When you are a buyer of used books, you sometimes wonder where you got this or that book, how long you’ve had it, and why you bought it. So it is with the book Witness: An Autobiography by Josyp Terelya with Michael H. Brown. Terelya was a prisoner in the USSR in the 1960s-80s because of his Christian faith.

The reason I wonder why we bought the book is because Terelya is Ukrainian Catholic, which is attached to the Roman Catholic Church. As a Protestant, I’m not anti-Catholic, but I don’t usually read Catholic books. I suspect we bought this at a thrift store, based on the price marking.

However, it is an excellent book. Terelya was born to Communist parents in Ukraine during World War 2. In fact, they were leading communists and very much in favor of Ukraine being part of the Soviet Union. Terelya was influence by his grandparents and others, and became a devout Catholic, much to his parents’ dismay. The USSR suppressed religion, especially any religions that competed with the Russian Orthodox Church.

When Terelya became an adult, he did not hide his religious observances, and was soon put in prison for it. He escaped. He was captured and his sentence increased. Put in a more secure prison, he escaped again. He was beaten, spent much time in solitary confinement, Food rations were inadequate. He developed health problems. The guards also tried to break him psychologically, with frequent interrogations and beatings. As a consequence of his long imprisonment, he developed chronic health problems.

Through this, Terelya survived. He found ways to share his faith and prepare printed materials. Once when he was released for a couple of years, he married and fathered his first child. In later years, two more children were added to the family.

A portion of the book deals with “appearances” of Mary, the mother of Jesus, over a several week period in a small Ukranian village in 1987. Terelya was out of prison by then and took part in observing the visions. He went into considerable detail about these.

My wife and I read the book aloud in the evenings, taking about a month to complete it (with a few interruptions). I’m glad we did. It was unexpectedly timely due to the current war in Ukraine, and it told us a piece of history we had no idea of. Learning new things while being entertained is a good thing.

The book, published in 1991, is likely out of print. But it is worth the read if you can find it. I give it 4-stars, it losing one star due to what I consider an overabundance of placenames without providing a map to give at least a basic idea where places were. Alas, the book is not a keeper. We are going to give it away to a Catholic relative, and hope they, in turn, pass it on to someone who will enjoy it.

In our evening reading time, my wife and I recently read aloud A Gift of Miracles: Magical Stories to Touch Your Family’s Heart. This is a group of stories about events in peoples’ lives where something unexpected and, shall I say, miraculous happened.

Submitted by those whose stories they are, the book is by Jamie C. Miller, Laura Lewis, and Jennifer Basye Sander. I assume they are editors of this, though they may have served as co-writers with some who submitted their stories.

The book contains 31 inspiring stories, typically three to five pages. These are very much like the stories you find in Guideposts magazine, though this is not a Guideposts book. While this is a faith-based book, all the stories are not outwardly spiritual. No matter. It’s a good book.

If you find this book, it’s well worth a read. Read one story a day for a month. Or two if you have the time. Or read it straight through. You will be inspired.

While I liked the book and give it 5-stars, it is not a keeper, as I don’t see myself ever reading it again. If this is in a series, or we find another like it, we will probably pick it up and read it.

One of the books we picked up used, somewhere along life’s way, is Luis Palau by Terry Whalin. It’s part of the Men of Faith series by Bethany House Publishers (since bought by others).

Palau was an Argentinian who grew up in difficult economic circumstances. He had limited schooling at an early age, though finally went to a European-run boarding school in Argentina. Slowly, God got ahold of his heart and he embraced Jesus as Lord.

He became interested in spreading God’s word and, in the 1940s, became aware of mass evangelism. This seemed a great idea to him. He found mentors and organizations to guide him, and his ministry took off. A few years later, he was holding crusades throughout Latin America. As bilingual, Spanish and English, he was soon called upon to hold crusades around the world. Along the way, he had emigrated to the USA, married in the States, and they had children.

The book was written while Pilau was alive and holding crusades. The author, Terry Whalin, is someone I’ve met at writing conferences. He has been active in all parts of the publishing industry: author, editor, agent, publisher. He also spent time with Wycliff Bible Translators. I’ve corresponded with Terry off and on over the years.

This is a good little book. If you get ahold of a copy, it’s well worth reading. Our book was a strange critter. We began reading it aloud. We got to page 32, and the next page was 65. At page 96, it went back to page 65. We saw, stamped on the bottom of the book, “Seconds”. We obviously bought a defective copy.  Not to worry. It was probably a 50¢ purchase. But, we aren’t going to pass a defective copy on to someone else, and into recycling we will go. We were able to find a copy of the book to borrow at Internet Archives, so we were able to finish it.

In our quest to reduce clutter and dis-accumulate years of accumulation, Lynda and I pulled a few books from obscure shelves in the basement family room, and will read them next. These are all “non-keepers”, books we will discard. One of these books was George Mueller. Not too long ago we read that aloud in the evenings.

I’ve known about George Mueller and his life of faith for a long time. I’ve read about him in various books and articles. I included him in a chapter of Acts Of Faith, my book about Bible people and Christians who had special faith experiences. But I had never read a biography of him.

This was a short book, possibly geared towards teens, though actually a good read for adults. It covered Mueller’s growing up in Germany, his wild youth period, his conversion, and his growth as a baby Christian. He gave up a prospective marriage to a woman who did not appreciate his desire to be a missionary.

He made contact with a missionary society that wanted him to work among the Jewish people in England. He went there, but it didn’t work out. He became co-pastor of a church. Before long, he started a Bible distribution ministry. Not long after that, he took notice of orphans in Bristol and their plight in the workhouses. He decided to develop orphanages, which he had seen in Germany but were a new concept in England. Over the years, he developed multiple orphanages, first in the heart of Bristol, then on the outskirts.

The act of faith? He did all this without ever soliciting donations. Not for renting property. Not for staffing the orphanages. Not for provisioning them. Not for buying property and building multiple orphanages on it. He prayed for the needs and trusted God to supply.

The book concentrated on the orphanage years. There were times when they had nothing for breakfast, and a bread truck broke down in front of the orphanage. There were times when a 5 pound bill was due, and an envelope came in the morning mail from someone they didn’t know. Mueller had faith when he needed a shilling and was trustworthy with it. God then gave him faith for tens of thousands of pounds and trustworthiness with that.

The book was an easy read. Not terribly long, but long enough so that by the end I felt like I understood Mueller’s life fairly well. Now I’m sure that, in a short book, much was left out. I want to read a fuller biography of this.

I highly recommend this book, which I give 5-stars. But this little paperback is long out of print. If you can’t find this, grab any bio of Mueller and dig in.

This book is not a keeper. However, we might give it to our grandchildren to read. It’s quite readable at that age.