The Best Life

“The good life”—a commonly used phrase—touts the satisfaction found in certain kinds of shoes, vinyl siding for your house, soft drinks, and even cigars. Sue not only challenges the reader with a realistic understanding of the good life but through interesting and convicting stories of how God worked in the life of a city girl—changing and molding her to begin to reflect His image and in the lives of the Berik people of Indonesian New Guinea, calling those He chose in eternity past to glorify and worship Him. Sue enables the reader to understand The Best Life, a life of healing and forgiveness, experiencing God’s peace and knowing His joy.

God gave Sue and her husband the distinct privilege of watching Him and having Him work through them to change a jungle society. She relates how God loved and prepared her to fulfill His plans for her, even using shattering childhood events and a man of the jungle to teach her. God implanted in her attributes that enabled her to thrive in situations for which she felt inadequate, situations that are 180 degrees different from her life “before Peter.” Through exciting and powerful eyewitness accounts, she leads the reader, showing how God used four academic disciplines—anthropology, linguistics, literacy, and translation—to impact a formerly unreached people group and to give them the New Testament in their own language.

Sue raises these questions: “Was it worth it to leave my own culture to struggle in another culture, to risk the lives of our children with tropical disease, to suffer through the agony of exotic illnesses like malaria and dengue fever, to live with all of God’s creatures in our house, to be separated from family and lifelong friends—not even being there when Peter’s dad passed away? Is it really worth it to trust in Jesus, to surrender to Him, to commit to following Him, to obey Him, to thank Him—no matter what?” Answering these questions is what this book is all about, challenging you—whether you are young or old, male or female, are seeking to know Jesus or are searching for His will and plan for you to find and accept The Best Life.