The Vision of a Mother's Heart


Book Description

The Vision of a Mother's Heart is the story of Isabel Greene, an ordinary ten-year-old girl from an ordinary southern family that is living off the land in the 1920s. They are hardworking, God-honoring, fun-loving people who are considered poor by some but think of themselves as quite happy. Isabel's Mama teaches her the joys of cooking, sewing, doing laundry, and taking care of children, while always turning each chore into a time of singing and laughter and striving to instruct her children in the truth by planting seeds of faith in their hearts. When tragedy strikes, life drastically changes for the Greene family. Although the family attempts to press on, they are faced with further calamity when a fire ravages their home. Despite their escape, they are left with difficult questions: Where is God in tragedy and suffering? Why does He allow people to face hardships when all they want to do is honor Him? What if their worst fear-separation from one another-is realized? Can the Greene family trust God when everything around them is falling apart? The Vision of a Mother's Heart was inspired by the author's grandmother, Isabel. Her mother's life, love, and instruction sewed seeds of faith in the hearts of her children that now have been passed to the next generation. The story weaves a heartwarming tale that will leave you thinking about the long-term impact of your everyday decisions.




Making Vision Stick


Book Description

There are lots of books about discovering or developing a vision for your organization, but this one is about making that vision endure the corrosion of time and complexity--how to make your vision stick. Influential author and pastor Andy Stanley reveals the reasons why leaders' visions often falter, and he delivers 5 in-depth strategies so that you can dodge the pitfalls: How to state your vision simply. How to cast your vision convincingly. How to repeat your vision regularly. How to celebrate your vision systematically. How to embrace your vision personally. Many of us have good ideas, even great ones. The difficult part is putting them into practice and keeping that vision clear and visible to your organization--whether that's a business or a church--when there are so many things in the day-to-day living of that vision that can distract from it. Making Vision Stick offers valuable, practical tips and case studies. This is a book you'll want to highlight and dog-ear and pass around as you learn how to propel your organization toward the vision God has granted you. Vision is about what could be and should be, but life is about right this minute. The test of a true leader is in keeping that vision on track, day in and day out.




First Vision


Book Description

This is the biography of a contested memory, how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it. It's the story of the story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began. Joseph Smith, the church's founder, remembered that his first audible prayer, uttered in spring of 1820 when he was about fourteen, was answered with a vision of heavenly beings. Appearing to the boy in the woods near his parents' home in western New York State, they told Smith that he was forgiven and warned him that Christianity had gone astray. Smith created a rich and controversial historical record by narrating and documenting this event repeatedly. In First Vision, Steven C. Harper shows how Latter-day Saints (beginning with Joseph Smith) and others have remembered this experience and rendered it meaningful. When and why and how did Joseph Smith's first vision, as saints know the event, become their seminal story? What challenges did it face along the way? What changes did it undergo as a result? Can it possibly hold its privileged position against the tides of doubt and disbelief, memory studies, and source criticism-all in the information age? Steven C. Harper tells the story of how Latter-day Saints forgot and then remembered accounts of Smith's experience and how Smith's 1838 account was redacted and canonized. He explores the dissonance many saints experienced after discovering multiple accounts of Smith's experience. He describes how, for many, the dissonance has been resolved by a reshaped collective memory.




Crazy Horse's Vision


Book Description

"This production offers an engaging, original way for children to learn about a Native American hero. Renowned Abenaki author Bruchac has selected interesting facts that reveal how a young boy is transformed into brave Crazy Horse. ..." AudioFile Magazine




The Vision Driven Leader


Book Description

Having a clear, compelling vision--and getting buy-in from your team--is essential to effective leadership. If you don't know where you're going, how on earth will you get there? But how do you craft that vision? How do you get others on board? And how do you put that vision into practice at every level of your organization? In The Vision Driven Leader, New York Times bestselling author Michael Hyatt offers six tools for crafting an irresistible vision for your business, rallying your team around the vision, and distilling it into actionable plans that drive results. Based on Michael's 40 years of experience as an entrepreneur and executive, backed by insights from organizational science and psychology, and illustrated by case studies and stories from multiple industries, The Vision Driven Leader takes you step-by-step from why to what and then how. Your business will never be the same.




