What a great read. I enjoy reading Myer's books. Quotesp. 249 [Tyler the son of Daniel, the pastor, thought this and did some major growing up in this novel]...Here in this ugly, godforsaken place, with its flies, its people starving to death, its crushing daytime heat that wasn't much better at night...here where according to Diggers, there were sixty-three varieties of mosquitos (some carrying malaria)...here where there was more suffering and need than he'd seen in his entire life, there was also more peace and joy.There was great character development in this novel.

I enjoyed this book a great deal. It makes a person think. I can't imagine if Jesus had come today. Would I have trusted him enough to give him my life and follow him? I can't imagine seeing all those miracles and being uneffected.I think this would be a good book for a seeker to read. I think it makes a person think and seek out what the gospel actually says.I found quite a few quotes to be interesting in this novel...Quotesp. 160 It was love. But a different type of love. A love he'd never experienced before. It wasn't sexually charged, whorship-me-the-conqueror-of-t he-world-love of his [Conrad] twenties and thirties. Nor was it the old-shoe-comfortable love of his forties. No, this was different. This had nothing to do with sex or conquering, or habit. Instead it had everything to do with giving--with simply wanting to make her happy, with wanting to protect her, and to help her smile that smile of hers...at any cost." WOW!! That is an awesome way to describe love.p. 282 [spoken by Eli] "Real joy--I mean deep welling-up-inside-you joy--and real peace, they can only com from one thing...a relationship with God. They can only come when you are friends with God."p. 335 Since prayer was basically foreign to Conrad, he did his best to remember the structure Eli had taught them: opening with worship, then praying for God's will to be accomplished, then his [Conrad] own specific needs, then for forgiveness and finally that he not get caught up in temptaion, but be freed from evil.I thought this was a great structure for me to go by. I have never heard prayer being explained so simply and easily. I have always found it to be this complex thing. This is fiction, however, I think this is a piece of very useful information.p. 380 In the old world, the one before the accident, when he heard of Christ dying for his sins, he simply chalked it up to being part of his culture--a lathering of televangelist, a dangling necklace, a peeling fresco. But what he'd [Conrad] seen was the slaughter of a real human being, a loving, giving person, the greatest person he'd ever met. The slaughter of a love that had looked him directly in the eyes and said "I'm [Eli] doing this for you--its all for you."Another great perspective.