A true account of one family's journey from middle class suburbia into the depths of poverty then homelessness as they followed Jesus with uncompromising faith.
Homer, Wanda, Ida, and Fanny are a new breed of adventurers, willing to throw caution to the wind and follow God wholeheartedly. This family of 4 with their dog and bird in tow faced down the wilderness to pursue Jesus.
Bored with the mundane, they left their lives of extreme outdoor camping and audacious adventures seeking new challenges. Their thirst for the thrill of following God in faith drove ever onward. Soon they entered the high risk and financially demanding world of staying indoors, sleeping on real beds and eating regularly. A world that would require all their razor sharp skills to navigate.
Our intrepid band of pioneers have spent the past 2 years living in a small motel room. Their favorite pastimes of hide and seek and capture the flag replaced by standing up to the verbal assaults of drug-dealing pimps and former convicts. Adapting to the confined quarters, Wanda began leading an online prayer call for Canada while Homer has been dutifully preparing their online presence. Both have been judiciously crafting the story of their adventure, Wilderness—How to Marry Jesus in 10 Years or Less, into readable prose.
As a homeless family in Canada, options for refuge from the cold are few. People that will open their homes are rare and government services provide little choice. One option available is a homeless shelter. Our only experience with one in Moncton, New Brunswick was so violent and traumatic that our family vowed never to return to a homeless shelter again. Although God taught us valuable lessons through this one experience, we were grateful we never had to repeat it. Although shelters are a convenient way to remove the destitute from sight, they do nothing to help the soul of the poor.
Book Excerpt
Wilderness - How to Marry Jesus in 10 Years or Less
None of us had ever been to an army boot camp or spent time in prison before so what we were about to endure was far beyond our scope of experience. We were still new to homelessness and had yet to be fully exposed to the depths of humiliation one goes through when one is destitute and homeless. I am not sure what it is like in other parts of the world but in Canada destitute, homeless people are treated as if they had committed some capital crime or venal sin. To be poor in an affluent society is an insult to that society and the offenders must be punished with the severest degradations imaginable. To that end shelters are a means to help, and at the same time, humiliate the homeless. All the dregs of society are dredged up and placed in the same building, away from civilized and affluent society. Once that is done the citizens pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves that they have ‘helped’ the less fortunate. From our experiences shelters are highly unpleasant places but we did not know that when we entered the doors of Nazareth House. We would learn quickly.
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