LITMIR.BIZ

Relive through reminiscing and remembering, a Maine pastor's recollections of boyhood experiences that turned into a minister's messages in old age. After five decades (Barry's first message was preached in 1966), travel back in time with a lifelong Maineaic to his home place, the Blackstone homestead of Perham, Maine. What sparked these homilies was his inheritance of seven acres of the family farm, homesteaded in 1861, and the receiving of his grandparent's house built in 1924 at the death of his Uncle Paul. You will probably come to the same conclusion as this coastal Maine pastor–that his seminary training began long before he attended a Bible school in South Carolina in the early 1970s. Flash back with him to the 1950s and 1960s when spiritual lessons were everywhere on his rural potato and dairy farm. Pastor Blackstone didn't know it then, but realizes now that he was surrounded by family Bible teachers and friendly Biblical instructors that eventually would inspire this series of sermons. Homestead Homilies is a collection of scriptural observations inspired by a dog named Rover, an uncle named Read, a moonlit night, a barnyard hedge, a day plowing, a grandmother's helpful hand, a bee hive, a simple prayer, a sparrow's song, and many more simple events in a past age where homilies were being preached and now eventually heard. It is the author's prayer that these simple sermons will provoke the reader to remember long lost messages from their distant past.

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Though None Go With Me is a series of observations and challenges as seen through the eyes of a Maine pastor on his first trip to India. Barry Blackstone taught for forty days at a Bible college in Kerala State in India. Here he shares his insights on the cross-cultural adventure that has forever changed the way he sees missions and the support of native works in other lands. This book includes flashbacks to youthful days. (Rural India takes the pastor back to his own boyhood in northern Maine.) In India Blackstone faced challenges with language and food, and even a broken tooth. Here each story Blackstone offers is a devotional that brings to light deeper spiritual meaning and insights–more than the actual experience itself. This book also tells of the impact the pastor's trip on people of his own church in Ellsworth, Maine, and of what they did to forge a link between a small church on the coast of Maine and a small church in the hills of southern India!

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Have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel to a far-off and distant place to share with an unreached people group the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ? The Region Beyond is a journey with two young cousins to the remotest mission station in the world in 1972. Travel with Barry and Bob Blackstone from northern Maine to the Gibson Desert of western Australia to experience another culture and climate far beyond their imagination or expectation. Experience with them their first overseas flight across the width of the great Pacific; journey with them into the barren wilderness that is central Australia on a day-and-a-half railroad ride; fly with them through the interior of western Australia were mile after mile is nothing but flat, open wasteland; work with them on a million and a quarter acre sheep and cattle station and witness up close and personal the struggles of such a hostile land; drive with them deeper into the desert to an isolated community of Aboriginal natives and a few missionaries, three hundred miles–north, south, east, or west–from any other settlement; and share with them the ups and downs of living in a strange land for a summer. Their spiritual adventure will include a kangaroo hunt, dust storms that blotted out the sun, teaching aboriginal children the Story of Jesus, building a laundry and shower building in the heat of a hundred degree Australian winter, catching–by running after a caboose–a train heading east at a desert junction, watching a tribal fight with spears and knives, experiencing the hospitality of fellow believers unmatched until the author visited India. Learn what it takes to be a missionary to The Region Beyond, and discover your life's calling despite the desire to return. On the fortieth anniversary of this miraculous trip, Pastor Blackstone recalls the events that made this memorable summer of '72 possible, and the lasting effects of his journey into The Region Beyond!

