Working with Tyndale House Publishers and their fine authors is an absolute joy for me.  Deep in the throes of writing a new book set in 1939-1940, I’m looking forward to another exciting year of working with my amazing publishing team and connecting with all of you.

May God bless and keep you in your own new ventures and adventures this year.  I’m eager to hear about them, and hope you’ll share.

God is so good–To Him be all glory and praise!

The Christmas tree is up and the lights lift my spirits on the darkest of December days.  The joy in my heart, as I walk through these precious days of Advent knows no bounds.  I’m looking forward to sharing the Season with you, as we celebrate, Emmanuel–God with us!

God’s blessings for you,

Instead of giving more collectibles to dust, more whatsits to clean or wear, or calories that go to waist, I’m giving gifts that keep on giving this year.  The joy is in connecting the gift to the heart of the recipient.

My son began playing soccer at three. Even though he’s grown and living in Thailand these days, he still loves soccer—playing, watching, and cheering the sport that taught him countless life skills.  What could be better than donating soccer balls in his name for children whose only toys are found in trash heaps?

For those who’ve worked so hard on Band of Sisters with me—a novel that raises awareness of human trafficking and asks the question, what can I do to help in a need so desperate?—I’m donating to an organization that helps to rescue and restore young women, giving them a real start in life.  It’s the best way I know to honor those who’ve shared this journey.  If this sounds good to you, check out some of these wonderful organizations on the resource page on my website.

And then there are loved ones who, through the years, have shared concerns that God has laid on their hearts.  It’s exciting to help them in their desire to bless others.

If you’re looking for other ideas, here are a few of my favorites: clean water or a share in a well for those whose only water is contaminated and infested with disease; help for abused women and children locally or across the world; medicines that make the difference between life and death in this and other countries; family shelters in Israel for those who’ve been bombed out of their homes; mosquito nets for families in malaria infested areas; dental help for those who can’t afford it; support of cleft palette or club foot surgery; animals, like a sheep, goat, chickens or a share in a fish pond that help poor families sustain themselves and/or their community; a bicycle for children whose journey to school is long and perilous; school supplies or fees for needy children.

The possibilities are endless, at home and abroad. These have become my favorite gifts to give, and it’s thrilling to learn that they’re often favorite gifts received.  What are your favorite gifts to give—or to receive?  I’d love to hear!

This week we tramped the fields in search of the perfect Christmas tree.  I’m delighted to report that we found it—at least the perfect one for us, and that we’re enjoying the fragrance of evergreens.  What about you?  Are you decorating a tree this year?  Don’t you love the lights?

Looking forward to seeing you here again next week!

God’s blessings for you,

One of my family’s favorite recipes was also the favorite of Colonel Wakefield, a character found in my latest novel, Band of Sisters.  It’s best in a deep dish with plenty of room for apples—an extra one or two won’t hurt.  Not too sweet, but rich, warm and delicious—a Thanksgiving treat!

Ingredients:

• 5 large apples or 7-8 medium apples

• ½  cup sugar (raw, preferred)

• Pinch of salt

• ¼  teaspoon cinnamon

• ¼  teaspoon allspice

• 2 Tablespoons flour

• 2 Tablespoons melted butter

• 1 Tablespoon lemon juice

Directions:

• Prepare pie shell.

• Combine sugar, salt, cinnamon, allspice and flour in a large bowl.

• Peel, core, and slice apples thinly. Toss with dry ingredients until well coated.

• Combine melted butter and lemon juice, and stir into apples.

• Pour apples into prepared pie shell.

Topping Instructions:

• Combine 1/3 stick butter, ½  cup brown sugar, and ½  cup flour and mix thoroughly.

Crumble topping over apples in pie shell.

• Bake pie at 425 for 10 minutes. Reduce oven temperature to 350 degrees, and continue

baking for 45 minutes or until apples are soft and top is golden brown.

Served warm or cold, with vanilla ice cream or butter pecan ice cream, this is culinary autumn in all its glory!

What are some of your Thanksgiving favorites?

May God bless and keep you as you gather with family and friends this Thanksgiving.  May you rejoice in every blessing, remember God’s faithfulness from years gone by, and look forward to all that is to come.

Looking forward to seeing you next week, here in the garden.

