Author Rick Rouse weaves a tapestry of immigrant experiences—successes, hopes, challenges, and dreams that have often unfolded amidst global conflicts and political polarization. These narratives inspire compassion as “these least of these” search for a safe haven and discover how diversity enriches America and our faith. While the American story aspires to be the story of welcome and refuge for all, our history often tells a different story. As wars are raging in Ukraine and the Middle East, creating millions of refugees merely seeking safety, American politics remains so polarized that the government appears deadlocked or unable to act on meaningful solutions to immigration policies. In A Journey Called Hope, author Rick Rouse shares the stories of immigrants from around the world to America — their successes, hopes, challenges, and dreams. He explores how we can share our planet with the understanding that it is a matter of human dignity for all people to have a safe place to call home. In sharing these inspiring stories and hope-filled futures, Rouse assures us the United States is still a nation of promise made richer by its diversity.

In the midst of suffering and trials in life, we can feel lost ... abandoned. Life's unexpected twists and turns cause us to focus inward. Shut down and just survive. But there is hope. Finding Hope in the Journey is written for anyone who has felt despair, yet yearns for assurance. Experience with depression, chronic pain, a son returning home early from a mission and other difficult journeys gave author Heidi Tucker reason to lose faith. But through her struggles she found healthy patterns which positioned her heart to see God's hand in her life. Finding Hope in the Journey teaches us how to see, hear and feel those quiet, tender moments of hope. The friendly style of writing is easy to embrace as principles are taught and reinforced through true stories. This book will inspire you to rise up and find new strength, courage and determination to move forward as you implement tools to recognize messages of hope from God.

I've told my kids for years that God doesn't make mistakes," writes Mary Beth Chapman, wife of Grammy award winning recording artist Steven Curtis Chapman. "Would I believe it now, when my whole world as I knew it came to an end?" Covering her courtship and marriage to Steven Curtis Chapman, struggles for emotional balance, and living with grief, Mary Beth's story is our story--wondering where God is when the worst happens. In Choosing to SEE, she shows how she wrestles with God even as she has allowed him to write her story--both during times of happiness and those of tragedy. Readers will hear firsthand about the loss of her daughter, the struggle to heal, and the unexpected path God has placed her on. Even as difficult as life can be, Mary Beth Chapman Chooses to SEE. Includes a 16-page full color photo insert.

Hope Runs is the emotional story of one American tourist, one Kenyan orphan, and how one day became one year that would change the course of their lives forever. Sammy Ikua Gachagua lost his father to illness, his mother to abandonment, and his home to poverty. By age ten, he was living in a shack with seven other hungry children. He entered an orphanage, seeing it as a miracle. At the end of an around-the-world journey, Claire Díaz-Ortiz decided to climb Mount Kenya before heading home. She entered an orphanage, seeing it as a free place to spend the night before her trek. God had other plans.

A Journey Called Life is Gladys' story from birth to retirement. She discusses the following challenges during her life: her speech defect, loss of her first child, becoming a teacher, her son's involvement with drugs, her Mom's Alzheimer's, and her daughter's brain surgery. Before the death of her first child, she believed God planned and controlled everything in one's life. However, to her God is loving and caring not a punishing God or one to fear. Why would God take her first baby away from her when he was just two weeks old. After much grieving and soul searching, she changed her philosophy to although God is all powerful, he chooses not to use that power to interfere with nature. God might have a plan for your life. However, everything that happens to you is not God's plan or fault for he allows nature to exist as he created the world. In other words, illnesses and health problems are just a part of our world. God created a beautiful world but it is not perfect because God made people human not perfect. However, God is always there to help you through difficult times. Wiley's children invovement with drugs introduced her to Al-Anon. There she learned that worry is optional and one can experience negativity or anger without becoming negative or angry. She discovered that detachment is not caring less but caring more for your own serenity. She found out that no situation is too difficult to be bettered or any problem too great to be lessened. Wiley also writes about her travels to Virgin Islands, Tahiti, Hawaii, out West, and Alaska. Journaling has become very important to Wiley. She includes ponder questions at the end of each chapter to challenge her readers to think about the meaning of life, journal about their own lives, and grow as individuals.

