On Mended Wings - Press Release

Venture into a Larger World

Author Carol Van Klompenburg holds the mended ceramic butterfly that inspired both the title and the cover for On Mended Wings.

Discover True-life Stories of Transformation in New Book on Nehemiah Center's Cross-Cultural Ministry

In search of a bigger world, Carol Van Klompenburg headed to The Nehemiah Center in 2008 for a ten-day service trip. She found that bigger world. And, as she explored it, she discovered a people and a country that beckoned her to return again and again as she heard, amazed, their stories of transformation.

Those stories-and Van Klompenburg's personal story-are included in her new book, On Mended Wings: Transforming Lives and Communities in Nicaragua, to be released November 1.

The book invites its readers to step into a larger world to meet people whose lives have been transformed by God and through the work of the Nehemiah Center, an interdenominational collaboration of agencies and churches.

Meet Lourdes Rivas, an uneducated pastor's wife forced to make her home behind a curtain inside the church building. See how Daniel Aragón, once a leader in the Sandinista army and a drug addict, is changing Christian education. Read about Nixon, a gang member who lost his leg by machete when other gang members turned on him.

Read about the stories of many Nicaraguans who have transformed their lives and now are working in their communities to ease poverty and birth hope.

Read, also, the stories of the North American visitors to Nicaragua who have come to recognize their own poverty-lives governed by materialism and selfishness. See how God, through a unique collaboration called the Nehemiah Center, can transform all people.

Coauthored with journalist Donna Biddle and published by The Write Place, the book is a compelling combination of journal entries, photographs, stories, and data. Van Klompenburg, author of six previous nonfiction books, said with a sense of wonder, "When Nicaraguans see that God is God of all, something HAPPENS. Their lives are changed. I have learned much from them, and I feel as if I have just begun.

"My dream is that readers of On Mended Wings will learn from them as well."

Advance praise for the book has been extensive.

"I laughed and I cried at the amazing stories of struggle, hope, and transformation in this book," said psychologist Kim Freidah Brown.

The book is "a must-read for anyone engaging in cross-cultural missions work-whether long-term
or short-term," said the Rev. Esteban Lugo, director for the Office of Race Relations of the Christian Reformed church.

"On Mended Wings is a hopeful, inspiring, and instructive account of how entire communities can be transformed," said Scott Allen, president of Disciple Nations Alliance.

The 204-page book, scheduled for November 1, 2011, release, retails for $14.99 and can be ordered here.

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