death. Published posthumously, the book is a triumph of the storyteller’s art that conjures up the extraordinary voice of a living man.

Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta was founded in 1886. The name Ebenezer means "rock or stone of help." From a small group of believers, many of whom were former slaves, in a boxlike structure on Airline Alley, Ebenezer has grown to an internationally known church with over 4,000 members. The Gothic architecture of the Heritage Sanctuary on Auburn Avenue, coupled with the influence of the African meetinghouse seen in the architecture of the Horizon Sanctuary across the street, reflects the diversity of outreach of Ebenezer's ministry. Ebenezer has been a beacon of racial pride and social consciousness. The love and cooperation between the members and the pastor have created a family atmosphere that has sustained the growth and expansion of the church.