An Unlikely Missionary Dispels the Myth That
Miracles Happen Only in Africa
Michele Perry may be an unlikely person to start a missionary orphanage in war-torn Sudan. Born without her left hip and leg, she is no stranger to overwhelming impossibility. She's learned from childhood to rely fully on God, who constantly surprises her--and she and her Sudanese children, more than one hundred of them, have witnessed him moving in miraculous and wondrous ways again and again.
Here she shares some of these amazing, inspiring stories. More than that, she shows how readers can genuinely, fully experience God in their everyday lives--whether in Africa or at home, wherever they are. She helps them understand what he looks like, what it means to hear his voice, what it's like to see a vision, and how to recognize the holy in the ordinary. With these practical keys, believers will be able to open the floodgates of life changing, supernatural encounters with God.

Whether he's fighting fires, passing a kidney stone, hammering down I-80 in an 18-wheeler, or meditating on the relationship between cowboys and God, Michael Perry draws on his rural roots and footloose past to write from a perspective that merges the local with the global.

Ranging across subjects as diverse as lot lizards, Klan wizards, and small-town funerals, Perry's writing in this wise and witty collection of essays balances earthiness with poetry, kinetics with contemplation, and is regularly salted with his unique brand of humor.

From the acclaimed author of Population: 485 and Truck: A Love Story comes a humorous, heartfelt memoir of a new life in the country.

Living in a ramshackle Wisconsin farmhouse--faced with thirty-seven acres of fallen fences and overgrown fields, and informed by his pregnant wife that she intends to deliver their baby at home--Michael Perry plumbs his unorthodox childhood for clues to how to proceed as a farmer, a husband, and a father. Whether he's remembering his younger days--when his city-bred parents took in sixty or so foster children while running a sheep and dairy farm--or describing what it's like to be bitten in the butt while wrestling a pig, Perry flourishes in his trademark humor. But he also writes from the quieter corners of his heart, chronicling experiences as joyful as the birth of his child and as devastating as the death of a dear friend.

Celebrate the weird, wacky, and wonderful world of plants with a book that revels in the diversity of the botanical world. Plants are truly awe-inspiring. They can be vast, minute, smelly, or spectacularly ugly. Some plants live on their own, or by growing off others; some live by air and water; others are carnivorous, eating the creatures around them; some plants look remarkably like animals; while others have unusual symbolism; and some have special cultural significance. This book explores them all, bringing together the most peculiar and most fascinating plants on the planet - celebrating them in all their diverse splendour. Split into five chapters, covering everything from poisonous plants to painkilling ones, Michael Perry explains exactly what makes each plant special. With exquisitely detailed illustrations of all the different species, this is an informative, humorous, and beautiful gift for all those who love plants - whether they want to grow them or not. Hortus Curious delivers a different way to view the plant world and enjoy it for its bonkers and bizarre. The book is split into five chapters, covering: - Plants Behaving Badly - the criminal world of plants such as poisonous plants, insect catching plants, and plants that do risky things - Mistaken Identity - plants that look like other things, e.g. flowers that look like monkeys, bees, or even dead man's fingers - Greater Good - did you know that aspirin comes from a plant? This chapter explores the plants that make up our everyday products - Superheroes - find out about the plants that can disguise themselves, changing colour, shape or even moving themselves - X-rated Plants - a selection of the rudest plants out there! A humorous and quirky gift book for people interested in plants and gardening, Hortus Curious is sure to delight.

The author of "Population: 485" returns, delivering a truckload of humor, heart, and . . . gardening tips? Think "Zen" and the "Art of Motorcycle Maintenance," complete with stock cars, sexy vegetables, and a laugh track.

"All I wanted to do was fix my old pickup truck," says Michael Perry. "That, and plant my garden. Then I met this woman. . . ." "Truck: A Love Story" recounts a year in which Perry struggles to grow his own food ("Seed catalogs are responsible for more unfulfilled fantasies than Enron and Penthouse combined"), live peaceably with his neighbors (one test-fires his black powder rifle in the alley; another's best Sunday shirt reads 100 PERCENT WHUP-ASS), and sort out his love life. But along the way, he sets his hair on fire, is attacked by wild turkeys, takes a date to the fire department chicken dinner, and proposes marriage to a woman in New Orleans. As with "Population: 485," much of the spirit of "Truck: A Love Story" may be found in the characters Perry meets: a one-eyed land surveyor, a paraplegic biker who rigs a sidecar so that his quadriplegic pal can ride along, a bartender who refuses to sell light beer, an enchanting woman who never existed, and half the staff of National Public Radio.

By turns hilarious and heartfelt, a tale that begins on a pile of sheep manure, detours to the Whitney Museum of American Art, and returns to the deer-hunting swamps of northern Wisconsin, "Truck: A Love Story" becomes a testament to the surprising and unintended consequences of love. 1006

Welcome to New Auburn, Wisconsin, where the local vigilante is a farmer's wife armed with a pistol and a Bible, the most senior member of the volunteer fire department is a cross-eyed butcher with one kidney and two ex-wives (both of whom work at the only gas station in town), and the back roads are haunted by the ghosts of children and farmers. Against a backdrop of fires and tangled wrecks, bar fights and smelt feeds, "Population: 485" is a comic and sometimes heartbreaking true tale leavened with quieter meditations on an overlooked America.

