Author Spotlight: Emmie Stanley

We are pleased to introduce Emmie Stanley. Emmie recently published Time for Some Good News with us, which is now available through the Word Alive Press Bookstore, and everywhere fine Christian books are sold. We asked Emmie to share a little bit about her new book and her writing. But first, a little bit about her.

About

Emmie Stanley was born in 1958 in Richmond, British Columbia to a Dutch family that had immigrated from Holland a few years earlier. Richmond wasn’t much more than farmland and a fishing town, and life was very simple. Emmie and her three siblings grew up on a horse ranch, and their playground was the surrounding fields, trees, and ditches. They built forts and rafts, caught frogs, and made pretend salads out of the variety of weeds growing in the fields.

Emmie’s dad had a passion for horses and was able to make it his life’s work. So of course it was her life, too. Before she could walk, she was sitting on horses. And by the time she was a preschooler, she was riding her pony in parades.

Very early on she learned the high value of hard work. Every night she and her older sister had to wash the dinner dishes, standing up on chairs just to be able to reach the sink. Then they would go out to the barn and sweep the aisles free of hay and manure.

She attended a two-room Catholic school in New Westminster where catechism was a normal part of her daily routine, immersing her in the idea that there is a God. At the age of six, she received the Catholic rite of first holy communion. She was so excited for Jesus to come into her life in a special way.

From the ages of ten to seventeen, Emmie worked on the family ranch on weekends and school breaks. Emmie and her siblings did everything from dealing with customers to caring for the horses and shovelling poop.

Her dad liked to watch the news, and as a youth she heard stories of the Cold War, the Vietnam War, and the Beatles! As a young person, it was hard to know how to process or understand these events. They provoked feelings of fear and anxiety and caused her to wonder what kind of a future she could hope for.

By the time Emmie was eighteen, she started to find escape from the hopelessness through drinking and parties. But after a couple of years, the lustre of this life wore off and once again she found herself wondering about the future.

In 1978, she married and found a new sense of stability. She started going to church again but still searched for answers. This is when she began to regularly read her Bible and found out that God really does have the whole world in his hands. She surrendered to his good plans for her life.

Ten years later, her little family of four moved to Langley. With a heart for both prayer and schools, Emmie got involved in ministry. This included praying for the school her children attended, doing outreach in the local area, and giving leadership to women who also prayed for their schools. This led to growing opportunities in evangelism and women’s ministry.

Emmie’s children are now approaching their forties. They are happily married with kids, have good jobs, own their own homes, and are living with an eye for the future. In the face of the current turbulent world, she feels very optimistic for their future and that of her grandchildren.

Out of a desire to communicate the good news that God has good plans for our lives, she has been inspired to write her book, Time for Some Good News!

Q&A

Q: What event in your life inspired you to write this book, and why is it important for you to share it?
A: I often find myself engaging in conversations that involve sharing about the goodness of God. Our testimonies really do have a tremendous ability to capture the attention of others and effectively share the good news of Jesus’s love.

As I have connected and shared with people, I find that they tend to have very little basic understanding of the Bible and who Jesus is. When I saw them respond and invite Jesus into their hearts, it was a challenge to covey the bigger picture of what salvation means, and to help them understand the implications of his love and their response to him.

My purpose in writing this book was to produce for myself a tool I could share with others to help them to understand who Jesus is, his love for them, and the hope he offers for the future.

Q: Why should people purchase and read your book?
A: This little book can make an impact on two levels. Firstly, it has the potential to lead people to Jesus through my testimony, which offers hope in the face of fear and anxiety. That is certainly something that many can relate to today, making this book very relevant at this time in history.

Secondly, in my book I unpack the word “salvation.” Through this, I offer a kind of Christianity 101. This creates a starting point for new believers, and sometimes even older believers, to understand all that God offers us as his children.

You could say that this book lays out step one and step two in a person’s Christian journey. The fact that it’s very short makes it an easy read. It is a good evangelistic tool.

Q: What do you most want readers to walk away with after reading your book?
A: It is very important to me that this book lay out a very clear gospel message. It’s not just about receiving Jesus and then waiting for heaven. It’s about how to experience the abundant life Jesus spoke of in John 10:10—a rich life that brings hope for the here and now in the face of the real world, for all eternity!

Q: Have you taken any writing courses?
A: The truth of the matter is that I started writing this book not knowing an adjective from an adverb. What I did know was that God was speaking to me to write. I trusted him to bring the right words and concepts together. The topic was like a fire in my heart, and the desire to communicate it to my friends, family, and neighbours was the reward that kept me moving forward to completion.

Q: What was key to working out the process of formulating and organizing ideas?
A: This book was actually born out of a very interesting Bible study. During the COVID season, a relative who is a very strong Catholic asked if I would do a Bible study with her online. Of course, I said yes! I also invited another relative, someone who had just recently been saved and had been quite involved in new age religion. Lastly, we invited a relative who said, “I have no idea what this is about, but sure, I’ll join your group!”

So we had a Protestant, a Catholic, a new Christian with a new age background, and someone who had no idea but was game to join! With a group like this, my question was: where should I start? This is when I had the idea of sharing the characteristics of salvation.

Week by week, the concepts really spoke to this group. It was life-changing, and it soon occurred to me that I needed to share this message with the new Christians I was encountering. Having already “tested” these ideas on a very diverse group, it was easy to take the next step and organize the notes from each week into the chapters of this book.

Q: Do you have any advice for new writers?
A: Just do it! If God has set something in your heart, and called you to commit it to writing, you can trust him to provide everything you’ll need. When I started this project, I had no training and no idea of how to write or publish a book. However, once I made a decision to do it, everything came surprisingly easy.

My biggest takeaway from this experience is how effective our testimony can be in sharing the good news with others. I have found that people who generally aren’t interested in hearing the gospel will read my book because they know me and are interested in my story. I think every Christian who has a heart to reach others for the kingdom should write their story in a book and give it to everyone they know!

Connecting Points

To reach out to Emmie, please contact us.