WHAT PRAYER CAN DO - Ada Brownell - One Free Book

Welcome back, Ada. What would you like for our readers to know about you personally?

I began writing in my teens as a ministry, and spent more than 30 years teaching youth classes. I’ve always been an idea person, and that helped me work with young people and gave me direction in my writing. It was my top talent when I became a newspaper reporter. I found important news stories everywhere, as well as interesting features.

 Now as I’m writing the third novel in my Peaches and Dreams series, I dig for ideas to complicate the lead character’s life, which is how I plot. I only hope I can get him or her out of the mess I create.

Knowing the Lord personally gives me joy beyond any idea I dream up, however.

Tell us about your family.

My husband of 64 years, L.C. is romantic, a great helper, and the father of our five talented children. They are Gary, well known for his talents in a technical aspects of a church, and he’s designed church stages featured in magazines. Gwen, involved in healthcare, is working on her doctorate in nursing. Jaron is a computer software designer and works part-time as a worship leader. Jeanette is the #2 person in human resources at a steel mill in Pueblo, Colorado, and the wife of a pastor who now is a hospice chaplain. Our oldest daughter, Carolyn, a great pianist with perfect pitch passed away at age 31 from cancer. She worked with youth in a California church.

We have a group of talented grandchildren, as well. I thank God for family.

Have you written other nonfiction books?

My first, published by the Assemblies of God, was Confessions of a Pentecostal. Later, Swallowed by Life: Mysteries of Death, Resurrection and the Eternal; Imagine the Future You; and Facts, Faith and Propaganda. I have three novels: Joe the Dreamer, The Castle and the Catapult, The Lady Fugitive, and Peach Blossom Rancher.

Do you have any other books in the works right now?

I’m working on the third book in the Peaches and Dreams series. It’s tentatively title Ritah, but that probably will be changed.

What kinds of hobbies and leisure activities do you enjoy?

I love singing in groups, playing the piano, playing board games, and I used to play tennis.

Why did you write the featured book.

My brand is “Stick-to-Your-Soul Encouragement” and that’s the reason I wrote all my books. What Prayer Can Do is a compilation of 55 articles of the more than 100 articles I’ve had published in The Pentecostal Evangel. The book is filled with testimonies of answers to prayer among people I’ve known and interviewed. Some I ghost wrote under the other person’s byline so the stories could be told in first person.

What do you want the reader to take away from What Prayer Can Do?

I want the reader to believe God exists and He rewards those who diligently seek Him (see Hebrews 11:6).

Is there anything else you’d like to tell my readers about you or your book?

People’s testimonies I wrote in this book still bless me. The healed child admitted to a children’s institution with hydrocephalus (water on the brain where the head grows faster than the body) communicates with us yet today, many years after her miracle when their pastor visited, prayed for the child and the workers call the parents (our close friends) to come and get their baby because she suddenly was normal. The doctor wrote “absolute miracle” across her records after comparing X-rays of the brain before and after.

Please give us the first page or two from the book.

A strong wind propelled a raging brush fire up the side of Grand Mesa near Cedaredge, Colorado, leaving only blackness and ashes where it passed.

Suddenly the billowing smoke and hungry flames came into view of a mother and three children who were alone in a white two-story house.

The roaring mass of flames raced directly toward the home. The father had gone to help fight the fire, which began near Cedaredge. He had no idea the wind would take the fire to his family—now stranded without a car or any other means of escape.

Inside the house the mother and children ran to the bedroom, took the Bible, and read the 91st Psalm. Then they knelt and prayed fervently, but only briefly. They went back to the living room and watched the fire, now almost upon them.

Suddenly they saw the flames turn away from them as the direction of the wind changed. Their prayer had reached God, and He had answered!

This true experience is one of several miraculous answers to prayer experienced by persons who attend the First Assembly in Lakewood, Colorado.

Recently I was asked to speak to the youth meeting at our church, so I decided to talk about “What Prayer Can Do.” While meditating and praying for the service, I felt I should let people in our church tell from their own experience what prayer can do.

So I began asking individuals to help me. My only problem was choosing which miraculous answer to prayer to use! I found so many examples of the power of prayer that I couldn’t use half of them.

One woman said she uttered a simple prayer as their family’s truck, loaded with apples, rolled over the side of a mountain. Her three children rode on top of the apple boxes under a tarp. After she scrambled out of the truck which was crushed by the huge boulders, she began calling her children’s names.

“Tim? Are you all right?”

“Yes,” a voice answered from beneath the boxes.

“Steve?”

“Here!” he answered.

“Connie?”

“Here, Mom!”

The entire family escaped uninjured.

“Sometime let me tell how the Lord made an empty fuel barrel keep the house warm for a week,” she added.

A deacon told how God stopped the rain so he could work on a road construction project. The deacon had five small children to feed and needed all the work he could get. If it rained, he couldn’t work.

One day he noticed big black clouds rolling toward the road construction area. He prayed the Lord would let him keep working.

It was the deacon’s job to send supplies to the men on a paving machine. For three days the rain followed close behind the paving machine, but it never rained where the men worked. Occasionally the showers came right up to where they were, but then would go back again.

Where on the Internet can the readers find you?

Amazon Ada Brownell author page: http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B001KJ2C06

Amazon hadn’t added What Prayer Can Do to the page yet. You can get the book, paperback or for Kindle, at http://ow.ly/9CEI30h4IdL

Thank you, Ada, for sharing this book with us. I love to hear about the wonderful things God has done for other Christians.

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