What can we learn about life, love, and artillery from an eighty-two-year-old man whose favorite hobby is firing his homemade cannons? Visit by visit--often with his young daughters in tow--author Michael Perry finds out.

Toiling in his shop, Tom Hartwig makes gag shovel handles, parts for quarter-million-dollar farm equipment, and--now and then--batches of potentially "extralegal" explosives. Tom, who is approaching his sixtieth wedding anniversary with his wife, Arlene, and is famous for driving a team of oxen in local parades, has stories dating back to the days of his prize Model A and an antiauthoritarian streak refreshed daily by the interstate that was shoved through his front yard in 1965 and now dumps more than eight million vehicles past his kitchen window every year. And yet Visiting Tom is dominated by the elderly man's equanimity and ultimately--when he and Perry converse as husbands and the fathers of daughters--unvarnished tenderness.

This classic work is an essential resource for anyone seeking effectively to understand and help people who believe themselves to be disturbed or invaded by powers which they cannot control. It includes sections on spiritualism, New Age spirituality, abuse (including Satanic ritual abuse), and charismatic renewal, and these are augmented by sources and references on 'occult' and 'psychic' phenomena. Well-balanced in its coverage, judicious and responsible in its treatment of controversial subjects, and illustrated throughout by pertinent case studies, Deliverance will be consulted as the most authoritative handbook on the market. Describing as it does the range of cases a pastor might expect to encounter, the book offers indispensible guidance on the practice of discernment.

Jeanne DuPrau's The City of Ember meets Louis Sachar's Holes in this imaginative and hilarious middle grade novel from New York Times bestselling author Michael Perry. When the world started to fall apart, the government gave everyone two choices: move into the Bubble Cities...or take their chances outside. Maggie's family chose to live in the world that was left behind. Deciding it's time to grow up and grow tough, Maggie rechristens herself "Ford Falcon"-a name inspired by the beat-up car she finds at a nearby junkyard. Ford's family goes to this junkyard to scavenge for things they can use or barter with the other people who live OutBubble. Her family has been able to survive this brave new world by working together. But when Ford comes home one day to discover her home ransacked and her family missing, she must find the strength to rescue her loved ones with the help of some unlikely friends. The Scavengers is a wholly original tween novel that combines an action-packed adventure, a heartfelt family story, and a triumphant journey of self-discovery in a world where one person's junk is another person's key to survival. Katherine Applegate, author of the Newbery Medal winner The One and Only Ivan, raves "Michael Perry pulls out all the stops in this colorful tale."

In Exploring the Messianic Secret in Mark's Gospel, John Perry shows the reader how to distinguish between the actual history of Jesus and Mark's Messianic Secret theology, explaining why the substance of Mark's theology is still valid and can still nourish our contemporary faith.

Tradition has assumed that the Lord's Supper was "instituted" by Jesus on the night of Holy Thursday as a memorial of his impending death on Good Friday. Recent scholarship tells us, however, that this assumption must be carefully qualified. The way in which Jesus taught the church to celebrate his Supper was actually far more complex. This investigation reveals that the earliest celebrations of the Lord's Supper were memorials of Jesus' Resurrection, not his death. Only later, because of an urgent pastoral problem, did the early church decide to join the memory of Jesus' death to her original celebration of his Resurrection. In the final chapter, Perry answers specific questions raised by the contemporary understanding of the Lord's Supper.

InExploring the Resurrection of Jesus, John Perry defends the appearances of the Risen Jesus as real but "nonphyscial" and he reconciles this reading with a scientific world view.

In this concise study, John Perry enables the reader to see that the Transfiguration story does not recount an actual event, but was created to teach an important "symbolic" lesson abou thte Risen Jesus. To that end, he explains: (1) the conflict within the early church that called the story into being; (2) the nature ofmidrash and the role that it played in the formation of the story. Perry then considers why Mark, the writer of the first Gospel, decided to modify the Transfiguration story known to him and use it in his Gospel. Finally, answers are provided for 12 questiosn frequently prompted by contemporary readings of this story. These answers shed considerable light on the way the early church went about the task of preserving and interpreting the sacred history of Jesus.

From barnyard to backyard, lowly hens have flown the country coop and joined the city chicken movement. A new generation of small-acreage farmers raising heritage breeds has inspired urbanites and suburbanites across America to install some poultry out back for eggs, meat, fertiliser, and cockeyed companionship. Whether the breed is Jersey Giant, Wyandotte, Buff Orpington, or Silver Frizzle Polish-chickens are now chic. This is not a how-to book on raising chickens but rather a wry, fascinating, sometimes startling appreciation of them, conveyed in compelling accounts by Susan Troller and striking prints and paintings by S.V. Medaris. A bonus: chicken stories from three of Wisconsin's most celebrated writers-Jane Hamilton (The Book of Ruth, A Map of the World), Michael Perry (Coop, Population 485), and Ben Logan (The Land Remembers)-round out the collection.