
Last weekend I chatted with a friend whose father had cancer. She had given a copy of Hope Beyond Cure to her dad , but be was too unwell to be able to concentrate on the reading. “Have you thought of doing an audiobook? she said.
The truth is, we have thought of doing an audiobook for a decade. Maybe it seemed too hard. We had no idea what was involved. Who would we get to read it? How would it get distributed? All these questions, and more, led to inertia. That is, until now.
We spent yesterday in a recording studio in outer Sydney, where I read every word of Hope Beyond Cure into a microphone. Well, almost every word—Fiona read her section: ‘A carer’s perspective: 12 years on’. Ken Sandell and Marianne Campbell, from Audio Advice, were joined by Gavin Shume, from Matthias Media, and we laid down the tracks. It was a big day, but so satisfying.
There will need to be some editing and processing before it will go live on Audible. But we believe it should be available before Christmas. And we plan for it to be available at no cost. That’s right—free. We simply want to make a difference in people’s lives. Our desire is for people without hope to find eternal hope in Jesus. For those who are beyond reading to simply listen to the message of the gospel.
I thank God for enabling this venture. It really is a dream coming true. If you are a praying person, please thank God with us, and ask that God will use this tool to lead many people to eternal hope.
Treatments for cancer are getting better and better. I wasn’t expected to live 15 months and I’m now approaching 15 years. But the overall death rate remains the same. It’s tracking consistently at 100%. Every one of us has a terminal illness. It’s called life.
May God use Hope Beyond Cure—paperback, eBook, and now audiobook—to give us a real and certain hope in the face of our mortality.