God’s rich blessings for you,

I am also starkly reminded of attitudes of special interest groups and key legislators in the early years of the last century—years that nourished through mighty American dollars the pseudo-science of the eugenics movement, and even our legislation for sterilization—which Adolf Hitler endorsed as he wrote Mein Kampf.  Does that sound drastic?  A brief reading of Hitler’s letters and book, and medical journals, books, and histories regarding those issues and times will be eye-opening.  Attitudes and catch phrases like “quality of life,” and “those who create a drain on society,” and “life unworthy of life” mingle like premonitions.  Knowing history and where it led clarifies perspective on the present.

Francine Rivers, in her excellent blog written shortly before the election, http://francinerivers.com/blog/elections,raised concerns regarding the future of health care in the U.S. as regards the elderly.  It’s well worth reading.  I’m reminded that history repeats itself with astonishing regularity.

America, through those determined to pass their agendas, has planted both feet on a very slippery slope. It’s too late for any of us to say “I should have voted,” or “I didn’t think it would come to this.”

It is not too late to make a recommitment to teaching our children and grandchildren right from wrong, that God is sovereign and will prevail despite man’s folly, and that not all things legal are moral, ethical or God honoring.

There is a difference between treating others with respect and passively allowing them to demean our faith, ride roughshod over our values, take away our rights and change the nature and culture of the society in which we live.

Hiding our heads in sand or rabbit holes, remaining silent or compromising godly principles—for fear of sounding politically incorrect—is not an option for moving forward or creating a better world for the next generation.  We’re called to be light set on a hill, and salt that doesn’t lose its savor.

Please join me in praying for our country and its leaders, and in remembering that our first allegiance is to God.

In this Season of Thanksgiving, let us bow our heads and bend our knees, thanking God for our freedom to worship and honor Him openly—a freedom upon which this country was founded, a freedom that did not come through apathy or silence–a freedom that was not free.

Looking forward to seeing you here in the garden next week, I pray God’s blessings upon you,

In our church, the names of members are called, their photographs shown.  And then the aisles fill.  As hymns are sung by the congregation, all who’ve lost loved ones—family and friends inside or outside our church walls—are invited to bring signs of remembrance, single flowers to vases waiting near the altar.  As we place our flowers in vases, we whisper their names, shouting them once again in our hearts.

Poignant and lovely, it’s our collective way of remembering those deeply rooted towers of faith and strength in whose shade we’ve grown, in whose shadow we’ve stood as they shielded us from storms and the heat of life, as they nurtured us, teaching by example how to live out this life, this faith.  Precious, precious memories, and a safe place for the shedding of tears.

When I think of heroes of faith beyond those mentioned in the Bible, I automatically think of people like William Wilberforce and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Susannah and John Wesley—men and women fully surrendered to God, who stood for right and truth against the pressing tide of their time, who worked and lived sacrificially for the good of the church and of humanity.

But, through the years, I’ve been especially blessed by heroes and heroines of faith within my circle of family and friends—surely true for all of us.  My grandmother and grandfather—two of the greatest influences and most powerful witnesses in my life—top that list.  We buried them both sixteen years ago, and I miss them as though it were yesterday—sometimes so much it’s hard to breathe.

What better time than All Saints Sunday, appropriately these few weeks before Thanksgiving, to remember and celebrate the lives of those dear ones who’ve gone before, whose legacy continues to show us the way?  What better time to renew our vows to live life with hearts and hands wide open to those around us, and to the glory of God?

Hurricane Sandy layered a bright carpet across yards and forest floors, giving us another splash of color among those leaves still clinging to rain-wet trees. Colder weather and lack of electricity during the storm inspired my husband to fire up our woodstove—cozy, and November’s first fragrance!

It’s a perfect day for hot cider.  Come, let’s start our day together with a cup by the fire.

Looking forward to seeing you here, next week.

God’s blessings for you,

No one imagined when British, American, German and scientists of other civilized countries invested heavily in eugenics research early in the 1900s that conclusions would lead to sterilization of those without rights or voice in this country, or that Hitler would birth an entire philosophy to rid the world of people he deemed “life unworthy of life.”

The astounding thing, in retrospect, is that no one seemed to believe either the scientists’ conclusions detailed in scientific journals or the ranting of Adolf Hitler.  At least, many have claimed that they had no idea Hitler would do the things he did.  Yet he spoke plainly—wrote his intentions in black and white in Mein Kampf years before he came to power.  It’s made me realize how seriously we must take world leaders who threaten outrageous strikes against others.

