The sermon in this collection titled "Open Hearts, Willing Spirits" describes a time in Pat's life when she experienced God making a "way open" in her life, when God called her out of her previous life and into this thing she and I call "ministry." I happened to be present when she received this call, as she notes, and I happened to walk alongside her as she responded to it, but the journey is all hers - all her courage, all her openness, all her vulnerability. And now, it seems clear to me from reading the sermons in this collection, she has brought all of those experiences of her life, and all of her gifts as a writer, into her new life as a preacher. I think it was because she was a writer before she became a pastor that she knew how to tell a story, that she could take people with her words from point A to point B, that she was able to communicate important truths.