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Though One Go With Me is the sequel to Pastor Blackstone's first book, Though None Go With Me, which retraces the steps of a Maine pastor back to the fabled land of India. This time the 'one' is the pastor's daughter, Marnie. Travel along as Blackstone introduces his daughter to her first taste of hot, spicy foods, an auto-cart ride, playing with elephants, and traditional Malayalam dress. Once again journey through the State of Kerala on a Sunday Safari into the tea mountains of India, take a sunset stroll along the sands of Kovalam Beach, and enjoy the uniqueness of wearing a pepper necklace around your neck and eating with your fingers. Witness and wonder as Marnie drinks coconut milk straight from the shell, goes on a shopping spree for a beautiful sari, enjoys the smell of a jasmine and rose myla, and experiences the G-Mart (India's version of Wal-Mart). The purpose of this second trip to Edyappara was to be graduation speaker at Kerala Baptist Bible College, where the pastor had taught for 40-days on his first trip, and to deliver a half a million rupees to a small congregation in Venmony so they could start building a church sanctuary and parsonage. Relive the adventures of a father and daughter as they trek through a tropical paradise filled with hospitable people, amazing animals, and breath-taking scenery in their own version of 'The Amazing Race'!

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Rendezvous In Paris is a series of practical devotionals and personal meditations written by a Maine pastor as he traveled to the Charles De Gaulle Aero port to meet his daughter who was returning home sick from a summer missionary trip to Togo, West Africa. As he traveled on buses and planes through forty hours of wondering why, this pastor was inspired by everything from a fly on the flight to the plight the world was in during the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. The book includes the opinions and observations of a tourist in France and the spiritual insights he drew from the Eiffel Tower, Notre Dame Cathedral, and the Parc Du Champ De Mars. Traveling just weeks before 9-11, there are also some considerations on just what happened and how it happened that terrorists were able to get through national security and attack the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. The book also includes the miraculous events required to take this trip, the ultimate purpose of God when He calls us suddenly out of our «comfort zone,» and the blessings and pleasures that come by «letting go and letting God.» On a personal note, this group of short stories reveals the deep emotion and loving connection between a father and his daughter and the extraordinary adventure they shared together in a day in Paris!

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Travel through the back roads and country lanes of the British Isles with a pastor and his wife celebrating their thirtieth wedding anniversary. Journey to London and witness the special blessing experienced by Barry and Coleen Blackstone as they take their very first 'alone' vacation since starting into the pastorate. Visit the famous sites of England's fabled capital, including a night on the town with the human animals of the musical «The Lion King.» Your stops will include Hampton Court, Salisbury Cathedral, the city of Bath, the chimes of Chester, Strafford-upon-Avon, Edinburgh Castle, the ancient walls of York, the colleges of Cambridge, and many more famous British sites. Ride with the honeymooners on a narrowboat ride through the canals of Wales; eat the best meal of your life at the George in Scotland; ride through the rain in the midlands of England, and tour the Britannia, once the queen of England's private ocean liner. Walk the streets of London town and ride its famous underground after a shopping spree at Harrods, the world's most famous department store. Window shop in Stamford, listen to Scottish bagpipe music under the Firth of Forth railroad bridge, buy jewelry in Jedburgh, sweaters in Scotland, and walk under the shadow of the stones at Stonehenge. Learn what it means to rekindle an old love, the simple joy of being two people alone on an island in the North Sea for ten days, and the spiritual lessons one can learn on a journey to Scotland!

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Enlarge My Coast tells of Pastor Blackstone's return to India to see the completion of a project inspired during his first trip to the subcontinent of Asia in 2006. This time his traveling companion will be a church deacon of the Emmanuel Baptist Church, Russ Coffin. Blackstone and Coffin travel to Kerala State to help in the dedication of the new Venmony Baptist Church sanctuary and parsonage built through the support of their ministry in Maine. Once again Pastor Blackstone is able to share the wonders and wants of India through the eyes of another adventurous traveler. Enjoy with them the fascination of watching a working elephant beside a rural road; the attempt of catching on film five people on a motorcycle at one time; a houseboat ride on Kerala's largest lake; listening to Russ's first sermon; graduation day at Kerala Baptist Bible College; an Indian barbeque of pancakes and omelets; of trying to find a bell for the college in the busy and confusing markets of one of Kerala's biggest cities; and an auto-rickshaw ride through rubber tree-lined lanes, banana grove-covered valleys, and an Indian road repair crew! As in his other India books, Though None Go with Me and Though One Go with Me, share the practical spiritual lessons Pastor Blackstone learned on this, his third «India journey» and his first mission trip to the State of Andrah Pradesh as the guest evangelist for the Independent Gospel Baptist Churches of India. Share in the personal experience of a daylong journey on the infamous Indian railway into the backcountry of central India, of driving a bullock cart, eating an Indian catfish, making friends with a dog named Ellie, preaching in a thatched-roof church, being surprised by a police raid at four in the morning, and witnessing more people coming to Christ at one time than at any other time in the pastor's ministry. Journey for a month into the unpredictable land of India and enjoy the surprises around each corner as Pastor Blackstone travels to three Indian states and gets to meet fellow pastors from five states. The fellowship will be sweet, the food will be hot, and the friendships made will be eternal!

