Call of a Coward

June 18, 2012
How would you respond if your spouse believed that God was calling his family to accompany him as he ministered to widows and orphans in a remote Mayan village in Guatemala? Winner of the 2010 Women of Faith Writing Contest, this account of the privations and joys of life in a Central American village is accessible, if sometimes rambling. In engaging, scripture-laden prose, the writer chronicles encounters with scorpions, frustration with heavy-handed government bureaucrats, hair-raising rides along cliffs, and the deepening relationships with the poor but often exuberant and welcoming locals. Vividly but without drama, she describes the struggles of adapting to a culture light years away from her comfortable former life in suburban New Jersey. As the author tells it, her family’s journey in faith, from the Guatemalan highlands to a small Vermont church, became a divine tutorial in learning to trust God. Laced with homely analogies (“Frustrations, like grit caught up in a gust of wind, eddied up and stung our vision”), this volume will have special appeal to evangelical female readers who appreciate this form of narrative.