Book Chat this Saturday

This term we've been reading My Seventh Monsoon, by Naomi Reed. Naomi is a physiotherapist who worked with her husband Darren (also a physio) in Nepal as a missionary for many years during the 1990s.

I enjoyed reading the story, although I wouldn't say the writing style is fantastic. I'm putting that down to the fact that she's a physiotherapist. Physios, by and large, get into the physio course at University because they are good at maths and sciences rather than humanities subjects. They might like reading, like my physio husband does, but generally writing great descriptive stories isn't their thing. (Although I do work with a physio who is a bit of an exception to this rule. She is an artist when she is not working as a physio, and is pretty creative. But, like I said, she's an exception rather than your standard garden variety physiotherapist).

What I probably found most interesting was the story of how Naomi and Darren became missionaries and how God led them to Nepal. It's amazing how God worked in their lives for it all to come about. And it was also good to read about how sometimes, God's reasons for why events happen may only be revealed with the wisdom of hindsight rather than at the time they are actually happening. Her conceptualisation of life as a series of seasons was helpful too.

Worth a read if you're interested in what one person's experience of missionary life was like. I'm looking forward to the day when Wendy gets her book of stories of missionary women's experiences published. Since I would guess that there are as many different experiences of missionary life as there are countries they go to, I think it would be great to read lots of different stories on this topic.