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Author Bio
I am a home builder in Northeastern Oklahoma and president of 1256Movement.org. Proceeds from my latest book published in 2023, Prodigals, benefit this nonprofit dedicated to reparations of racial trauma in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Taylor is author of several books, including a coauthored work with Randy Harris titled Living Jesus. He and his wife, Jill, have three adult children, Ashley, Anna, and Jacob, for whom Prodigals is dedicated.
I’ve been a writer for 30 years, a professional writer and editor for most of those years. No matter what other jobs I’ve done, I’ve continued to write. I’m the author, co-author, editor, or ghostwriter of many books you can see here.
You’ll find a lot of topics I’ve written about listed and I’ve tried to categorize them so there should be bread crumbs for you to follow your interests. I’m 2024, I’ll celebrate 20 years of blogging. You can also find lots of free articles I’ve published in various magazines if you search my name at Christianity Today, Sojourners, and Wineskins. I wrote many book reviews for Publishers Weekly some years back but most of the reviews are not named reviews for sake of objectivity.
This is a somewhat dated photo of me with my wife, Jill . . . laughing, like we do a lot together. Jill’s my best friend, a faithful loving mom, a genius math teacher, and a humble disciple of Christ.
Jill and I have three children, from left, Anna, Ashley, and Jacob. We’re very proud of them. They do their own laundry, clean their rooms when we hold something back from them like food or money, all do great in school, but more than anything else, I’m happy to see them grow in a deeper relationship with God everyday. This is an older photo of them — they are adults now! Maybe soon I’ll post some photos of them as adults and of my grandson! You can guess which one you think had a baby first.
This is me talking with Teresa and Hector in Honduras. This is one of the things I do as a writer, listen to people’s stories and write true stories from what I hear. Research I was doing about Dr. Amanda Madrid and Predisan formed the basis of a book I wrote titled, Lay Down Your Guns: One Doctor’s Battle for Hope and Healing in Honduras. There is also an audio book at this link!
I’m very blessed to have traveled many wonderful places in the world, some mountain top experiences! This is one of those times with a church I preached for some years ago. My daughter, Anna, and the youth group climbed a 14,000 ft mountain in Colorado then visited a wonderful ministry called Dry Bones Denver.
Ok…so where are your roots! I hear you, but what about the first 19 years of your life. I could contribute to this! I remember 2 kids in the back of my car who yelled at some other kids in the sooner area. Next thing I knew we were being chased by these sooner kids and Kelley and I are taking turns driving an old car that is over heating! Great memories!
I would love to share with you our experiences of five trips to Honduras, starting in 2007 and our most recent one in April of 2014. We go to an orphanage just outside of San Francisco de la Paz and travel to various villages in the mountains. We live in NH and on our most recent trip we visited a gentleman who takes care of children with disabilities in Catacamas. I went to the library yesterday to get something to read and happened upon “Lay Down Your Guns” – finished it this afternoon (good thing I did not have to work). Great book. Sad story but we always choose to have hope. Peace, Mary F. New Hampshire
Hi Mary, feel free to share your experiences here and I can read them and others can see and learn from what you share. So glad you are going to Honduras. Was Lay Down Your Guns in your local library? If so, great, but it’s just out so happy and pleasantly surprised if a local library chose it. Thank you for writing, and thank you for your time reading. It’s always an honor when someone reads the stories I write. My job in this story was not to mess up a perfectly great story!! It’s not as easy as the final product may make it seem to construct a story like this told in thousands of puzzle pieces over time, but Dr. Madrid’s story is truly inspiring, so I hope it spreads widely. Thank you for sharing the story with your networks, Mary!
Dear Greg, How nice to hear from you. Lay Down Your Guns was indeed in the Concord, NH public library. As I was looking for something to read it caught my eye as I am always interested in reading anything about Honduras. This is a book I can relate to, having been to many of the places mentioned. On our first trip, I thought it was pretty amazing that I was going to a third world country to help the poor. God sure taught me a lesson: they gave much more to me than I ever could given to them. They showed us love and welcome and a great family spirit amongst terrible poverty. Each time we have returned they are so happy to see us. They are truly amigos y amigas. From our base in San Francisco de la Paz, our ecumenical group travels to small villages in the mountains to build school or community gardens. As you know, the diet in these villages is not varied and many suffer from malnutrition and stunted-growth. In addition, our small project sponsors kids to stay in school past the 4th or 6th grades. You may read more about our project at
http://www.projectedenhonduras.org or on Facebook at Project Eden & Adelante. I will highly recommend your book to 1) anyone I know who has been on these trips and 2) other people. Blessings, Mary F.