Hot Apple Cider: Words to Stir the Heart and Warm the Soul is an anthology of inspirational writing by 30 Canadian Christians.

The introduction describes the material as “thought provoking and honest accounts about how faith affects real life.”

Contributors include Mark Buchanan, Carolyn Arends, Grace Fox, Keith Clemons, Denyse O'Leary, Paul Beckingham and Sheila Wray Gregoire; it features a foreword by best-selling author Janette Oke.

Edited by Ontario writers N.J. Lindquist and Wendy Elaine Nelles, co-founders of The Word Guild, the book will be released by That's Life! Communications this spring.

It is being endorsed by World Vision Canada, which will distribute some 30,000 copies to women who attend the ministry’s Girls Night Out events across Canada.

These two pages feature excerpts from the book.

The Child on the Tracks
Carmen Wittmeier

“It’s not our problem that children in developing countries starve. If their parents are too lazy to take care of them, then they deserve to die.”

“I wouldn’t call impoverished parents lazy . . . The problem is that if we help them, they’ll simply have more children, who will also end up starving.”

My English students at Langara College in Vancouver were discussing a New York Times Magazine article on world poverty, by controversial author Peter Singer.

I always appreciated my students’ candor and passion. Still, I was a product of my own experience, and the month I had spent volunteering with World Vision in a Romanian orphanage had left its mark.

Would I give up dinner and a movie to feed a hungry child? Was it wrong to cater to my genetic predisposition for pumpkin spice lattés? Did I really need that new leather jacket, or was it evidence of an inherent selfishness?

But there was more to the picture.

Gabriella was the sort of orphan who could make a volunteer feel helpless one moment and ecstatic the next.

Autistic, she was locked in her own world, unable to communicate through language or eye contact. When her needs went unmet, she clenched her fists, grimaced and rocked, sometimes crying in frustration until her lips turned a pale blue.

Of all the orphans, Gabriella struggled the most to make sense of the seemingly arbitrary rules which governed the adult world. Once, upon oversleeping and missing her snack, the little girl grabbed a volunteer by the hand. In vain she attempted to pull him to the lunchroom; in vain he tried to gesture that the food had been put away.

It took patience to break through her barriers. The volunteer before me had taught her to walk. I, in turn, formed a relationship by swinging her back and forth. Day after day she would seek me out, and I would swing her though the air. One day, which I will never forget, Gabriella looked directly into my eyes and smiled.

Giving, I have since realized, is not the same thing as giving up or giving away. Dinner and a movie pale in comparison to the soul-nourishing experience of ensuring a child will not go to bed hungry.

No pumpkin spice latté, however frothy, is comparable to knowing that, because of my actions, a child is now safe and warm. A new jacket is meaningless next to the wild joy I feel when a friend or acquaintance chooses to sponsor a child.

Jesus’ Disciple Wears a Stethoscope
W. Harold Fuller

“Harold, you’ve just got to meet Dr. Bell,” I was told several times. “She’s from your country, and she’s doing amazing work in the middle of the monsoon rains in northern India.”

I found Dr. Bell, a farmer’s daughter from Bruce County, Ontario, sitting at the wheel of a four-wheel-drive Jeep.

“Hop in!” Aletta (pronounced Ah-LEE–tah) called, giving me the impression she was anxious to get going on her rounds of the village health centres she’d set up in the area.

Fifty, I guessed her to be at the time – although guessing a woman’s age can be reckless! Fresh-faced and dressed in an Indian-style long tunic over slacks, she acted more like a 30 year old. The only indication of her profession was a stethoscope dangling from her neck.

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As the Jeep bumped along unpaved trails, I learned more about this Canadian medic whom local people looked upon as their own ‘Mother Teresa.’

Of course, most of the world knows about the Albanian nun who spent her life caring for the dispossessed in the slums of Calcutta. But who has heard about this ordinary Canadian doctor, who has invested her life caring for remote, poverty-stricken villagers on India’s border with Nepal?  

We watched children making rehydration packets for people. Sitting on mats, the children filled small plastic bags with a mixture of sugar and salt.

One child carefully spooned out the right quantities, while other children filled the bags and sealed them with heat from a candle.

“We pay these children for their work, and we use the packets in the villages and back at the hospital, which buys them,” Aletta explained. “The children use their money for school books and pencils.”

The work was also an educational experience. The children learned that evil spirits don’t cause dysentery, and that illness can be overcome with the right treatment – not with sacrifices at the local shrine. Moreover, they learned to follow directions and measure accurately, while they earned money for schooling and helped their communities.

But sadly, such an opportunity is not given to most of India’s 70 million children under the age of 18 who labour “without benefit of education,” according to World Health Organization reports.

It is estimated that 10 million children are bonded or enslaved, paying off inherited family ‘debts.’ Two million “children at risk” are living on the streets, including hundreds of thousands of child prostitutes. Thirteen million of India’s children are considered homeless, and more than one million are orphans.

On Writing with Passion and Integrity
M. D. Meyer

Someone asked me the other day if I was “still working at the school.” When I told them that I’d quit my job to write full-time, there was the inevitable question: “Any money in that?”

I had to admit that there isn’t – or at least, not much. And narrowing the field to Christian writing only serves to further diminish my potential income.

“So it’s kind of a hobby, then?”

I had to smile. The image conjured up by the word ‘hobby’ seemed far removed from my everyday writing experience.

But there is really no simple way to describe what I do or why I do it.

I write because I have to.
It’s like breathing.
It’s a compulsion. An addiction.
It’s a ministry. A gift.
A burden.

My research on the after-effects of Indian residential schools on Aboriginal Canadians tears at my soul.

I ache to think about young children being taken from their parents and thrust into a foreign environment, forced to speak a new language, beaten and even molested,          all in the name of Jesus.

And I agonize over the formidable task of telling their story, knowing these children are now adults – and many of their voices have been silenced.

Do I dare to speak for them?
If I do speak, I know I first must listen.
Just sit and listen.
Not rush ahead and make assumptions,
But open my heart.
And listen until it hurts me too.
Immerse myself in their stories until I can feel . . .
the pain of an abused child,
the desperation of a prostitute,
the despair of an alcoholic.
Till I can know
or perhaps just imagine for a moment
the struggles of a young man with AIDS.
It’s not what I want to do.
It’s more like what I have to do.
Compelled by love.
His love for me.
My love for Him.
His love for a hurting world.

Winter/Spring 2008