My Memoir is Published

It was thirty years ago this month that I first stepped foot on Slovak soil. The Slovak Republic was just six months old. I was part of a group of 25 on a mission trip from Calvary Baptist Church in Holland, Michigan. Little did I know then that that trip would be the beginning of relationships that have spanned 30 years.

A year later I was on my second trip to Slovakia. This time with Joe Ann and the Calvary High School choir plus Pastor Grooms and a few more chaperones. The young people sang 20 times in 10 days, played basketball against Slovak high school teams, met with high school English classes, and had weekend concerts in churches and a city auditorium.

Then, in 1997, Joe Ann and I sold everything in the U.S. and moved to Slovakia at the invitation of the Baptist church in Banska Bystrica. Lord willing, I will again be in Banska Bystrica next week. Traveling with me will be one of those high school students from 1994.

This and the story that spanned the next twelve years is covered in the memoir that I completed this spring and has now been published. It is available on Amazon. Although the bulk of the book is my memory of our years in Slovakia, there is a backstory that tells how Joe Ann and I met and what happened in the ten years before we went to Slovakia. It concludes with an epilogue of the years after we returned to the U.S. until Joe Ann’s death last year.

I chose the three words, Courage to Change, in the title because it is part of the Serenity Prayer. The burden of our hearts from the beginning was to share the experience, strength, and hope that comes with recovery from addiction. However, for everyone who experienced God-enabled change during our years in Slovakia, including the two of us, it took courage to change those things in our lives that needed changing.

This fall the book will be translated into the Slovak language for those with whom we shared our lives who cannot read it in English.

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