Welcome back to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Information regarding the resources referenced on today's program can be found at www.knowingthetruth.org. Now here to continue with today's program is Pastor Kevin Bowling. Well, let me ask you a question. Do you like missionary stories? I know I do. One of the stories that captivated my heart and my interest was the story related to Operation Alka. You know, the story there, of course, with probably the two most famous of the five missionaries that were killed were probably Steve Saint, and then also Jim Elliott, and everybody was so familiar with Jim Elliott and the quote by Jim Elliott, primarily, I guess, because of Elizabeth Elliott and her work afterwards, but the quote was, a man is no fool to give up what he cannot keep to gain that which he cannot lose. I had the opportunity of actually interviewing Burt Elliott, Jim Elliott's brother. You can listen to that interview out on my webpage there www.sermonaudio.com forward slash knowing the truth and you can just put in Burt Elliott and you'll be able to listen to that interview that I did with him. Speaking of missionary stories, we have a guest here in the studio, Rebecca Davis. She's a local Greenville author who writes these great missionary stories referred to as Hidden Heroes. Let me just tell you a little bit about Rebecca. As I mentioned, she lived right here. In Greenville, South Carolina, she loves to do research and to write stories for children and their families about God's great work all over the world. In school and in churches, she presents dramatic storytelling events based upon the books that she has written. and she and her husband have four children and two grandchildren. I know one of their children pretty well, her daughter, Christiana, who sings tremendously. She sings over there at the Forest Coffee House. If you get a chance, she doesn't, not all the times, but most times, on Tuesday night during their open mic that takes place, you can find Christiana singing over there. She also sometimes sings in downtown Greenville. Just as you're walking around, she's one of those that has an instrument down there playing. I like to hear her down there even more so because she has a very powerful voice and it just carries down the street and echoes off of those buildings down there. I just found it to be a real, real blessing. We've got to get her on the program sometime and have her sing for us and you'll understand a little bit of what I'm talking about. Rebecca, welcome to the Knowing the Truth radio broadcast. Thanks so much, Kevin, and thanks for doing that plug for my daughter. Yeah, we have to plug her CD and stuff. She has a web page out there, doesn't she? Let's do that real quick. Just a Facebook page right now. No CD yet. And is it Christiana Davis Music? Yes. OK, they can just go ahead and Google that or look on Facebook, and it'll take you right to that page. Well, let's talk about you being the author of these Hidden Hero series of books. How did you get started in writing? Tell us a little bit about yourself. Well, I'm a homeschooling mother of four. And before I started, before my first child was born, in fact, I started writing my first book. We have all the books here. It was this one, With Daring Faith, a biography of Amy Carmichael. And then I raised four children and homeschooled them and squeezed in a couple of books during that time. Now my children are about grown and I'm back to writing and speaking and doing that pretty close to full time. I want to make sure that I don't forget to mention it, so make sure you tell us what the website is, so that as people are listening to our discussion here today about your books, they won't say, oh, you know, the pastor forgot to mention that website. So tell us that right up front. The website is HiddenHeroesMissionaryStories.com, and if you go there, you can see all my books. There are eight so far. Well, the ninth was just accepted for publication. You can read a sample chapter of every book. You can read reviews. There are even educator resources on the website. You can read more about me and the storytelling presentations I do. I speak in schools. And you can also go to my Facebook page, same name, Hidden Heroes Missionary Stories. And the nice thing about that, if you join that Facebook group or like the page, you can be alerted to when I finished a draft, I love to have reader families read for me and help me make the book a better book. And then when a book comes out, like this last one, Lights in a Dark Place was just published. When it comes out, I ask families or teachers to read the books out loud and write a review. And they'll get a free copy of it if they'll agree to do that. Excellent. And this one was published by a division of Focus, Christian Focus Books. All the Hidden Heroes books are published by Christian Focus Publications. And this one came out just, I think it was just two days ago. Oh, excellent. I had the opportunity to do an interview with the founders, and I guess the president and his wife there from Christian Focus. Just delightful people. Yes, I love their accent. Yes, yes. They've invited me, you know, hey, kids, come on over to Scotland and visit. and they're just wonderful, wonderful people, and I really appreciate the materials that they produce, and now finding out about your series here as well. When you talk about hidden heroes, now some people might be familiar with, as we mentioned, like Amy Carmichael in the story here, you have one about Fanny Crosby in some of your other books as well, but in this series where it talks about hidden heroes in particular, You're looking at somebody who may not be the main character in some of these missionary stories. Tell us about that aspect of your book. Yes. Well, I wrote the biography of Amy Carmichael. I wrote a biography of George Mueller, Fannie Crosby. All these people already had biographies written about them, although I will say that the Amy Carmichael biography was the first biography of Amy Carmichael written for children. But I did want to explore all the missionaries that were out there that would have stories that people didn't know. Why are we telling the Hudson