Book Review: The Fire of Faith, by John H. Groberg

The Fire of Faith, by John H. Groberg

I was a big fan of John Groberg's The Other Side of Heaven and Anytime, Anywhere. Both were very good, and highly spiritual, filled to the brim with interesting stories and incredible miracles. The Fire of Faith was kind of like a 'deleted scenes' from those books, with stories that were gentle and nice...and gentle....and mild...and not really stories...

The book is mainly about him being a mission president in the South Pacific in the late 60s and then a general authority in Hawaii in the 70s. The stories in this book are mostly about the preparation he did for a 50th anniversary jubilee of opening the Tonga (I think) mission. So right off the bat, you know that it's not going to be as miraculous as his other stories where he survives being thrown overboard and surviving a major ocean storm, or meeting and talking with people who had passed on, one of whom teleported him to Hong Kong and spent the day with him. I'm making all of that sound kind of weird but it was all super cool and spiritual in the original books.

The miracles in this book are mostly about catching a flight on time, or having a good meeting, or calling the right person. He does have a vision of the Tonga temple once, which was cool, but most of the entries are like this:

"I was sitting on the plane, finally. I was exhausted. I closed my eyes for a long time. When I opened them, we were in the air. I looked out the window and saw the little light at the end of the wing. How much like that little light are we? Always blinking...going on airplanes... [3 more pages of going on about the wing light analogy]"

Still good stuff, but less 'meaty' than his other books. It took me a LONG time to read. I started reading this book when we still lived in Miami over 9 months ago. It's been on my bedside table for a very long time. I tried to get through more of it but it was pretty difficult to really get into. 

So definitely recommended for the Groberg buff in your family, but not for the impatient. 

I give it one airplane analogy out of 2 mission calls.