When Hitler began “restoring” Germany, raising it from the “ashes of the Treaty of Versailles,” the people applauded him.  After years of depression, inflation, and hopelessness, Germany was going back to work, building its military, holding its head up among the nations.  But this building, the people were told, required hard decisions—decisions to suppress others and take away their rights in order to give “the people” the rights they so richly deserved.  It was a slippery moral slope—not only for Hitler and the Third Reich, but for the German people.

At first that slope didn’t seem so horrific to most—at least not to those it didn’t adversely affect. But the moral compromises snowballed.  One rationalized decision opened the door to another until the horrors of those compromises stole the rights of innocents, destroyed whole groups of peoples, and drew the world into a war more horrifying than anyone could have imagined.  The legacy?  The Holocaust.

I’ve been thinking a lot about moral compromises as I’ve researched and begun writing this book, and as we stand on the threshold of this presidential election.  Psychologists are fond of saying, “Past behavior provides the best window into future behavior.”  It’s one of the things I find most fascinating and most daunting about history.

As we humbly, prayerfully prepare to cast ballots November 6 it’s also time we took a good look at our country’s moral decisions and ask if they reflect the standard we as Christians hold dear—the righteousness of God as revealed through Scripture.  Whatever compromises we or our leaders have made, and the slope upon which we, as individuals and as a nation stand will outlive us, reaching beyond this decade into the world and into the future.  I’m thinking long and hard about the legacy I leave my children and grandchildren.

The woods swirl red and gold in snowglobe leaf showers this morning, and gray squirrels hither and yon gather their winter hoard.

Our daughter and son-in-law have come for the weekend. Tonight, we’ll mull apple cider in spices and roast hotdogs and marshmallows over an open campfire.  All that’s missing is our son and his guitar.  Stop by—there’s plenty for all!

Looking forward to meeting you here, next week, in the garden.

God’s blessings for you,

*First, learn all you can through reading and talking with individuals and organizations who have already joined the fight:

• Google “human trafficking” to learn what is happening in the world.

*Contact your local library, social services, churches or police force and ask what is being done in your community to raise awareness and prevent human trafficking.  They can help you find books, organizations, and on-line information to educate yourself about:

• The crime (what is human trafficking and where in the world it occurs—you will be astonished
• The people at risk
• The methods traffickers use to capture and enslave
• The apprehension, arrest and prosecution of predators
• The rescue, restoration, and healing of victims
• The fight to abolish slavery through legal means
• The education of men and boys re. the dignity and worth of women and girls
• Organizations and/or Individuals that are already working
• **See the resource page under Band of Sisters on my website at  www.cathygohlk.com for a growing list of these sites.  If you find more, please let me know so I can add them.

*Once you understand what organizations and opportunities are already in place, determine what you are able and equipped to do.  That might include:

• Work directly with one of these organizations, either in this country or in a foreign country
• Validate, affirm, encourage and engage girls or women who are at risk or in the process of healing
• Welcome strangers into your church as part of the church family, remembering that isolation makes people vulnerable
• Take a rescued victim into your home or provide housing
• Mentor a victim, or a girl or woman at risk
• Help a woman find safe employment and/or child care
• Help a woman applying for a job find appropriate clothing
• Provide childcare and/or transportation when needed
• Tutor a student, young or not so young and encourage hopeful options
• Invite women or girls for a meal in your home or take them out for a meal or event, using the opportunity to reaffirm their worth
• Provide assistance for medical care—practical or financial
• Speak up when others make slurring or disrespectful comments re. women, immigrants, homeless, etc.—attitudes must change to make change last
• Do not patronize stores, hotels, sporting events or other venues where you believe women or children are trafficked
• Provide legal counsel, assistance or finances for same for victims
• Hold public figures and men within your circle of acquaintance accountable for their actions toward women and children
• Write or speak out against trafficking
• Support legislation to stop trafficking, to prosecute and to educate predators
• Write letters of support and concern to elected officials re. human trafficking
• Contribute financial support to one of the organizations that is already in place and helping
• Create and/or support films, documentaries, plays, or various art forms that raise awareness or needed funds
• Fundraise for organizations that are helping
• Help to educate publicly or privately those you know re. all of the above
• Work with others to create new possibilities
• Pray—continually

*Most importantly, realize that while you can’t do everything, we can each do something.  Together we will raise a clamor that must be heard.  Together, we can abolish slavery in this 21^st Century.