Taylor stories over and over and over and Mary Slessor over and over and over and not finding the ones that people hadn't heard about? So as far as I know, this series is the only one of its kind in that each book is based around a location rather than a person. The first one is in Ethiopia, then the Central African Republic, what used to be called Erie and Jaya, now called Papua Indonesia, Southeast Asia, and then the most recent one that just came out is based in Colombia. The book that I just finished writing and just finished signing a contract for is based in Iran, and that's very exciting. These are all based on location, so the stories sometimes include several different missionary stories. And in order to do that, I'm reading books that are out of print and old magazine articles online. The Internet has been huge to make a difference in being able to do research for this. It's like going on a treasure hunt, looking for the stories that will come together for a book of this nature. Now, some of the folks that you write about, are they connected to some of the more well-known missionary stories in those areas? Yes. In this book, Return of the White Book, True Stories of God at Work in Southeast Asia, Adoniram Judson makes a cameo appearance. He's on about one or two pages because he is sending out the main missionary that I talk about, whose name is George Boardman. As far as I know, George Boardman has never had a biography written about him. He died when he was about 30. And his wife, Sarah Boardman, became Adoniram Judson's second wife. But his work with these people was really a work that needed to be written about. So I was excited to be one of the first to do that. Well, let's have you give us a little bit of a summarized sneak peek at what people will learn as they read through this series. Now, we're specifically talking about the series of the Hidden Heroes books, but as we mentioned, Rebecca also has other books as well. Three other ones that I have here in front of me, a biography of Amy Carmichael, Fanny Crosby, and also George Mueller. So those three books are kind of separate because those were not part of this series. We're just now talking about the Hidden Heroes series. And I would say specifically, you know, these are really, really good for homeschoolers, of course. Rebecca started off by saying that she had homeschooled and she had four children. I think that comes with a T-shirt. You know, it says, I survived homeschooling four children. I have homeschooled 23 years so far. 23 years. And I'm still at it. Wow, excellent. And so I think that this would be a great resource for homeschoolers specifically, but it's not limited to that. Any, I think for churches and Sunday school classes, you know, we've got Christmas, I don't want to shock you here, but right around the corner. And so if you're looking for a great resource to give to a Christian family, or for your own family, for your own little ones in your family, here'd be a great thing to get is this series on the Hidden Heroes series. And again, you can go out to Rebecca's website at www.hiddenheroesmissionarystories.com. By the way, if you have a question for Rebecca, as we're talking through this, we've got a few minutes here on the broadcast today. I'd be happy to go ahead and take your question or your comment. Maybe you've read through some of her books and you want to give a little bit of a comment about what you read there. You can do that. The number here is 1-888-660-WLFJ. That's 1-888-660-9535. Again, that's 1-888-660-WLFJ. And I would be happy then to go ahead and take your question or your comment about this series or about this type of writing in general. So let's start with the first one here, Rebecca. Your first one is With Two Hands, Stories of God at Work in Ethiopia. Give us a little sneak peek as to what listeners or readers would find in that book. Well, the primary missionary in this book is Dick McClellan, and the way I found him, the way this whole series got started, is a pretty exciting story in itself. I felt like the Lord just put this story into my hands, and I said, oh, I want to write a book. I tried through email, it was 2007, pre-Facebook, I tried through email to find, to connect with some mission organization who might be able to help me find his family because I figured he was long gone. Because his stories were old and I was connected directly with him. He lived in Australia. He's in his 80s I was able to communicate with him. I said to my son All this happened in just a few days and he's just looking at me and nodding like yeah, what's the big deal? and so I connected with Dick McClellan, got his stories, collected them, and these are either stories about things that happened to him or stories that were told to him by the Ethiopian missionaries themselves, the Ethiopians, the nationals. And so this is a collection of those stories. One thing I want to emphasize is that I don't show the Western missionary as the great white hero. I show him or her as someone who's doing what God has called them to do, making great sacrifices, yes, but that the national missionaries, the national Christians who have this fire of the gospel lit in their own hearts are then going out to their own people. to do the same work. So many of the stories are about the nationals. It was this book with two hands, True Stories of God at Work in Ethiopia, that a Kenyan missionary read and said, we want to translate this book into Swahili because it will be so inspiring to our young men to understand that the nationals are doing the work too. It's not just the white missionary. Has it been translated then? They're in the process of doing it. What's one of the aspects of the ministry there with Dick McClellan, then in Ethiopia, that comes to your mind that you can share briefly with the listening audience? Well, when I do storytelling presentations, because I go to schools and churches and other venues to do storytellings, and this is not readings. I don't read the story. I do a dramatic presentation. One of the stories I tell, it's just maybe my favorite one in this book, is when the The communist general is about to kill Dick McClellan. He has the rifle pointed to