Neal Petersen was born physically disabled and impoverished in apartheid-era South Africa, but was introduced to healing and equality in the waters surrounding Cape Town. Journey of a Hope Merchant recounts the epic journey that took this misfit kid from a racially segregated, working class neighborhood to the prestigious world of solo yacht racing.

When special forces soldier Jason Morgan awoke from a months-long coma, he was told he'd never walk again. Discovered face-down in a Central American swamp after a jungle mission gone wrong, he had a smashed spine, collapsed lungs and countless broken bones. It was a miracle he'd even survived. Months of painful surgery followed, with Jason's life balanced on a knife-edge. Released from hospital in a wheelchair and plagued by memory loss, Jason's life fell apart. Left alone to raise his three infant sons, all hope seemed gone, until Jason met Napal, a handsome-as-hell black Labrador provided by a very special charity. With this one incredible dog at their side, Jason's life and that of his family would never be the same again. With Napal's help Jason was able to conquer his paralysis, eventually completing a marathon and winning numerous medals in the Wounded Warrior Games. More than that, this amazing service dog helped heal a family and taught Jason to be the father his kids needed him to be. A Dog Called Hope is the moving and heart-warming story of how Jason rediscovered his life's mission, his strength as a father and, through his beloved dog, his hope. It's the story of the closeness between one man and one dog like no other, and how this mesmerizing duo changed countless lives. Inspirational, tear-jerking and laugh-out-loud uplifting, this is a story that will brighten any day and warm every heart.

"Dr. Bill, I know I'm not going to win this battle with cancer. Can you teach me how to die?" What is it about this stage in life that calls us to seek instruction?I have come to discover that the real issue is not the event called death but the ongoing journey prior to death that we call dying. Everyone has their own unique journey with dying. It is in that final stage in a person's life that I have had the privilege of knowing and giving care to my clients.This is a series of true stories, from my files. These are the shared voices of people who would find a new way to hope. A hope that would empower them to embrace the mystery of living meaningfully and purposefully until they died. And the story of one who could not."No, Sam. But I am prepared to work with you so that you will find a hope to live with, until you die."

Liberia was founded by the American Colonization Society (ACS) in the 1820s as an African refuge for free blacks and liberated American slaves. While interest in African migration waned after the Civil War, it roared back in the late nineteenth century with the rise of Jim Crow segregation and disfranchisement throughout the South. The back-to-Africa movement held great new appeal to the South's most marginalized citizens, rural African Americans. Nowhere was this interest in Liberia emigration greater than in Arkansas. More emigrants to Liberia left from Arkansas than any other state in the 1880s and 1890s. In Journey of Hope, Kenneth C. Barnes explains why so many black Arkansas sharecroppers dreamed of Africa and how their dreams of Liberia differed from the reality. This rich narrative also examines the role of poor black farmers in the creation of a black nationalist identity and the importance of the symbolism of an ancestral continent. Based on letters to the ACS and interviews of descendants of the emigrants in war-torn Liberia, this study captures the life of black sharecroppers in the late 1800s and their dreams of escaping to Africa.

Girls grow up wanting to be mothers. From a very early age, we play and pretend with our dolls. In teenage years, we practice mothering skills while we babysit. Motherhood is one of the crowning glories of being a woman. But what if it doesn't happen for you? You never hear the words, "You're pregnant" or feel life inside of you, and infertility moves in. Infertility is a life-questioning event. It invades the physical, mental, emotional, social, and spiritual being of a woman. Women who face it tend to crawl into a protective, isolative shell. No One to Call Me Mommy provides companionship, strength, and a voice to break through that isolation. It is not a book about infertility; it is a book about hope and healing through the journey.