As a child, I celebrated birthdays with joy and excitement. I opened my gifts with great zeal — tearing open boxes, ripping through wrapping paper, and turning gift bags upside down....

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I have always been very confident in my abilities. When I finished high school, I was sure I would get into a state college; however I did not get a good...

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I had invited my friend and his wife to attend church with me for many years, but they had never shown any interest in coming. For a long time they had...

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When I was a child, I thought that God was actually in the streams of light that sometimes break through the clouds in the sky. It seemed to me that God...

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A few years ago, one of my sons, Bongue, and I left home early one morning to participate in a training seminar for pastors in Luanda. It was still dark. A...

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As a black man living in the United States, I consider freedom one of my most precious blessings. My ancestors were slaves once, bought and sold like property, worked like cattle...

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With my husband, Talmadge’s, brain-tumor diagnosis we looked death in the face. Yet, out of the ugliness of scalpels and scans, healthy tissue destroyed with disease, muscle weakness, weight loss, nausea,...

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Hokkaido, Japan is known for its racehorses. Once, when my family and I traveled to Hokkaido, a tour guide told us that some of the young horses were not obedient to...

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When I saw the email, I braced myself. For nearly a year, I’d sent sample chapters to different publishers, praying that one of them would give me a contract for my...

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One summer, I stayed with a family who lived by a lake while I was doing a college internship. When I told them I didn’t know how to water ski, they...

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