his chest and Dick McClellan is leaning against the tree going, Jesus, Jesus, Lord, Jesus. And up in the hut, these women are praying and crying out to God for rescue. And how the Lord works through all that is just very exciting. I was telling this story to a group in Georgia and I saw tears on the faces of the adults. These stories are not just for children. They are for all ages. These are stories that God wrote, and I just have the privilege of recording them. So the second book in the series then, it says, The Good News Must Go Out, Stories of God at Work in the Central African Republic. Tell us a little bit about what's in this particular volume. Well, the way that book came about was somebody asked me, have you ever heard of the book, They Called Me Mama? And I said, no, I've never heard of it. Who's it about? And the person said, I can't remember. And I said, what a perfect book for hidden heroes. I mean, she could not remember the name of the missionary, but she remembered How wonderful were the works that God did? Well, she bought a copy of that book sent it to me in the mail I took stories out of that and wrote them on a upper elementary level always remembering that I'm writing for adults, too and Those stories went into this book, The Good News Must Go Out. The missionary, I do remember her name. Her name is Margaret Nicole. She became Margaret Nicole Laird after she married on the mission field. She was one of the first missionaries to go to the Central African Republic. And again, some of the stories are primarily about the Africans who went out to their own people. Mm-hmm, the indigenous missionaries themselves. Yes, indigenous missionaries. And so this one, the men and women saved from cannibalism. Yes. And young boys who herded goats and carted water, who took the good news to the villages and homesteads of Africa. Wow, so much we forget about the Christian roots that were there in Africa. I think about Augustine and so forth. And so often we think that it's just so dark and there's very little Christianity there or something. But it really had a lot of historical background. Well, this was the 1920s, and they were basically animists. Animists and cannibals. Many of them were cannibals. And they heard the gospel and received it. Many of them received it in just amazingly large numbers. It speaks of the power of the gospel, you know, no matter where it goes. That's what I love. And that's what I want to accomplish through these books is showing the power of God through his word, through the light of the gospel as people make sacrifices. I want families, parents and their children And together to be saying, wow, we have a great God, because part of the way I can work to help advance the kingdom of God is to show people how it's already advancing and to inspire young people, children to say, God is doing that. I want to be a part of that and to show people it isn't just us. so many of us tend to be so Western-centric, like we're the hub of everything and everything goes out from us, but that God is doing things all over the world. Exactly. He's not limited by borders, that's for sure. Let me mention once again that we're speaking with author Rebecca Davis and speaking with her specifically about her Hidden Heroes series of books. I mentioned that this would be a great book series to give away as a gift or for homeschooling parents that are in our listening audience. Let me tell you once again that the website for that is www.hiddenheroesmissionarystories.com. Hey, by the way, when I keep mentioning homeschoolers, I wanted to mention really quickly that James Wanless, who has been with me on the broadcast before to talk about his book dealing with the green dragon and so forth, talking about the idea of climate change and a biblical perspective of those things, his daughter, has just been, let me read the press release here. It says this, local youth qualifies for the National Bible Bee in Florida. So this is out of Fountain Inn, a local young person who will be headed to Orlando, Florida to compete in the 2014 National Bible Bee on October 29th through November 1st. Grace Wanless, excelled in Bible memorization and study enough to secure one of the 360 top scores from across the country during the local Bible Bee contest, which was held on August 23rd. Grace is only 13 years old. And she's the daughter of James and Esther Wanlis. They're members of Greenville Presbyterian Church. As I mentioned, James has been on with us before. But I just want to say congratulations to Grace on a job well done. She now has to memorize 601 verses of the Bible. well as the book of verses, and I think the book of Nahum, as well, in order to enter into that national contest. So congratulations, Grace, on an effort well done there. I bet you Grace could tell us a little bit about some missionary stories. Let's run to the phone lines very quickly. We got Nelson up on line one there. Nelson, you have a question or a comment today for our guests in the program? Yeah, I do. Rebecca, I recently read a few books from Paul Brand. He was a missionary in India. Have you heard of him? Yes, I have. I have his book. Okay, so I was just wondering if... He just did some incredible things with changing the way we look at leprosy and how we treat it here and around the world. And he pioneered hand surgery. And he just did so much you know, for the leprosy patients. He has a facility in Carville, Louisiana, especially for them. And I just thought that a lot of people don't know about him. Yes, that's true. I have actually considered that. Yeah, a future book that you might want to publish. Well, I always am looking for suggestions, so I appreciate that very much. Nelson, thank you so much for asking about that. We really appreciate it. Okay, Nelson was pointing out another hidden hero that's out there, maybe up here in a future book, who knows. We were going through some of the series, and the next one on the list here is Witness Men, True Stories of God at Work in Papua, Indonesia. Now, is Papua, Indonesia different? When I think of Papua, I think of Papua, New Guinea. Right. It's the other half of the island. Okay. And when I think of Papua New Guinea, is that the place of