Wherever the river runs

This has been my summer of reading fiction books. And I have thoroughly enjoyed it.

But it’s no secret (or maybe it is) that my first reading love is always a memoir. I love reading about real life and things people have been experienced and how it has impacted them. Which is why I was so excited to read my friend Kelly Minter’s new memoir, Wherever the River Runs.

I know I talk about a lot of books here, but I hope you’ll pay attention today because Wherever the River Runs quickly became one of my favorites. I read an advanced copy of it way back in February. I remember it clearly because I was on my way to a speaking event in Virginia Beach during one of the great snowstorms of last winter and all my fears of getting stuck at the airport kind of faded away for a while as I read Kelly’s words.

Wherever the River Runs is the story of Kelly’s journey to the jungles of Brazil as she and her friends minister to the forgotten people who live along the Amazon River. I’d heard many of these stories in person, but reading about them in Kelly’s beautiful, descriptive, funny way of telling a story brought them to a new light. As I read this book on the plane and later that night in my hotel room, I found myself inspired and challenged in a whole new way.

And here’s what I love the most about this book. I feel like there are so many voices in the church right now who make us feel like we’re all supposed to be out doing these big, huge things for God on some foreign mission field to the point that we can start to believe loving our neighbor and raising our babies and volunteering at the elementary school right here in America is insignificant. But Kelly talks about how her work in Brazil led her to the realization of all there is to do in our own communities.

Here’s one of many things I underlined:

“…the Brazilian church is ministering to its people in the Amazon, but at about the same rate we as American Christians are giving ourselves to the neighbors, projects, sick, homeless, and spiritual wanderers living in our midst. If I were going to wish the Manaus would seek out its own river people, I would have to hold myself to that same standard and ask what I was doing in my community. What ‘Amazon’ was I missing, practically living on top of, merely because the ‘harvest field’, as Jesus referred to it, had blended into the background of my everyday life, just like the river people had disappeared into Manaus’s landscape? For some reason, it took seeing Brazil’s mission field before I could clearly see my own.”

See?

That’s challenging.

I can’t encourage you enough to pick up a copy for yourself. Maybe read it in your small group or Sunday school class. I guarantee there’s something in it for everyone and it will make you fall in love with Kelly and, even more, with the God she serves.

Wherever the River Runs is available here on Amazon and here on Barnes & Noble and here at Walmart.

(Your best bet might be B&N or Walmart or your local bookstore. Just checked and Amazon is down to only 12 copies at the moment.)