While I say I am an eclectic reader (I read almost all genres), I do limit myself to fiction. Why? I love a good story. And with my advanced years 😉 I need to make sure I read books I enjoy. It’s like eating dessert first! Today’s Top 10Tuesday prompt is Why I Love Reading — I hope you like my reasons and the books that go along with them.
This week the folks at The Broke And The Bookish are focusing on Books Set Outside The United States. To find out all the great books bloggers are recommending, click HERE.
I’m not much of a traveler, but I have loved the places I visited in books! Because there are so many great books set outside of the US, I have included many more than 10, 25 in fact. Divided by geographic location, my list includes books set within the last 100 years so that you can easily see where you are visiting! Have fun exploring the world!
Perhaps that’s the greatest reason why He calls us to dangerous places: so that we will know His astonishing, sacrificial, life-restoring love.
Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places is about what is lost and what is gained when we follow God at any cost.
Soon after 9/11, Kate McCord left the corporate world and followed God to Afghanistan —sometimes into the reach of death. Alive but not unscathed, she has suffered the loss of many things: comfort, safety, even dear friends and fellow sojourners.
But Kate realizes that those who go are not the only ones who suffer. Those who love those who go also suffer. This book is for them, too.
Weaving together Scripture, her story, and stories of both those who go and those who send, Kate considers why God calls us to dangerous places and what it means for all involved.
It means dependence. It means loss. It means a firmer hold on hope. It can mean death, trauma, and heavy sorrow. But it can also mean joy unimaginable. Through suffering, we come closer to the heart of God.
Written with the weight of glory in the shadow of loss, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places will inspire Christians to count the cost — and pay it.
Kate McCord lived and worked in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2010. During her years in country, she worked as a humanitarian aid worker, delivering projects to benefit the people of Afghanistan. She also learned the local language and developed deep and lasting friendships with local Afghans.
After evacuating from her home in Afghanistan, Kate transitioned into a mentoring, training, consulting and coaching role to other workers serving in the region. Prior to moving to Afghanistan, she worked in the international corporate community as a business process and strategy consultant. Today, Kate serves Christ through writing, speaking, mentoring and conducting workshops and seminars.
Kate is the author of In the Land of Blue Burqas and Farewell, Four Waters.
Last year I read Kate McCord’s novel, Farewell, Four Waters, one of the most moving novels I have read based on the mission experience. (You can read my review HERE.) At the time I read that book, one of my oldest son’s best friends was serving God in a foreign country, a dangerous country that cannot be named. She visited with us a few months later following her return to the United States. Her heart was still with the people and place she had come to think of as home. I knew then she had to read Farewell, Four Waters, because the feelings she related were so much like McCord’s.
A few months ago, I was approached to review McCord’s latest non-fiction work, Why God Calls Us to Dangerous Places. Well, I had a much better idea. I wanted AK to read it and tell you what she thought. The following is AK’s guest review.
AK’s Impressions:
The pages of this book speak to the collective we. We, the Body: the ones who sense the call as well as the ones who love those who sense the call. As someone who has lived in and returned from a place considered dangerous by many, I admire the total inclusion of the full network of people involved (family members, friends, the individual presently serving, the individual preparing to go, and the individual who has returned) in a book that seeks to answer the inquiry for all: Why? It is a conversation that often seems marginalized in communities of believers across America. It is a question worth far more discussion than it receives. Why does God call us to dangerous places? McCord suggests, and I agree, He calls individuals to dangerous places because He loves the people that live there and because we can’t touch people, heal their bodies, hand them a book, or worship and pray with them from [7,400] miles away. Love and truth takes on flesh and walks the earth, and He does so within us. McCord shares her deep-seated wisdom through analogies inspired by the human experience. Her experience and the documented experiences of others are unique in many ways, albeit entirely familiar for any individual who seeks to follow Christ more closely each day. I read most of the lines of this book through water-filled eyes because it was so in tune with the Spirit. Her writing resonates at the heart level.
