Each month the Opportunities to Affect in fellowship! magazine offers a book related to the topic being studied. Reading group study guides are available each month to help lead group discussions about the book and its relationship to the missional topic of the month.
2012-2013 Reading List
August 2012
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Chilean author Isabel Allende writes a memoir of her life, My Invented Country, centered on two pivotal dates -- both on September 11. The first was in 1973 when her uncle, the president of Chile, was assassinated, and the second in 2001 when Allende recognized a deep connection to her U.S. home.
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Download a copy of the Reading Group study guide for August.
September 2012
October 2012
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In the 1930’s, an American composer named Colin McPhee heard gramophone records of Balinese gamelan music and knew he needed to travel to Bali to study the music he was hearing. A House in Bali (by McPhee and James Murdoch), originally written in the 1940’s, offers a literary narrative of a classically trained musician who immersed himself in another culture.
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Download a copy of the Reading Group study guide for October.
November 2012
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Sold by Patricia McCormick introduces us to the world of Lakshmi, a 13-year-old girl from Nepal who thinks she is finding work to help her family, but later learns she has been sold into prostitution. In India, Lakshmi’s life becomes a nightmare as she tries to survive in this terrifying new world.
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Download a copy of the Reading Group study guide for November.
December 2012
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In her book Leap of Faith: Memoirs of an Unexpected Life, Queen Noor tells the story of how she, as an American woman, became Queen of Jordan. In this book, readers are given an inside look at peacekeeping efforts in the Middle East through listening to the experiences of Queen Noor and King Hussein.
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Download a copy of the Reading Group study guide for December.
January 2013
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Until recently, Iranian literature has been written primarily by men. This collection, Let Me Tell You Where I've Been, edited by Persis M. Karim tells the stories of more than 50 women writers who contributed to this volume. Covering themes such as exile, family, culture resistance, and love, this book provides a rich look at the Iranian diaspora from the words of its women.
February 2013
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Tony Early, a writer from North Carolina, chronicles the lives of 20th-century North Carolinians in Here We Are in Paradies: Stories. In these stories about ordinary people, Earley captures the greatness of the human spirit through the tales of compassion and courage.
March 2013
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Of Beetles and Angels: A Boy's Remarkable Journey from a Refugee Camp to Harvard is a true story of Mawi Asgedom, a refugee from Ethiopia who spent three years with his family in a refugee camp in Sudan. After his family was resettled in Chicago, Asgedom earned a full scholarship to Harvard.
April 2013
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In Evolving in Monkey Town, we meet Christian blogger and author Rachel Held Evans who grew up in the town where the famous Scopes Monkey Trial took place. In this commmunity where fundamentalism was still the norm, Evans learns to ask her own quesitons about life and fatih.
May 2013
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Mountains Beyond Mountains tells the true story of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Harvard educated doctor who chose to work among Haiti’s poor. Farmer’s advances on treating the poor, particularly those with HIV and AIDS, have revolutionized the way medicine is done in the developing world.
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Download a copy of the Reading Group study guide for May.
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