Memoirs

The Country Under My Skin

Zora Neale Hurston’s character Janie in her novel Their Eyes Were Watching God counsels her friend with the words: “It’s uh known fact… yuh got tuh go there tuh know there.” Brendan’s autobiography about growing up in Haiti adjusts this statement and proposes that you gotta grow there tuh know there. He describes the life of a missionary kid growing up in Haiti from the ages of 8-18, in the years spanning 1992-2002. Mostly shaped around gratitude for the incredible gifts of the land and its people, his autobiography questions what foundational lessons and instructions are imprinted on the life of a child from his formative years spent straddling a life in the United States and a childhood in Haiti.

Four Under Four

Mixing family life with missionary work proves to be mutually rewarding to both those who are guests in a host country and the families they work with as well. That is what Bruce and Ruth discovered early on in their first missionary term in Papua New Guinea in the 1950’s. They hiked into the western highlands with their infant twins, David and Darlene, and would leave from their first term with two more: Larry and Jimmy. This book records the story of the young “four under four” and their lives as missionary kids (MKs).

Through jungle hikes, tropical disease, emergency medical flights, and the early days of Bible translation, the four Blowers children, along with their parents, discover missionary life to be an ongoing adventure with God. Preaching a “real God” involves going as “real people” and with a “real family.” And these are some of the stories of all three.

Be Thou My Vision

These photographs are a gift from the people and places and cultures in Costa Rica. They are meant to tell us something important. Every person has an image of his or herself, something they want to tell others about who they are and where they live. It is not something I as the photographer could come up with on my own. It is something truly unique and profound that is being said by someone else. I just happened to be there to capture the moment.

The places and people portrayed in this book have irrevocably changed me. I will never be the same. And I hope that they change you as well. I hope that the images in this book leave you with a truly different understanding of the world, one that is enriched, hopeful, and inspired.