The Journey: Appalachia to Paradise to Purgatory
1$55.99 – $62.99An autobiography of the innocence, happiness, and final disappointment of a West Virginia coal miner’s son who sees his country on the slippery slope to immorality and cultural destruction as he journeys from the coal fields to the military and highest levels of academia. This book describes the life and travels of a skinny, hard-nosed, hard-working West Virginia kid, a true believer in his family, the West Virginia-Appalachia culture, and the goodness and righteousness of the United States of America. Rags to riches story of a sort, from the primitive life of the coal fields to a Chief Master Sergeant in the Air Force and a Ph.D. from a world-class university. He reveals a liberating journey and appreciation of his country while at the same time experiencing the slow decay of the American culture and values that he knew as a young man.
Witness
0$8.99In 2013, I wrote and published a book titled “You Have Got to Be Kidding.” in which I cataloged numerous life events that I believed to be the results of an amazing series of “good luck”. Some of these events were actually life-threatening, which I obviously survived. Example: Two of the best things that occurred in my life happened on the same day in 1961. I did not know it at the time but on that day, I joined the Marine Corps and met my future wife. That was the beginning of a seemingly endless series of events that I attributed to luck, fortune, or fate. I finally realized in 2022 that these events were in reality, instances of Divine Intercession or Intervention. I list the events chronologically and then ask the reader to decide if it was good luck or Godly Influence. I finally began to understand Christianity and am, as I say, A. Believer.
Stories From The Boxcar: A Spiritual Journey
0$4.99 – $54.99Frank Varro, author of ‘Stories from the Boxcar,’ is a retired Methodist pastor, prison and hospice chaplain, missionary, teacher, counselor, and musician. He is from a three-generation family of China missionaries. This ‘Quilogy’ (five-books-in-one) is the story of his paternal Hungarian-immigrant heritage, and his maternal-missionary heritage. It relates to his father’s boyhood home-a boxcar on a siding in Regina, Saskatchewan-from which came his father’s many stories and life’s lessons, which is the theme of Dr. Varro’s book, pictures of his own life, struggles, victories, and detours along the way. The journey takes us through his international childhood in Alaska, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and five states of the U.S. He graduated from Morrison Academy, a Taiwan missionary boarding school; he also graduated from Seattle Pacific University, where he met and married Margo Moore, his accompanist-now his wife of fifty-six years. The story goes on with their own radio and TV missionary work, and teachers at Taipei American School in Taiwan; it continues with the birth of their daughter in Taiwan, and an around-the-world trip through Asia and Europe; then back to Seattle at the University of Washington-earning a Masters of Music, and Doctor of Music Arts in Choral Conducting degrees. He taught elementary, middle school, high school, and college music in Taiwan, Seattle, Oregon, Ohio, and Texas. After fifteen years as teacher and college music professor, Dr. Varro held music positions in churches, and founded two community music ensembles. Following times of spiritual struggle and renewal, he graduated from Houston Graduate School of Theology with Masters of Divinity, Masters of Arts in Counseling, and Doctor of Ministry in Pastoral Counseling degrees. He trained and was Staff Counselor at Samaritan Counseling Center in Houston. He founded Varro Counseling, spending the next twenty-two years in pastoral counseling, free-lance music, prison, and retreat ministries, as an ordained minister, in first the Evangelical Presbyterian Church, then the United Methodist Church, and finally the Global Methodist Church.
The last two books outline his spiritual struggle and renewal before ordination. He and Margo are parents of Shelley, born in Taiwan; Steve, born in Oregon; and Rob, born in Ohio; they have five grandchildren, and one great-granddaughter. He and Margo have lived in Houston, Texas, for thirty-nine years.
Discovering My Royal Heritage While Surviving in Black Skin
0$3.99 – $22.99Surviving in Black Skin is an illuminating virtual journey within the black skin of the author whose life was abruptly uprooted from his southern home in Mobile, Alabama, and transplanted onto the western coast of Los Angeles, California. The reader learns that his family’s abrupt transplantation was part of a much larger southern exodus of people in black skins in reaction to the tortuous lynching of a 14-year-old kid named Emmitt Till. It’s quite a paradox that the continued lynching’s (6500 between 1865 and 1950), like the late George Floyd, didn’t limit the murders to the South.
The consequence of the covert and overt racism Webster experienced while living through the paradox of racial integration in high school, college, the Navy, as well as his workplace, provides the reader with Webster’s vision of the institutionalized xenophobia which exploded into the Watts Rebellion of 1965. Webster introduces the reader to the launching of: Black Student Unions, the Black Panthers, the Congress of Racial Equality, and some of their leaders such as Malcolm X, Huey Newton, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis and the non-violent crusade of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.. The author culminates these encounters by taking the reader out of the United States of America, to Africa’s Egypt only to discover his great ancestry; Pharaohs in Black Skins who were the original authors of the first written language, literally the very African birth of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam.
The reality that an advanced civilization of people in black skins, were the authors of the civilization of Ancient Egypt has not only been dismissed, but vehemently condemned by conventional Egyptologists, archaeologists, and even the present Arabian Egyptian government.
The reader will take away from this book a better sense of “WHAT HAPPENED?” How the ancestorial history of people in black skins was literally transformed into the Greek, Jewish, and Islamic history, while “Black History” is relegated to “Slave History.” Why are the names of the great Pharaohs not mentioned in the bible. The names of nearly every prince and priest are spelled out; first, second and third cousins; first and second wives; beggars and even prostitutes are named, but the names of the most important and powerful men and women in the world at the time are not mentioned. The king lists of pharaohs who ruled the most powerful and civilized country in the world for over three-thousand years aren’t named. The leaders that provided the very blueprint for Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are never named, but simply referred to as pharaoh. Could it simply be because they were in Black Skins?
The reader will eventually discover that we are all just one human race with one common heritage.
AFRICA
Life’s Journey: Volume 1
0$3.99 – $20.99Jon F. Gleman, through his book Life’s Journey (VOLUME 1), is dedicating his journey to generating awareness on just how fortunate we are to be part of life here on our planet Mother Earth, and the responsibilities we have to protect and preserve our home.
No matter where you live on this planet there is one thing that we all need to agree on. It may be the most important decision mankind ever makes. Time is running out, and we won’t get a second chance. Our planet, Mother Earth, is talking to us. At this point, she is imploring us to set things right, to stop defiling and polluting our home – the very planet we live on, along with all our earth-born companions. It has to stop, or life as we know it will change for the worse. It already is.
A Silent Cry
0$5.99 – $11.99It’s easy for anyone to feel isolated and alone, especially when we feel confused or embarrassed by the experiences we have. Sometimes those we should trust most are the ones who do us harm – and sometimes those we turn to for help surprise us by turning away. When this happens, we learn to distrust others and even ourselves.
These are the heart-wrenching realities facing a young woman named Clair in the pages of A Silent Cry. Enduring sexual abuse at a young age, as well as other personal abuses throughout her life, Clair must struggle with the difficult realization that her family is not a source of safety and security for her. These traumas teach her to feel different, victimized, and defenseless, even into her adult years, and the result is severe depression. Afraid to trust anyone yet afraid of turning them away, Clair eventually reaches out to the counsel of a caring aunt, who tries to show her an alternative to her lonely life through faith in God and finding peace within herself.
The story of Clair’s strong will to move forward, and her aunt’s sincere words and guidance, offers hope for those experiencing similar personal dilemmas, as well as inspiration to those who can reach out to help a loved one through unimaginable difficulties in life.
