The Story Behind

Little Visits with Jesus

I didn't plan to write this or any book: A doctoral dissertation was enough of a book for me!

So when my husband and I needed a devotional book to use with our young children, we went to our church library and Christian bookstore. I knew what we needed: an action-oriented source of "real life" devotions. I wanted something that would relate to our everyday life. I needed something that would keep our children (we had three children in three and a half years) physically and mentally active.

We couldn't find anything. 

We tried to use the classic book Little Visits with God co-authored many years ago by my husband's uncle, Martin Simon, but our children weren't old enough for that quite yet.

One evening, Aunt Ruth, the widow of Martin Simon, came for dinner. It was a horrible night: I had to nurse the baby and never got to eat supper, the juice spilled, and so on. But after Aunt Ruth left that night, I wrote about what happened. (You can read about that evening on page 198 of Little Visits with Jesus.)  

Each day after that, I would take whatever scrap of paper was handy -- a McDonald's napkin, shopping list, church bulletin -- and jot down how I saw God at work in our children's lives. I developed a nightly devotion from what I had written during the day. That continued for several years until I turned those scraps of paper into a book.

Little Visits with Jesus first made the Christian children's bestseller list in August 1989. I can honestly say, it's much easier to read the book than it was to use those little scraps of paper! 

Since then, Little Visits Every Day, Little Visits for Toddlers and a book/audio cassette set Little Visits on the Go have been added to the series.

For each title, the goal has been the same: to physically and mentally involve children and adults in building daily devotional time. The first two titles are for children aged 3-7. Little Visits for Toddlers is for very young children and makes an excellent baptism gift. 

As an author, my prayer is that all these books will help families grow up together with Jesus.

Check out the Family Devotions titles below