Richard Mason travels to New Mexico to pastor a small church. Trouble finds him when he foils a stagecoach robbery. Kidnapped before he can preach his first sermon, rescued by Amber Logan, a beautiful vigilante, desperate to make it back to Casa Nueva alive, Richard learns someone has big, bad plans and Richard is in his crosshairs. Why is Bank President Lawrence Jacobsen so interested in his old Bible? It might be worth Richard's life to find out.

"A fascinating glimpse into the consciousness of being an outsider in every possible way, and what it takes to find your path into the life you'd like to lead."--Nylon A riveting memoir of losing faith and finding freedom while a covert missionary in one of the world's most restrictive countries. A third-generation Jehovah's Witness, Amber Scorah had devoted her life to sounding God's warning of impending Armageddon. She volunteered to take the message to China, where the preaching she did was illegal and could result in her expulsion or worse. Here, she had some distance from her community for the first time. Immersion in a foreign language and culture--and a whole new way of thinking--turned her world upside down, and eventually led her to lose all that she had been sure was true. As a proselytizer in Shanghai, using fake names and secret codes to evade the authorities' notice, Scorah discreetly looked for targets in public parks and stores. To support herself, she found work at a Chinese language learning podcast, hiding her real purpose from her coworkers. Now with a creative outlet, getting to know worldly people for the first time, she began to understand that there were other ways of seeing the world and living a fulfilling life. When one of these relationships became an "escape hatch," Scorah's loss of faith culminated in her own personal apocalypse, the only kind of ending possible for a Jehovah's Witness. Shunned by family and friends as an apostate, Scorah was alone in Shanghai and thrown into a world she had only known from the periphery--with no education or support system. A coming of age story of a woman already in her thirties, this unforgettable memoir examines what it's like to start one's life over again with an entirely new identity. It follows Scorah to New York City, where a personal tragedy forces her to look for new ways to find meaning in the absence of religion. With compelling, spare prose, Leaving the Witness traces the bittersweet process of starting over, when everything one's life was built around is gone.

God is Love. Expressed in many ways, a caress, a touch, a spank or the surge of an enema when sick, love cares. This book is about love, the love or a man and woman, a mother and daughter, an aunt and niece, an older and younger sister. Preachy love? No, real down-home loving, the kind most of us grew on and pass to our spouses and down to our children. Love is universal, a part of God, a part of sex, a part of childhood, the fundamental of any faith worth following. What ever life brings, what ever pain, sorrow, joy or bliss, love comes back as the Jonquils come back every spring and waves yellow flowers in icy breezes. If you want to feel love through the mind of a baby, a ten year old, a young or old woman then read When The Jonquils Bloom Again: Book One--- An Enema, A Birthday Spanking, A Love Story..

Experience True Liberation by Seeing Your Beauty, Femininity, and Freedom From Heavens Point of View Has Christianity kept women trapped in the stone age? In many ways, yes; but this is not by Gods design. As society offers women opportunities to explore outer-space and govern nations, the church often stifles and limits them. The tide is changing, though. Amber Picotas Gods Feminist Movement is a new covenant manifesto calling women to embrace their true identity in Christ and fulfill their destiny as revolutionaries who shape the course of history with the Kingdom of God. There is a powerful new feminist movement emerging in the body of Christ. Its not politically driven and its not being championed by an uprising of angry man-haters. Based on an intense study of Scripture, factoring in historical and contextual hermeneutics and original languages, Picota shares a practical, non-legalistic, and non-traditional (yet deeply Biblical) look at topics that women commonly face, such as: Dating and Modesty Female Leaders in the Church Submission in Marriage Beauty and Self-Image Celebrate the power and beauty of womanhood. God has given you permission to change the worldby being you! Break off religious traditions that keep women trapped in old school legalism and move beyond Christian clichs that minimize a womans true position in Christ!

"When people are committed to gender equality, what gets in their way of achieving it? Why do well-intentioned people reinforce sexist outcomes? Why does dissonance persist between organizational actors' good intentions of equality and sexist outcomes? This book provides answers to these questions by applying the critical lens of gendered organizations to moderate-liberal congregations that separated from their mainline denomination in support of women's equal leadership yet remain predominately male in positions of authority. This critical methodological study investigates congregations affiliated with the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship (CBF) with some dually aligned with The Alliance of Baptists. Although the CBF identifies the equal leadership of women as a core component of its collective identity and women are enrolling in Baptist seminaries at almost equal rates as men, only five percent of CBF congregations employ women as solo senior pastors. This book provides an organizational analysis investigating gendered congregational processes on the individual, interactional, and organizational levels including themes such as gendered hiring criteria, a perceived incongruence of women's bodies and leadership, unconscious biases of organizational actors, and how women pastors' experiences of discrimination influence their more risky approaches to leadership"--

Light, melodic tones. That was a worship service. Not guitar music! At least, Haley Cartwright believed that, and she was willing to do anything to prevent the new choir director from changing things. No matter that the man stirred up more than just Haley’s anger and made her yearn for things she had long given up on.... Matt Brandon had come to the small Oregon town to start over. He’d never expected to face an adversary like Haley. And though she protested she wanted him out of town, he saw how much his music touched her. Could he use his music to work through her fears and show her the blessings of love?