Facing Life's Struggles As We Grow...Life can be so challenging yet so rewarding. As we grow we've notice things are not as what we thought it would be. Drugs have interrupted families, insecurities have kept people secluded from the world, broken homes, loss of loved ones, new children are born and depression has had some people turn suicidal. Is it love? Or is it lust? The fast pace beating of your heart when you see that person, I've learned that's only at the start. Giving your all thinking its love just to find out they're paying you no attention at all. Spiritually I try to stay focused on what really matters, knowing that he will provide me with what I need. Putting him first and letting everything else just fall into place. Stepping Through Muddy Waters is a walk through the ups and downs in life. It'll help you to have a different outlook on life itself. In writing I have also had a better prospective on things. As you step through the pages of this book you will find yourself or maybe someone that you may know and help change the negative into positive.

An Ezra Jack Keats Book Award Winner A New York Times Best Illustrated Book An NPR Best Book of the Year A Bulletin Blue Ribbon Book A Parents’ Choice Gold Award Winner A picture book celebration of the indomitable Muddy Waters, a blues musician whose fierce and electric sound laid the groundwork for what would become rock and roll. Muddy Waters was never good at doing what he was told. When Grandma Della said the blues wouldn’t put food on the table, Muddy didn’t listen. And when record producers told him no one wanted to listen to a country boy playing country blues, Muddy ignored them as well. This tenacious streak carried Muddy from the hardscrabble fields of Mississippi to the smoky juke joints of Chicago and finally to a recording studio where a landmark record was made. Soon the world fell in love with the tough spirit of Muddy Waters. In blues-infused prose and soulful illustrations, Michael Mahin and award-winning artist Evan Turk tell Muddy’s fascinating and inspiring story of struggle, determination, and hope.

Muddy Waters is an auto-biography of my experience of twelve years spent with a home-grown New Zealand cult who established themselves in North Canterbury first in a Christchurch suburb and then relocating to a farm in Waipara. I joined immediately following a spiritual awakening when I engaged Air Force friends who were already in the cult without knowing its true nature. Other Air Force personnel did similar. I share this journey beginning with my background prior to my entry into the group. I explain my journey while in this particular cult from an insider’s point of view which has not been shared before in a way that outsiders can comprehend. The group went through a number of transitions hinging around them understanding their leader to be Messiah. I share some of the life lived, the style of worship, the rationales around them justifying at times, large scale theft and also petty theft with an accompanying idea it was ok to lie to outsiders. We achieved notoriety after sizeable NZ police raids in 1977 and subsequent raids assisted by members of the defence force on households around New Zealand located near RNZAF bases after the discovery of a large cache of firearms and explosives. The group was again raided in 1987 on similar grounds and other firearms confiscated. My journey was one of a growing self-awareness and a distinct development of conscience as I met and worked through each of the challenges I engaged on exiting. Prior to leaving my experience was marked with conflict and confrontation with the leadership which grew around the illusions presenting him as the secret Messiah. Anecdotes include their lifestyle; the routines; the rituals and their exorcisms; I was excommunicated following a direct doctrinal challenge I made to the leader and from which he then manipulated the group by playing victim in telling the followers I wanted to see him dead. This caused a severe and vitriolic reaction ensuring I could in no way return even if I wished to. I was shunned. It has taken me 30 years before I got to the point of being able to write my story. Today I am a retired Presbyterian minister in New Zealand and have recently retired after 25 years of pastoral ministry ranging from rural work to suburban and inner city work.

On an icy evening in December, Kimberley Jamieson's world is shattered by a careless drunk driver who skids into her mother's car. Slowly, Kim gets back in step with the help of her friends.

Muddy Waters invented electric blues and created the template for the rock and roll band and its wild lifestyle. Gordon excavates Muddy's mysterious past and early career, taking us from Mississippi fields to postwar Chicago street corners.