October is a wild array of color, and “the leaves by hundreds came.”  Watching the windswept trees shower us with their glory makes me think we’ve turned a snow globe upside down, and that we’re standing inside—magnificent!

How about a bowl of hot apple cobbler and a steaming cup of coffee?  We’ll sit on the deck and watch Nature’s grand show.

Looking forward to seeing you here, in the garden, next week.

God’s blessings for you,

So, how do we respond?

By stepping out of our comfort zones, and speaking and working for the good of those who have no voice.  Victims of human trafficking and modern-day slavery—in all its forms—are among the poor and needy of our day, and in many cases are the orphans that Jesus commanded us to care for.  His wasn’t a suggestion, it was a command.

We must remember, above all, that the discomfort is ours, and the desperate need is theirs.

That doesn’t make it easy.  But, being a Christian, a Christ follower, isn’t easy in a fallen world.

Doing what Jesus did wasn’t easy or comfortable.  He confronted demons and hypocrites.  He stood against people who cared more about the monetary value of their livestock than they did about freeing one human being from demonic possession.

Jesus ate with “publicans and sinners” to the ruin of His reputation, and then He laid down His life for them, and us.  Just as He is our example in loving one another and in protecting innocent young children, so He is our example in setting captives free, in loosening cords that bind, in rescuing women and children from prostitution, men from slavery.

In many countries of the world Christians pay with their lives for standing up for their faith and/or for protecting others.  I’ve heard it said that only in America do we expect it to be easy to be a Christian.

Talking about things that are uncomfortable to our sensibilities doesn’t seem so hard in comparison to the life threatening dangers our brothers and sisters in Christ face the world over.  Let’s join them wholeheartedly in prayer and in working to combat this evil.

Next week we’ll talk “hands on” opportunities to help those in need.

The autumn leaves are glorious, and the weather is a daily gift.  I’m enjoying working outside—both writing, and putting the last of the garden to bed for the winter.

Let’s take a break and stroll through the woods—“a carpet of glory is spread wide today, and the last trace of summer has tiptoed away.”  I’ll pack a thermos of ginger-peach tea to share.

Looking forward to meeting you, here, in the garden, next week.

God’s blessings for you,

If we unite, if we all demand change, we will create a clamor that can’t be resisted.

To see what individuals and groups are doing to raise awareness and to learn how you can help create change, please visit the resource page on my website.  Connect to the links for sites fighting modern-day slavery, sites that hold out a hand of hope and help to rescue and restore victims, and sites that educate through documentation, news, films, documentaries, books (both fiction and nonfiction), special exhibits, music, plays, and various media and art forms. The list is not exhaustive.  If you know of other sites or organizations or media forms, please share them.

Education is vital if we’re to help trafficking victims and bring predators to justice.  Education is vital to protect our children and grandchildren—and all those who are vulnerable.

It’s often thought that trafficking is restricted to big cities or foreign countries.  But, small, rural, isolated or poor communities are targets just as vulnerable. America is no exception.

Traffickers often enter small communities with bogus offers of better jobs, modeling opportunities for young people, and offers for education opportunities.  But those dreams are crushed when willing applicants are unwittingly sold as sex slaves or used for pornography, with no way to get back to their homes and families.

In some cultures, once a girl has been so abused, she is no longer welcome to return to her family, thereby compounding the problem and her sense of hopelessness.  Education and understanding is desperately needed on all parts.

This week, PBS aired a two-part special called, “Half the Sky”–a springboard from the book by that name from the husband and wife journalist team that continues to work to bring opportunities to oppressed women and children.  It’s a book and organization worth checking into.  Here’s a link: http://www.halftheskymovement.org/ 

Let me know what you think and what you’re doing to help.  I’d love to hear from you and share ideas at www.cathygohlke.com.

October has come.  The leaves are beginning to turn, and the skies are bright, October blue.  This is my favorite month of the year—my favorite season.  I think I’ll rake leaves today and start a campfire—the first fire of the season.  Will you join me for cup of hot, spiced cider by the fire?

Looking forward to seeing you here, next week, in the garden.

God’s blessings for you,