This tribute to the creation of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" celebrates the tenth anniversary of the popular TV series, profiling the people who originated it. 700+ illustrations & color photos.

Can the ordinary American achieve success and fulfillment? The answer is yes. How do we know this? Americans are optimists. Americans are doers. Americans dont give up at the first sign of failure. The stories we love most are those of underdogs who persevere and overcome against all odds. Why is that? We believe in resilience. This book presents a unique approach to successa practical can-do model drawn from army field manuals and woven into a tapestry of ideas from philosophy, psychology, theology, and literature. The military operates on principles and approaches driven to accomplish the missionnot to give up. Success involves taking chances, saying yes to opportunity. You really can be anything you want to be. Anything you dream. Anytime. Only in America. Thats what our flag represents.

The author of the best-selling Found Dogs combines duotone photographs with inspiring profiles of dogs and cats who have emerged from abuse-marked backgrounds to become assistance animals working as nursing home therapy pets, service animals for the blind and more.

Livingstone believed in 1856 that he had opened Central Africa to industry, commerce, and Christianity. He summoned Britain to plant a settlement that should destroy the slave trade by teaching the Christian faith to Africans and by developing the wealth of the country. Mackenzie led the mission that tried with Livingstone's help to plant this settlement. This book describes the ensuing tragedy; a tragedy that nevertheless helped to found Nysaland.

The Mission of Guevavi on the Santa Cruz River in what is now southern Arizona served as a focal point of Jesuit missionary endeavor among the Pima Indians on New Spain's far northwestern frontier. For three-quarters of a century, from the first visit by the renowned Eusebio Francisco Kino in 1691 until the Jesuit Expulsion in 1767, the difficult process of replacing one culture with another—the heart of the Spanish mission system—went on at Guevavi. Yet all but the initial years presided over by Father Kino have been forgotten. Drawing upon archival materials in Mexico, Spain, and the United States—including accounts by the missionaries themselves and the surviving pages of the Guevavi record books—Kessell brings to life those forgotten years and forgotten men who struggled to transform a native ranchería into an ordered mission community. Of the eleven Black Robes who resided at Guevavi between 1701 and 1767, only a few are well known to history. Others—such as Joseph Garrucho, who presided more years at Guevavi than any other Padre; Alexandro Rapicani, son of a favorite of Sweden's Queen Christina; Custodio Zimeno, Guevavi's last Jesuit—have the details of their roles filled in here for the first time. In this in-depth study of a single missionary center, Kessell describes in detail the daily round of the Padres in their activities as missionaries, educators, governors, and intercessors among the often-indifferent and occassionally hostile Pimas. He discusses the Pima uprising of 1751 and the events that led up to it, concluding that it actually continued sporadically for some ten years. The growing ferocity of the Apache, the disastrous results of certain government policies—especially the removal of the Sobaípuri Indians from the San Pedro Valley—and the declining native population due to a combination of enforced culture change and epidemics of European diseases are also carefully explored. The story of Guevavi is one of continuing adversity and triumph. It is the story, finally, of explusion for the Jesuits and, a few short years later, the end of Mission Guevavi at the hands of the Apaches. In Mission of Sorrows Kessell has projected meticulous research into a highly readable narrative to produce an important contribution to the history of the Spanish Borderlands.

This book explores how member care is being practiced around the world to equip sending organizations as they intentionally support their mission/aid personnel. The information provided includes personal accounts, guidelines, case studies, worksheets, and practical advice from all over the globe. “This book delivers what it promises! Here are 50 chapters from the widest selection of writers in the member care field to date.” –Brent Lindquist, President, Link Care Center This book was published in partnership with the World Evangelical Alliance.

Traces how two veterans of the wars in the Middle East organized ways that injured veterans could continue to serve, sharing inspiring stories of disaster relief in Haiti and post-Sandy New York as well as tales of support for newly returned and traumatized vets.

What does your spiritual DNA look like? In terms of your spiritual identity, where do you come from and where are you going? We live in an age when many Christians have experienced several denominational and religious communities. Many wonder what to do with these experiences. At the same time many congregations are made up of people who come from different traditions, and the question is how to bring these diverse experiences into the life of the congregation in an enriching way. If we take as our starting point, the call of Abraham and Sarah to take a journey to an unknown land with the promise that their descendants would be a blessing to the nations, what might this look like in terms of our spiritual lives? Join with the author as he draws on his spiritual journey that has taken him into several denominational traditions, as well as his experiences as a pastor and historical theologian, to discern values and concepts that can help congregations and individuals make sense of their diverse spiritual experiences, so that together we might fulfill the Abrahamic calling, reaffirmed in Christ, to be a blessing to the nations.