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JW Belize

Tomorrow I fly to Belize and the amazing Junkyard Wisdom: Belize begins. There are twenty-two brave and adventurous folks on the trip! It’s going to be an incredible time of discovery, conversation, and (hopefully) spiritual growth.

We will be staying at Jaguar Creek, one of my favorite places on the planet (picture below). It has fully recovered from last summer’s hurricane and looks amazing. You really should visit someday!

D’Aun and I would appreciate your prayers. The book Junkyard Wisdom has opened so many doors of possibilities. Just today I received an email from somebody who read the book …

Bulk Sales

Call me smart, or call me dumb, but call me if you want to buy Junkyard Wisdom in bulk. Here’s the scoop.

Knowing I was unlikely to be a top seller, and knowing it takes sales in the thousands before royalties kick in, I decided to take lower royalties and instead get lots of copies of Junkyard Wisdom.

Smart! I have lots of books I can sell or give away!

But wait. Dumb. Now I have lots of books to store and have to go through the headache of selling.

Hmmm…a dilemma. Sorta.

Solution! I can sell books in bulk …

My 58th Birthday

I was born in 1958 and it’s my 58th birthday today. Lots of 58’s ringing around in my brain, so here’s an idea. Give $58 to PathLight, and I’ll send you a free signed copy of my book Junkyard Wisdom. It’s a good way to support the amazing work PathLight does for children — education, mentoring, discipleship, and all the rest. And you get a halfway decent book!

Don’t have time to do this today? ~~Why you lazy…~~ Sure, I understand. We’re all busy this season. So I’ll keep this offer open till the end of the year.…

Book Boneyard – The Lost Introduction

Every book has a book boneyard: the paragraphs that didn’t make the cut, the stories that didn’t work, or the ideas that simply didn’t fit in. For Junkyard Wisdom the boneyard is almost as big as the book itself.

When this journey to write began it wasn’t entirely clear where it would end. But I had to start somewhere, so I wrote the paragraphs below. At the time — sitting in a hotel by myself in Southern California — I thought it might work as the introduction. It’s a hint of what’s to come, but it didn’t make the final …

An Example of Junkyard Wisdom

My friend David emailed the link to this article and wrote, “This is junkyard wisdom … it’s like the guy is living the book.”

Click the link and you’ll see what he means. A conservative guy in his 60’s has a dim view of the homeless who live near his business. Then he meets one of the guys living on the streets and builds a relationship with him. Guess what? Yep, Junkyard Wisdom kicks in and he sees the world differently. Both of them do, actually.

Read the article. You’ll love it.

Thanks, David, for sending it along.

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God Only Knows What Will Happen

There’s a point in Junkyard Wisdom when I describe three steps for being successful:

Start by making friends with people different than yourself.
Then keep doing that your whole life.
God only knows what will happen.

Seems silly, doesn’t it? No strategic plan? No analysis of the big challenges we face? No StrengthsFinder test or Myers Briggs exam? How could this possibly be a plan for being successful? How could this possibly change the world?

But it is. It’s part of what God designed. It’s the Church.

We are called to love each other. When Jesus was asked who our …

John Ortberg Interview

Author, teacher, and all around good guy John Ortberg wrote the foreword of Junkyard Wisdom. We sat down in his church to talk about the book. Thought you’d enjoy seeing it!

http://intransitmedia.wistia.com/medias/dx38gxjurb?embedType=async&videoFoam=true&videoWidth=640

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How You Can Help

So now the book is out and I can relax, right? Well not exactly.

To create sustained credibility, a book needs reviews on Amazon. You know how it is — you hear about a book, go to the Amazon page, and see that nobody has reviewed it, or just 2-3 people have. And you think, “Huh, well, maybe it’s not such a big deal after all.”

By contrast, you go to Amazon and see dozens of reviews. Even hundreds. And then you think, “Wow, people must be really engaging with this.” And you buy the book.

That’s the reaction …