A portion of every Little Jesus Mission book sold — about $1 per book — supports our friends Lance and Amy and their ministry through MANNA Worldwide. I want to tell you about them, because they're the reason this giveback is personal to us.

We met Lance and Amy at church more than ten years ago. Lance worked for our family business for a season, packing promotional boxes. My husband Josh volunteered at the church food pantry that Lance ran. Amy and I were in a women's Bible study together, and somewhere in those years of friendship and conversation, Lance and Amy started talking about a calling — that maybe full-time missionary work was where God was leading them, not the missions leadership role Lance had at our church.

We walked with them through that. Through the praying and the vision and the slow, brave work of uprooting their two girls from one small Texas town to another. We were honored to be part of that transition then, and now more than ever, we want to support the work they're doing.

Most recently they've been serving in Colombia. They also travel across the United States visiting churches — sharing what God is doing through MANNA, raising the support that makes their ministry possible.

In every book I write, I want children to understand not just the lesson on the page, but what that lesson looks like lived out in the real world. To do that, I have to point to people I fully trust. Lance and Amy are those people. Having known them and lived life alongside them for over a decade, Josh and I are confident that what they're doing — and what your purchase of this book supports — is the real thing.

It's the same model we've used with The Mouse in the Hammock. About a dollar from every book, donated steadily over time. We've sold around 25,000 copies of that series and donated about $25,000 to an orphanage in Haiti. The more books that find their way into homes, the more support flows to the people doing the work. It scales naturally. It's slow and steady, and it adds up.

At the end of the day, together we are the hands and feet of Jesus.

— Bethany & Josh