Begin with the Heart


Book Description

At a time of many distractions for church leaders, lay teachers and parish catechists are often left to fend for themselves. Working within the treasures of our tradition, this book hopes to offer some nourishment and inspiration both personally and professionally. Begin with the Heart introduces a radical dimension to the work of catechesis and religious education. It calls for a dynamic theology and vital spirituality in all aspects of our educational endeavours. The recovery of the notion of the 'sacramental vision' cannot fail to touch the creative imagination of today's teachers and catechists. It ensures that the Catholic tradition of education will make an even greater contribution to the common good in our profoundly pluralist society. It is only from the teachers' and catechists' own inner passion and conviction that the hearts of others will catch fire and be transformed. It is time now for a new effort to realise the dream, to work the vision more surely.




Escaping the Build Trap


Book Description

To stay competitive in today’s market, organizations need to adopt a culture of customer-centric practices that focus on outcomes rather than outputs. Companies that live and die by outputs often fall into the "build trap," cranking out features to meet their schedule rather than the customer’s needs. In this book, Melissa Perri explains how laying the foundation for great product management can help companies solve real customer problems while achieving business goals. By understanding how to communicate and collaborate within a company structure, you can create a product culture that benefits both the business and the customer. You’ll learn product management principles that can be applied to any organization, big or small. In five parts, this book explores: Why organizations ship features rather than cultivate the value those features represent How to set up a product organization that scales How product strategy connects a company’s vision and economic outcomes back to the product activities How to identify and pursue the right opportunities for producing value through an iterative product framework How to build a culture focused on successful outcomes over outputs




Saint Louis and the Last Crusade


Book Description

This is the 30th title in the very popular, award-winning series of Vision Books on the lives of saints and heroes for youth 9 - 15 years old. Louis IX of France, who took the throne in 1226, had one aim in life - to be a good king. Guided by the advice of his mother, he ruled well and was beloved by his people. At the age of twenty-eight he took the cross of the crusade and, with his army, set out for Egypt to defeat the Saracens, the most energetic enemies of the Holy Land. Instead, the Saracens charged to victory and imprisoned Louis, whose saintly conduct while in prison shamed his captors. Released, and after another miserable failure in Palestine, he returned to France broken in health but still fired with the desire to liberate the Holy Land. And so again, St. Louis led his men out from France, this time on the last crusade.




God Has a Dream


Book Description

Nobel Laureate Desmond Tutu has long been admired throughout the world for the heroism and grace he exhibited while encouraging countless South Africans in their struggle for human rights. In God Has a Dream, his most soul-searching book, he shares the spiritual message that guided him through those troubled times. Drawing on personal and historical examples, Archbishop Tutu reaches out to readers of all religious backgrounds, showing how individual and global suffering can be transformed into joy and redemption. With his characteristic humor, Tutu offers an extremely personal and liberating message. He helps us to “see with the eyes of the heart” and to cultivate the qualities of love, forgiveness, humility, generosity, and courage that we need to change ourselves and our world. Echoing the words of Martin Luther King, Jr., he writes, “God says to you, ‘I have a dream. Please help me to realize it. It is a dream of a world whose ugliness and squalor and poverty, its war and hostility, its greed and harsh competitiveness, its alienation and disharmony are changed into their glorious counterparts. When there will be more laughter, joy, and peace, where there will be justice and goodness and compassion and love and caring and sharing. I have a dream that my children will know that they are members of one family, the human family, God’s family, my family.’” Addressing the timeless and universal concerns all people share, God Has a Dream envisions a world transformed through hope and compassion, humility and kindness, understanding and forgiveness.