Finding Home - by Jewel Showalter (Paperback)

About the Book

Finding Home is a rare look inside the heart and mind of one who has experienced the length, depth, and breadth of a life of mission. You can't miss the conclusion that in that call is where, generation after generation, we all find home.

Book Synopsis

This book takes you almost everywhere. To Hippo Hole where large beasts snort and babies dive off their mothers' backs and to the floor of a hostel during a military coup while bombs fall from the sky and machine guns rattle outside. You'll eat injera in Ethiopia, ugali in Kenya, lahmacun in Turkey, peaches in Virginia, and Lebanon baloney in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You'll beat trees with broom sticks until green and black olives rain down on you. And you'll be evicted from a country. As you read, you'll feel strangeness wash over you, again and again. And with Jewel, you'll share the aching for home that lives in all of us. Finding Home will help you understand not only its author, but also yourself and your longing for a place to belong.

Review Quotes

This book takes you almost everywhere. To Hippo Hole where large beasts snort and babies dive off their mothers' backs and to the floor of a hostel during a military coup while bombs fall from the sky and machine guns rattle outside. You'll eat injera in Ethiopia, ugali in Kenya, lahmacun in Turkey, peaches in Virginia, and Lebanon baloney in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You'll beat trees with broom sticks until green and black olives rain down on you. And you'll be evicted from a country. As you read, you'll feel strangeness wash over you, again and again. And with Jewel, you'll share the aching for home that lives in all of us. Finding Home will help you understand not only its author, but also yourself and your longing for a place to belong.

-Phyllis Swartz, author of Yoder School, teacher for 35 years, educational consultant, blogger at Apple to Apple

As president of Rosedale Bible College, I recognize our students' hunger for security, rootedness, and belonging. Jewel Showalter's Finding Home is the story they need. Unpretentious and sincere, the book reveals God's work in a lifetime of cross-cultural endeavors, showing a new generation that home is not a place, but rootedness in God.

-Jeremy Miller, President, Rosedale Bible College

Jewel Showalter's Finding Home is a vital, compelling account of a life lived without borders. Raised in pioneering Ethiopia and later serving alongside her late husband, EMM's 6th President, Richard Showalter, Jewel's story chronicles the transformative results of mid-20th-century Mennonite missions-a legacy that includes the world's largest Anabaptist body, the Meserete Kristos Church. This memoir offers essential historical documentation while powerfully exploring the universal search for belonging, where physical geography

never becomes a spiritual destiny. A necessary read on faith, legacy, and the true meaning of home.

-Marvin Lorenzana, President, Eastern Mennonite Missions

Finding Home is a beautifully told story of life lived to the full, learning to follow Jesus. Jewel's honest and vulnerable reflections caused me to laugh out loud and moved me to tears. Finding Home will call us all to reflect more deeply on how we respond to His voice when asked to trust more, to go further, to worship wholeheartedly, and to forgive completely. Thanks Jewel!

-Darren Peachey, Conference Pastor, Rosedale Network of Churches

Whether Jewel describes a California-style hippie bandana or a rumpled Lancaster Mennonite headcovering; a thermos of goldenrod tea or a full-page ad for Johnnie Walker whiskey; Miss Havisham's yellowing wedding dress, or the white, clean linens of the Bride of Christ-her story sings, often literally, of God's great faithfulness to His people, throughout all seasons. Jewel's memoirs are all the more potent for me and my house, because we are the direct beneficiaries of her passion for the "inclusion of the Gentiles" in the Showalter's native tribe. These are stories to read, and to read with your children, and to read with your children's children. By preserving these memories for future generations, Jewel has done a great service, not only for her own immediate family but also for God's entire household, adopted in Christ.

-Matthew Cordella, Pastor of Pike Mennonite Church in Elida, Ohio, father of four, and a visiting faculty member at Rosedale Bible College

Finding Home is a rare look inside the heart and mind of one who has experienced the length, depth, and breadth of a lifetime of mission. Here you'll find wonder and adventure, danger and risk, joy and suffering-all part of the call of Jesus to go anywhere and everywhere with the beautiful news that His kingdom is here. You can't miss the obvious conclusion that in that call is where, generation after generation, we all find home.

-Joe Showalter has been president of Rosedale International (former