Showing results by narrator "Pam Ward" in All Categories

Christians are supposed to be “the light of the world.” Yet we seem to spend most of our time stumbling in the dark. We want answers carved in stone, and instead we get uncertainty. We want a clearly marked path and a panoramic view of the future, and God gives us only fleeting glimpses of what lies ahead—and just enough light to take the next step. So what do we do? We take the next step.

Conventional wisdom holds that John F. Kennedy was the first celebrity president, in no small part because of his innate television savvy. But as Kathryn Brownell shows, Kennedy capitalized on a tradition and style rooted in California politics and the Hollywood studio system. Since the 1920s, politicians and professional showmen have developed relationships and built organizations institutionalizing Hollywood styles, structures, and personalities in the American political process.

In the summer of 1916, a big twister brings destruction to the land around Boynton, Oklahoma. Alafair Tucker's family and neighbors are not spared the ruin and grief spread by the storm. But no one is going to mourn for Jubal Beldon, who made it his business to know the ugly secrets of everyonei n town. It doesn't matter if Jubal's insinuations are true or not. In a small town like Boynton, rumor is as damaging as fact.

We are not taught how to grieve, and yet grief comes to every one of us at some time. Bestselling author Lauraine Snelling discovered this truth when she began her own journey with grief in 1985, the year her 20-year-old daughter, Marie, lost her battle with cancer.

In this nonfiction book,A Hand to Hold, Lauraine helps us release the fears that make us uncomfortable around those who grieve. She urges us to offer those who grieve the gifts of touch, tears, talk, and time.

Marine biologist Kathy McNeely travels to Alaska, where she discovers an illegal ivory-poaching operation that is threatening the region's walrus population, and, with the help of a local tribe, she sets out to expose the poachers.

Kathy McNeely, a marine biologist and environmentalist, and a Russian scientist investigate a mysterious oil spill in pristine Antarctica despite storms, tourists, a reporter, and a series of so-called accidents at various research stations.

From the time she was conceived, Susan Morse was her mother’s “special” child. For Susan, special translated into becoming her incorrigible mother’s frazzled caretaker, a role that continued into adulthood. Now she finds herself as part of the sandwich generation, responsible for a woman whose 85 years have been single-mindedly devoted to identifying The Answer To Everything. And, this week’s Answer looks like it may be the real thing. Susan’s mother is becoming a nun.

A response to all those grandmother books with flowers and puppies on the cover, Grandma Rules is a book for the hip, baby boomer grandma who realizes that after all the work she put into her own kids, she can take a break and have fun with her grandkids. A perfect gift for the greatest grandmothers you know, this book is laugh-out-loud funny while offering useful insights and tips on how to embrace the world’s greatest job.

Alafair Tucker is a strong woman and the core of her family’s life on a farm in Oklahoma where backbreaking work and the daily logistics of caring for her husband and their nine children, and of being a good neighbor, requires determination and a clear head. She’s also a woman of strong opinions, and it is her opinion that her neighbor, Harley Day, is a drunkard and a reprobate. So, when Harley’s body is discovered frozen in a snowdrift one January day in 1912, she isn’t surprised that his long-suffering family isn’t particularly broken up. When Alafair helps Harley’s wife prepare the body for burial, she discovers that Harley’s demise was anything but natural.

The year 1916 was not shaping up to be a good one for Alafair Tucker, and finding Bernie Arruda dead in a ditch didn’t help matters. Alafair had not wanted to go to Arizona in the first place. But her 10-year-old daughter, Blanche, was suffering from a stubborn ailment of the lungs, and her best chance for a cure was dry desert air. So Alafair and her husband, Shaw, had bundled their sick child onto the train and made the difficult trip from Oklahoma to the home of Alafair’s sister in Tempe, Arizona.

When former Congressman Mark Stedman throws in the towel on his presidential campaign, his only choice is to return to his home state and decide how to spend the rest of his life...until he meets Josiah Stoltzfus, an Amish farmer from Pennsylvania. Using his old campaign headquarters for a base, Mark Stedman determines to introduce a new candidate to America. He pledges to do everything in his power to make sure Josiah gets elected. But can a plain man of faith turn the tide of politics and become the leader of America? And what will he have to risk to do it?

Roman Catholic sisters first traveled to the American West as providers of social services, education, and medical assistance. In Across God’s Frontiers, Anne M. Butler traces the ways in which sisters challenged and reconfigured contemporary ideas about women, work, religion, and the West; moreover, she demonstrates how religious life became a vehicle for increasing women’s agency and power.

Ann Meyers Drysdale is one of the greatest stars in the history of basketball. But her rise wasn't without controversy. Her 1979 NBA bid to play with the Indiana Pacers brought a barrage of criticism. But Ann simply wanted to play among the best. She had always competed with the guys. A female first in many categories, Ann Meyers Drysdale was the first woman ever signed to a four-year athletic scholarship to UCLA, where she remains the only four-time Bruin basketball All American, male or female.

Embrace your inner Mrs. Potato Head! She’s so much more real and full of fun than Barbie ever could be. And she knows how to laugh like only those who have discovered the humor, heart, and wisdom of true womanhood can laugh. Mrs. Potato Head’s hormones are out of whack. Her memory is held together by sticky notes. But she’s got a sense of humor that just won’t quit, and she’s learned to accept and enjoy herself as she is - because God does.

In Idaho, the land is good but life is hard for a German emigre whose dreams have turned to dust. Love found and lost can shatter a man's faith. But it is about to strengthen that of the woman to whom he turns - and in the drought of summer, a withered promise springs to life. Promised to Me is book four in the Coming to America series about women who come to America to start new lives. Set in the late 1800s and early 1900s, these novels craft intense chemistry and conflict....

Let Bill and Gloria take you on a sleigh ride of sights, sounds, aromas, feelings and flavors! This Christmas—and every Christmas—you and your family can join Bill and Gloria Gaither and their Homecoming friends as they celebrate this most sacred holiday—that historic moment in time when God’s Son, the Glory of heaven, came to earth to be “God with us.”

Many pastors feel ill-equipped to address the family issues, the addictions, the pain of abuse and loss, as well as the myriad other secrets that people in their churches and communities hide in their lives. Church leaders know they have a message that offers hope and healing, but they struggle to put structures in place that allow for focused recovery care. Ministries of healing and renewal are the bridge they need to access God's boundless grace and the encouragement of a life-giving community that can offer support and counsel.

When unusual circumstances place Sophia's baby in Laura Ann's care, Laura Ann is now the virgin mother of her own biological son. The media call him "Nobody's Child". But somebody wants him badly enough to steal the baby. Weaving together bioethics and faith, Nobody's Child dramatizes a future that is already upon us, with consequences we can no longer avoid.

In the big-sky country of Montana, the past doesn't always stay buried. Circumstances have a way of forcing secrets into the open, sometimes bringing hearts together in unlikely ways, and sometimes tearing them apart. Dear Lady is Book One in the Coming to America series about women who come to America to start new lives.

The Washington Post’s must-read guide to health-care reform traces how President Obama and the Democrats achieved this historic overhaul, explains the legislation itself, and shows how it will impact individual Americans.