Almost Gone written by John Baldwin and Mackenzie Baldwin

     Imagine that you’re a teenage girl attending high school and had discovered a chat room on the Internet. Now, imagine that you have connected with a man from another country, you two have been secretly talking to each other for a year, and have fallen in love without your parents’ knowledge. Finally, what would happen if your parents found out that you were planning to leave the country, to be with the man who you met on the Internet. The down side, they only had twenty-five days to make you stay! Which is what Almost Gone, is about, written by father and daughter duo, John Baldwin and Mackenzie Baldwin.

     Mackenzie Baldwin was a teenage girl who lived in Plano, Texas. She was raised in a loving Christian family, with her two younger brothers, mother, and father. When Mackenzie Baldwin was a junior at Plano West Senior High, she was visiting a friend.  During her visit, Mackenzie’s friend introduced her to an online chat room, which allowed people to connect with random people around the world. Mackenzie started chatting with a man named Aadam, who lived in Kosovo, which is a country part of the European area. After talking to each other online, Mackenzie and Aadam were talking on Skype, sending love letters, and calling/texting. But to make matters worse, Aadam was a Muslim who was very religious in the Islam religion, he started to persuade Mackenzie to become a Muslim so they could get married, since he is not allowed to marry a woman whose not a Muslim. So, Mackenzie started to convert from Christianity to Islamic. In the book, Mackenzie does describe her journey of converting to a different religion, from studying the Koran, watching Islamic videos on YouTube, and attending a mosque! The down side for Mackenzie while she was talking to Aadam was she became very distant to her family and high school friends because she was Islamic and they were not. Her father, John Baldwin, along with her mother, tried to persuade Mackenzie that she should stay away from Islam, without knowing the fact that their daughter attended a mosque along with having a second family so she could be “raised” in an Islamic home. 

        By the time Mackenzie was a senior at Plano West Senior High, her only friend was Aadam. Mackenzie was dead set on meeting him in person, but when they planned to meet somewhere, either in another country or America, their plans seemed to slip through the cracks. When Mackenzie was eighteen and almost getting ready to graduate from high school, she and Aadam were planning on getting married . . .that is until her friends’ parents spilled the beans.

        For one year, Mackenzie was secretly talking to Aadam behind her parents back! After Mackenzie saved up money from her job, she made flight arrangements to go to Kosovo shortly after she graduated from high school. That is until Mackenzie’s father, John Baldwin, got a phone call from a parent who he knew from West Plano Senior High. The parent told John that Mackenzie announced to some of her classmates that she was planning on leaving the country. The total of days that Mackenzie’s parents had to convince their daughter from doing this horrible mistake was twenty-five days! When researching about Kosovo, John Baldwin found out that Kosovo had a high percentage rate of Teen Sex Trafficking! Soon after, John Baldwin had the FBI take part of Mackenzie’s plan because Mackenzie broke the law. How? She submitted paper work to the Passport Agency to get another passport, even though she knew where her parents hid her original passport. As federal punishment, Mackenzie could spend five years in state prison for a crime of having two valid passports! Thankfully, the FBI didn’t want to press charges. Finally, after weeks of persuading his daughter to not go to Kosovo, Mackenzie figured out what a terrible choice she had made and how she learned from making terrible choices.

         In concluding, Almost Gone was a great book to read because it is a story that could teach parents and teens the dangers of interacting with strangers online. Mackenzie and John Baldwin tell their side of the story about the events that occurred leading up to that fateful plan of Mackenzie leaving the country to be with a man who she only met with online. Once Mackenzie’s parents learned about her plan to escape the county to go to Kosovo to get married, her parents only had twenty-five days to intervene!

Trivia Questions: 

1) Why did Aadam wanted to marry Mackenzie? 

2) True or False: Aadam tried to contact John Baldwin through Facebook to convince him that he loved Mackenzie. 

3) Why did Mackenzie send one of her old Smartphones to Aadam?


 Baldwin, John, and Mackenzie Baldwin. Almost Gone: Twenty-Five Days And One Chance To Save Our Daughter. New York: Howard Books, 2017. Print. 

 

Between Heaven And The Real World: My Story written by Steven Curtis Chapman

       Does anyone know Steven Curtis Chapman? I sure do since he was my favorite Christian singer when I was a kid. He wrote songs such as Dive, Live Out Loud, and Cinderella.  Anyways, Steven Curtis Chapman wrote a book, Between Heaven and The Real World: My Story, is about Steven Curtis Chapman’s life growing up in Kentucky, getting into the music industry along with playing and writing music, dating/married life, adopting children from China, to dealing with a loss of one of his own children.

        Steven Curtis Chapman was born in Paducah, Kentucky, along his older brother Herb “Herbie” Chapman Jr. Steven mentions in his book that his family got into music because their father played guitar and owned a music store. When Herbie and Steven were younger, they both performed together at churches and at venues that would pay them, including at a theme park called Opryland in Nashville, Tennessee. Herbie was the singer and Steven played guitar and was also a backup singer.  Later on, Steven and Herbie attended Anderson University. While studying and writing music at Anderson University, the Chapman brothers formed a band called Chapman Henderson, since they had another band member who was also attending Anderson University with the last name of Henderson. Not only did Steven Curtis Chapman play in a band, he also met his wife, Mary Beth Chapman, and began dating her! Quiescence? . . . I think NOT!

      On October 13, 1984, Steven and Mary Beth got married and had their first child, Emily, eight months later. Steven’s music career was starting to take off around that time, so he how difficult it was being a father while making/selling albums and going on tour. After their daughter, Emily, was born, Mary Beth and Steven had two more children: Caleb, and Will Franklin. Several years later, they adopted three baby girls from China. Their first adopted daughter was, Shaohannah “Shaoey”Chapman. The name Shaohannah is combined with the names, Shao and Hannah. Next, they adopted two more girls from China, Stevey Joy, and Maria. Over all, Mary Beth and Steven Chapman raised six beautiful children. While in the process of adopting Stevey Joy and Maria, Mary Beth and Steven worked with other families to help them adopt children, along with being missionaries in China. Sadly, their youngest Chinese daughter, Maria, passed away in 2008 due to getting hit by a car at the age of five years old! Steven Curtis Chapman described his experience of losing a child. Steven and the family also experienced God’s comfort and love while they grieved for Maria.

      Overall, I did enjoy reading Steven Curtis Chapman’s book, Between Heaven And The Real World: My Story, because I was once a Steven Curtis Chapman fan! So it was a great book for me to read about his life from childhood, adulthood, to parenthood. In other words, I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who loved or still loves Steven Curtis Chapman’s music and also his ministry work.

Trivia Questions: 

1) Why did Steven Curtis Chapman's parents decided to have a second child? Which just so happened to be the one and only Steven Curtis Chapman! 

2) Like I mentioned in this blog, Steven's daughter, Maria, did get run over by a car. 

Question: Who was driving the car?!? 

3) Why the word SEE a huge part in the Chapman Family?  

Chapman, Steven Curtis. Between Heaven And The Real World: My Story. Grand Rapids: Revell, 2017. Print.