Gena Thomas

In 2017 five-year-old Julia traveled with her mother, Guadalupe, from Honduras to the United States. Her harrowing journey took her through Mexico in the cargo section of a tractor trailer. Then she was separated from her mother, who was held hostage by smugglers who exploited her physically and financially. At the United States border, Julia came through the processing center as an unaccompanied minor after being separated from her stepdad who was deported. Gena Thomas tells the story of how Julia came to the United States, what she experienced in the system, and what it took to reunite her with her family. A Spanish-speaking former missionary, Gena became Julia's foster mother and witnessed firsthand the ways migrant children experience trauma. Weaving together the stories of birth mother and foster mother, this book shows the human face of the immigrant and refugee, the challenges of the immigration and foster care systems, and the tenacious power of motherly love.

Are you jaded by charity work yet have a heart for missions? Are you at all skeptical about the effectiveness of short-term missions? Do you believe you have a role in the Great Commission? A Smoldering Wick brings awareness to the pitfalls of charity work and brings to light the biblical call to a justice mindset, without arguing that short-term missions are a lost cause. In Isaiah 42, God speaks of how Jesus will neither break a bruised reed nor snuff out a smoldering wick, but in faithfulness, establish justice on earth. Being equipped through theology, theory, and practice, the Church can be encouraged and admonished not to grow faint in the arduous work of justice. By mixing personal missionary memoirs with poverty alleviation tools, A Smoldering Wick proposes what is wrong with short-term missions and offers applicable solutions to reverse the unjust ways that the Western Church sees itself, poverty, and its international brothers and sisters.