the peace child took place here in that area? My half is the place of the peace child. The peace child story is in this book. In fact, that's one of the stories that I tell when I do storytellings. And I love telling that story because as people who are not familiar with the story of the Peace Child. It's a book written by Don Richardson, who is a hero of mine and who initially inspired me when I was in my 20s with his book Eternity in Their Hearts. But this story, the Peace Child story, when I tell it, especially for the young people who have never heard this story before, as they realize what's happening, as they make a connection between the strange custom of the tribal people of offering a child, not in sacrifice, but to exchange with another tribe in order to make peace, that Don Richardson uses that tribal tradition to explain who Jesus Christ is, that I can see the young people's faces changing, sometimes their jaws dropping to realize what God is doing through that, what's called a redemptive analogy. Yeah, that was fantastic. They take the one child and give it to the other tribe, and as long as that child is alive, peace will be there. You actually had dinner with the Richardson's, right? Were they in your home? Well, I got to be in their home, which was a great privilege. That was a real privilege to be able to visit with them. Wow, people, I know that name very well. We just have about four minutes left, so I just want to mention the other two and get you to give us a quick synopsis here. And we got another call coming in, I think, as well. But it says this, the fourth one in the series is Return of the White Book, True Stories of God at Work in Southeast Asia. Give us a brief summary of that one. This is the one that Adoniram Judson is in. The reason it's called Return of the White Book is because it turned out that these people had a tradition, a longstanding tradition, that the missionaries didn't even know about initially, that a white brother and a white book was going to come back to them and give them the truth and help them reconnect with Yawa, the God who had gone far away from them. This is why they so quickly embraced the gospel. And this is the Karen tribe in Southeast Asia. Amen. Well, thankfully that God that had gone so far away had also come to us in His Son, the Lord Jesus Christ. Amen. Let's run to the phone lines again. We got Terry. Terry, what's on your mind today? Well, I've just been so inspired listening to this. What a wonderful career you have and just a wonderful way to spend your time in your life. Praise God. I wondered, do you ever do any contemporary missionaries? And the reason I ask is because I was just learning last night about some people who are missionaries to the deaf in many countries, and they're a subgroup that is really isolated amongst isolated groups. And, you know, I just think it's fascinating what's going on with the death in these various countries. I will tell you that most of the missionaries I write about are still alive. And I write letters to them asking them permission to write about them. And they write me back. And they read the chapters about themselves so that I can make sure they're accurate. Most of them are contemporaries. So this sounds like an exciting opportunity you've talked about here. Well, Terri, thank you so much. That is so exciting. Yes, it is. Thank you so much, Terri, for asking that and pointing that out. I had no idea that there was a group that was missionary specifically to the deaf. Very, very interesting. Terri, if you'll write to me through my website, I'll correspond with you about that. Maybe a book come out in Braille. I don't know. Well, thank you so much for writing this series, Rebecca. It's really been, I think, inspiring for people to hear about these missionaries, to see the work that God is doing through people, not just in days of old, but what the Spirit of God and the Word of God is doing in the lives of people today. Final word that you want to leave with our listening audience? I'm very excited about what God is doing all over the world and I feel tremendously privileged to be able to record it. For you two, as Terry was just pointing out, it's such a wonderful way to spend your time on researching the work of God and then writing about it so that you can share that research with others. It's very exciting. Excellent. Well, Rebecca, thanks so much for coming into the studio today. I want to make sure that I give the listening audience all the pertinent information here on your website and about this book series and so forth. We've been speaking with Rebecca Davis, and you can go out to her website. Her website is www.hiddenheroesmissionarystories.com. Now that's all one word in the URL when you type it in, but it's hiddenheroesmissionarystories.com. And out there at that site, you're going to find out a little bit about Rebecca. You'll also find out about the series of books that we've been talking about today that are all published through Christian Focus Publishing. So you can also go to their website as well to find out about them. That's www.christianfocus.com if you want to find out more about this series and about Rebecca and so forth. Remember when we talk about all of these things we're talking about the idea of the gospel of our wonderful Lord and Savior Jesus Christ and in the gospel Jesus said this he said you shall know the truth and The truth shall make you free. We'll see you the next time right here on knowing the truth You're listening to knowing the truth to keep this ministry strong and coming your way you can make a financial gift at knowing the truth org by clicking on the donate button and You've been listening to Knowing the Truth with Pastor Kevin Bowling. Knowing the Truth is the outreach ministry of the Mountain Bridge Bible Fellowship located on Highway 25 in Traveler's Rest. For more information about the church and radio ministry, visit us on the web at knowingthetruth.org. The opinions expressed on today's program are those of the announcers, their guests, and callers, and do not necessarily represent those of the staff and management of his radio network, the Radio Training Network, or Clear Channel Communications.