Image is mine
I bought this book a year or more ago and just got around to reading it before Christmas ( and am now reviewing it two months later, good job Emily). I had really high hopes for this book.
They sought what they called epic life.....
who hasn't dreamed of it? Setting out on the open road. Traveling with your closest friends. Experiencing the world. The call of adventure pulls with herculean force on the daring soul. But this wasn't just high adrenaline travel. These four young men - Matt. Jedd, Mike and Trey - stepped of the path of graduate school and careers to search for something bigger. Something Epic.
Four souls captures the tales of their journey around the globe, into the Guatemalan highlands, Russia's far north, the mountains of southern Africa, villages in Bangladesh, Nepal's Himalayans , rural Vietnam, and other rarely traveled lands. Everywhere they went , they lived and worked with the locals - learning , sharing, serving.
More than just a collection of thrilling stories, Four Souls chronicles the dawning realization that came through the adventures: that life to the fullest - what the authors call epic life - is found only in radical commitment to Jesus Christ.
It took me awhile to get into reading it as I felt it started slow. I loved the descriptions of the places they stayed , and how they told the life stories of the locals they stayed with. I enjoyed that they took excerpts from each guys journal and included that- it was a nice way to see what they felt at the time , instead of a later date.
Some of my favorite quotes are :
"I don't think our responsibility as Christians is necessarily to love the greatest number of people possible. We just need to do a good job loving the people we are supposed to love, whether that's a big number or a small number."
...but to end up in places like this , you have to go beyond what you feel totally comfortable with... "Or at least beyond what other people feel comfortable with you doing , " interjected Mike. "Faith makes it possible to rebel against the expectations of the crowd."
"Epic Life .... It's living out ordinary life for eternal purposes."
I enjoyed this book, and it's got quite a bit of highlighting throughout of passages that really meant something to me. It was well written and the diverse subjects of the book match the diverse places and people they encountered.
I would give it a three out of five stars, and added it to my bookshelf.