There are guided questions at the end of every chapter; some may choose to read this book and skim or skip them altogether. I would highly recommend taking the time to digest the words of this book and its contents, particularly the questions provided in the guided discussions at the end of every chapter. It makes the topic that much more personal and sets the stage for great conversation to be had, whether that conversation is with others or in your own head and heart. The questions are chapter-appropriate and formulated in a way in which they could be for every perspective to answer. Each discussion guide encourages delving further into scripture, praying for specifics, and using a journal to document the journey of thoughts inevitably accompanying this book.
Upon completion of this book, I am left with an even greater desire for my own heart to be for the heart of the Father.
All she needed were stamps and signatures. Marie and her translator stood in the government offices in Kabul, Afghanistan to complete the paperwork for her new literacy project. The women in her home town, the northern village of Shehktan, would learn to read.
But a spattering of gun shots exploded and an aid worker crumpled. Executed. On the streets of Kabul. Just blocks from the guesthouse. Sending shockwaves through the community.
The foreign personnel assessed their options and some, including Marie’s closest friend, Carolyn, chose to leave the country. Marie and others faced the cost and elected to press forward. But the execution of the lone aid worker was just the beginning.
When she returned home to her Afghan friends in Shehktan to begin classes, she felt eyes watching her, piercing through her scarf as she walked the streets lined in mud brick walls.
And in the end . . .
It took only 14 days for her project, her Afghan home, her community – all of it – to evaporate in an eruption of dust, grief, and loss. Betrayed by someone she trusted. Caught in a feud she knew nothing about, and having loved people on both sides, Marie struggled for the answer: How could God be present here, working here, in the soul of Afghanistan?
Kate McCord, a protective pseudonym, lived and worked in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2010. During her years in country, she worked as a humanitarian aid worker, delivering projects to benefit the people of Afghanistan. She also learned the local language and developed deep and lasting friendships with local Afghans. After evacuating from her home in Afghanistan, Kate transitioned into a mentoring, training, consulting and coaching role to other workers serving in the region. Prior to moving to Afghanistan, she worked in the international corporate community as a business process and strategy consultant. Today, Kate serves Christ through writing, speaking, mentoring and conducting workshops and seminars.
My Impressions:
Farewell, Four Waters is an intense and personal look into the life of an aid worker in Afghanistan. Kate McCord combines her in depth knowledge with deep emotion to produce a book anyone who is interested in God’s work overseas should read. This book will hold your interest as you join with the main character to fulfill God’s commands to love Him and her neighbor.
Marie has been an aid worker in Afghanistan for over 5 years. She has come to love the people and the country and embraces both as her family and home. But another aid worker is targeted for murder and things change. Marie must balance her care and love for the women in her town with the distrust she must have to keep herself safe.
Farewell, Four Waters explores the emotional, physical, and spiritual toll that working in a foreign country puts on aid workers and missionaries. In Afghanistan, there is another level of security that other workers may not experience. The characters must maintain a hyper-vigilance that seems counter to the work that they are trying to accomplish. The book also offers a unique and personal look at women in Afghanistan. Complex, smart and capable, these women are cloistered and treated like children by the men. Even young boys are deemed more capable in keeping women safe than themselves. During Marie’s visits to the literacy classes she establishes, she attempts to bridge the gulf of culture. Western culture is as incomprehensible to the Afghan women as their’s is to us. But one truth remains — these are people that God loves and calls us to love as well.
I enjoyed Farewell, Four Waters. There was a tension that began in the opening pages and continued to ramp up to the very end. Marie was a difficult character, yet all the more real for it. Her fears, loneliness, grief and faith in God are very real. And best of all, the book is based on real events and people, giving it an accuracy that may not be present in other fictional accounts. This book is a good choice for a book club — a lot of topics to spark conversation.
Recommended.
Great for Book Clubs.
Audience: older teens to adults.
(Thanks to Side Door Communications and River North for a review copy. All opinions expressed are mine alone.)
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Perhaps that’s the greatest reason why He calls us to dangerous places: so that we will know His astonishing, sacrificial, life-restoring love.
Kate McCord lived and worked in Afghanistan from 2005 to 2010. During her years in country, she worked as a humanitarian aid worker, delivering projects to benefit the people of Afghanistan. She also learned the local language and developed deep and lasting friendships with local Afghans.
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