My guest today is Author Marta Perry who has been a Love Inspired author for years. God has now called Marta to write Amish stories. I had the pleasure of reading her first Amish story which Marta will tell you about. Here's Marta:
"We recently had a special celebration in our church. We were each asked to write a message about or bring a photograph of someone who had influenced our lives in a particular way. It proved to be an emotional exercise, as you can imagine, which caused me to think of the many Christian women whose spiritual gifts have inspired me over the years. One of these was the minister of my church when I was growing up.
It was highly unusual to have a woman minister back in the fifties, and even more so when the church was in a small rural Pennsylvania community. But then, Pastor Ruth was an unusual woman. She had come to our area years earlier, when her minister husband was called to our church. Although she was ordained herself, she took on gladly the traditional roles of a minister’s wife in those days—hosting ladies’ teas, helping in the church nursery, taking meals to the sick.
She became such an indispensable part of our church family that when her husband passed away, the church unanimously called her to take over the pastorate. And so I had for my spiritual mentor this lovely Christian woman. She was quiet, gentle, humble, and self-effacing. Despite those qualities, or perhaps because of them, she never hesitated to find the strength to combat wrong when she saw it. Her life was a testament to her faith.
Although I didn’t realize it at the time, Pastor Ruth must have been in the back of my mind when I started writing about Leah Beiler, the protagonist of my current Amish book from Berkley, LEAH’S CHOICE. Leah, a humble, devout Amish teacher, is confronted with a surprising turn to her life with the arrival of two men in her Pennsylvania Amish community: Daniel, an Amish widower with three troubled young children and a tragic mystery in his past, and Johnny, the fiancé who left her ten years earlier when he ran away to the outside world.
Leah faces decisions she never expected to make, and her life is further complicated by her rebellious younger sister and her dedication to her volunteer work with a clinic studying the genetic diseases that afflict many Amish children. She discovers that she must find her strength in God to make the right choices, even when they bring her pain, trusting in Him to guide her to the place He has prepared for her.
I hope, if you read Leah’s story, you’ll let me know what you think of it. You can reach me at marta@martaperry.com, and I’ll be happy to send you a signed bookmark and my free brochure of Pennsylvania Dutch recipes. Or visit my website (under renovation) at www.martaperry.com or my blog at www.booksbymartaperry.
I think any reader would love this book. I certainly did!--Lyn
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