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Return for a fifth time with Pastor Blackstone to the fabled land of India and discover more biblical precepts and life-changing concepts as he travels again with his good friend Shibu Simon to «earth's farthest bounds.» This time the Maine pastor will speak at three Indian graduations in three days in two different Indian states, witness a baptism in a cattle trough, get up close and personal with a temple elephant that had just blessed a house, and travel through eight Indian states in ten days while journeying the length and breadth of India in a four-thousand-mile odyssey. That odyssey will include visiting the Taj Mahal by water, the Red Fort of Agra, the Golden Temple of the Sikhs, a hostel in Delhi, and the guru caves of Udayagiri. Experience your first cycle rickshaw ride in Amritsar, your first rural hospital in Uttar Pradesh, your fifth Indian train ride through Haryana, and a surprising side-trip to Orissa. These encounters and experiences will cause you to think what is possible if you step out of your comfort zone and journey to «earth's farthest bounds» on business for the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords–Jesus Christ!

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Have you ever wondered what Jesus saw, heard, and did during his so-called «silent years» between his birth in Bethlehem, after his trip to Egypt, and before his baptism at the Jordan River? The only mentioned event in the Gospels from that time frame was being forgotten in Jerusalem by his parents at the age of twelve, as recorded by Luke. Barry Blackstone takes you on an imaginative journey, an inspiring jaunt into those days of Jesus as he remembers his own boyhood and early childhood experiences in the tiny farming village of Perham, Maine, a hamlet similar in size and nature to the Nazareth of Jesus' day. After visiting an archeological site in Nazareth in 2010, Blackstone realized the parallels between his obscure upbringing and the quiet years of the Savior in his boyhood home. It is the wish of the author that his reader might see through a morning dew, a blossoming flower, a blue sky, a gentle rain, a brilliant rainbow, a crowing rooster, a loving sister, and a father's carpenter's shop into the life of the boy Jesus. Blackstone attempts to fill in some of the gaps in the story of Jesus by sharing his barnyard memories with an application to the teaching of the adult Jesus. Can one see insights into what Jesus experienced in the lessons, parables, and teachings of his adult ministry?

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Are you ready for an Alaska adventure? Travel with a pastor through central Alaska on a two-week tour of our fiftieth state. A lifelong dream to visit the land of the midnight sun, this preacher will share his spiritual insights and Biblical observations of the last frontier. Journeying with this Maine minister will be his wife of forty-five years and their first born son, who had spent his final two years of active military service stationed in Alaska with the United States Army. Experience the North Pole and fishing for grayling and rainbow trout near Fairbanks; taste for the first time Alaskan king crab; travel south with this trio to Denali National Park and witness the animal world at its finest; view Mt. McKinley from thirty-six miles; explore the Kenai Peninsula and catch the biggest rainbow trout of your life; visit old missionary friends at their airfield ranch in Chickaloon; take a plane ride over one of the greatest glaciers in the world; four-wheel through virgin forest to a glacier river; feel the spray of ice-cold waterfalls while passing through a mountain pass; share the thrill with your son of hundreds of migrating salmon bumping against your legs in a tidal stream, and pan for gold and find some nearby ancient gold dredge. Travel with the Blackstones as they experience the best of what Alaska can offer tourists as well as the explorers, and on the way learn a few spiritual lessons that might just change your life.

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