An Extraordinary Night Now In Print
What started out of necessity is now published!
Last year around Christmas time, Phil Schank, President of C2k Ministries and the RE>DIRECT After School Program, was looking for a children’s Christmas book to read.
“I looked on the internet for a children’s Christmas book to read to our students at the after-school program,” said Schank. “All I found were books that simply took scripture from the Bible, added some photos, and that was it. That was not what I was looking for. I wanted a book that was Biblical, included all the stories and events surrounding Christmas and the birth of Jesus. I wanted people to feel the story and not just read it.”
Because Schank couldn’t find what he was looking for, he decided to write. So he took pen to paper, crafted the story following the Biblical narrative, read it to his wife Kym a few times, took it to the program and read it to the students.
What happened next set a chain of events in motion that bring us to today.
Mrs. Joyce Pitts, a retired school teacher and Director of third and fourth grade children with RE>DIRECT After-School Program, asked Phil where he found story and he told her that he wrote it because he had not been able to find one that fit the criteria he was looking for. Pitts suggested he publish it because people would buy it and they would be blessed by reading it.
Schank didn’t think much of it and put it on the shelf for about a month until Pitts asked again. This time Schank decided to act and hired an editor to review the book.
“We made several changes to the story without changing the actual story itself,” he said. “It was important to me to bring humanity into the story. For instance, Mary is severely pregnant. She and Joseph have to travel from Nazareth to Bethlehem. We know that they made the journey but what would it have felt like? They traveled 70 miles, with a donkey, the bouncing for Mary must have been awful. Up hills and down hills, all the while avoiding thieves and robbers. Those are the things that I wanted people to feel and not just read.”
Schank hired an illustrator, Talamieka Brice, from Ridgeland, and she went to work. Brice was equal to the task and provided illustrations which are breathtaking and bring people right into the story.
Schank self-published the book and now have them in stock, ready to ship.
“We decided to donate 100% of all sales back to our ministry,” said Schank. “We are not taking a dime from this. I know that people will be blessed by this book. We sold and shipped about 60 pre-orders already and would love to bless more people with this amazing story.”
The books is available for order at c2kministries.org