Middle East Memoirs

In the summer of 2009, I wrote a book about our year spent in Bahrain, in the Arabian Gulf. It's a collection of short chapters, reflections of our times in church, school, out amongst Bahrainis, and also traveling to other Middle Eastern countries. It's called Pearls, Sands, and Flamboyance. This is the blurb on the back of the book:

As a young, naive teacher, Shannon Malia Heil faced didactic challenges during her year abroad in the Kingdom of Bahrain. Together with her husband Mark, she battled stereotypes, culture shock, and religious oppression while learning the value of assimilation and the power of relational evangelism. In Pearls, Sands, and Flamboyance, she captures the day-to-day life in Manama, sharing insight into their customs and lessons she gathered from her own experiences.

If you are interested or know of someone who may enjoy reading this memoir, please contact me. We have a number of copies ready to disperse, and I long for these writings to be a blessing. However, we've chosen not to advertise publicly in order to semi-control our readership and protect some of the people we know. (You may ask me about this further.) Therefore, we are asking for donations and will gladly deliver a copy to you (if you are in Hawaii or Seoul) or mail it as soon as we can.

It's been five years since we left the Middle East and two years since writing this book, but the memories are still fresh and the impressions still deep. I thank God for the experiences--good and bad--that Mark and I were blessed to have together in Bahrain.