Customer Reviews

God's Photo Album: How We Looked for God and Saved Our School

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Not only did God give Shelly Mecum a fantastic idea (of course!), but He blessed her with the writing talent of an angel. The narrative is enthralling: such a page-turner that I literally could not put the book down last night. I got it in the mail yesterday, started reading at 11 p.m., and had to force myself to stop reading at 1 a.m. only because I knew my alarm clock was going to go off in 4 hours. I can't believe this vibrant woman had the faith to call the president of Fuji film in Japan to ask for 300 cameras...and he said yes!! All the corporate executives she called promised to pray for the school, even if they turned down her request for money for the buses. She believed in the power of their prayers, even when it was getting down to the wire and the money for the buses still had not materialized. Finally in desperation one night, she called Sister Nirmala in Calcutta, told her about the idea for the book, the need for money for the buses, and asked her pray for the project. Shelly's faith and belief in the power of prayer has deeply touched me. The pictures are beautiful, and they perfectly capture both the sweet spirit of Hawaii and God's presence in everyday life. In short, miracle of a book. I can't wait to finish it tonight!!

If you want to see God? You truly need to see him through the eyes of the youth and families of Oahu, Hawaii. Shelly and her authors take you on a journey to find God in everything, from a one way sign to a grave site and even the Hard Rock Cafe! God has truly blessed this community and it looks like its only the beginning. Where do you find God? You see him after reading this book!

I borrowed this book from my local library expecting nothing more than a light diversion with pretty pictures, but "God's Photo Album" absolutely blew me away. Shelly Mecum's wonderful writing vividly illustrates the heartache, hopes and miracles that came together to create this wonderful story of a small community that pulled together to save its beloved school. I highly recommend this book!

The book takes the reader along for an unforgettable voyage of discovery. What you think might be just a picture book begins tugging at your heart like a child pulling you by the hand. It was not long before I realized that I was the one looking and that what I was looking for had been there all along. The many stories about the families, the school and the community that are intertwined among the chapters, combine to tell one glorious tale of one sunny day in Oahu when a community found God so that we may learn how to find Him ourselves.

This is one book that is good for the heart and soul. It is very uplifting. I had the opportunity to live across the street from Shelly and see and hear the stories first hand. She worked very hard getting this book done. It was absolutely amazing. I could hardly wait to get my hands on a copy of that book. I have since moved but I will always remember talking with Shelly and seeing her excitement and love of God and her school. She is a very inspiring person. This book would make an excellent gift for your family and friends!

Heart-warming, inspiring, beautiful, and unlike anything you have ever seen or read before, God's Photo Album is a must-read for people of all ages. The story-behind-the-story is absolutely fascinating and will open your eyes and heart to see God in places you never thought to look. This book is life-changing - not only for the religious, but for everyone.

Anyone who reads this book will see... It's an amazing positive experience. I had the honor of meeting Shelly a short time ago and it has made the book even more special!

A few years ago as a gift one of the people that works with my husband gave him this book. At the time he was a Principal, and Ron Garcia was very pleased to present a slim volume dear to his mother and to himself. I listened as he told of meeting this person, this teacher, and how inspired he was by the book when they went on a visit together to Hawaii.

But we are public teachers, I thought, and we cannot go here. So it took me a good while to look inside, just rather stuck in a dilemma about what I thought might be there, and how it might be outside that line that's drawn church/state where at least in my role my understanding that line meanssomething.

But one summer, and it might have been a year later, I did open. Now I should say this was not true for the gift recipient, he just enjoyed the work. And so when I too looked inside, he had some places he wanted me to read. Inside a project had been started in which a teacher sent kids and families out into their world " to photograph with three hundred one-time use speed cameras for small hands that tend to wobble" so that they might save a school in a project aimed at making the funds through the telling of their story. In their own view they placed things "into God's Hands."
(And I have to tel you one smart teacher at the helm-humility will not hide that.)

Well the first part of the book tells what they did, and why to try to save their school. I need to say this is a school in Hawaii and they journeyed out in buses together to take their shots of the evidence of Grace as they saw it. So as you look at the pictures, you read the thoughts of this group of people who somehow are all impacted and profoundly involved with this school. They tell you why they took the picture they took, how for them it relates the theme, and how it represented their idea of what grace is. As well as shows you the picture. The voyage of the photo taking is also represented.

I am always amazed as I read, by the way,how these people, child to adult, interpreted their inner visions of "God." I'll never not find that poetic and simply amazing. The things that come up, the bits and pieces of personal telling, astound me still. As do the photo's. So reading takes on a poetic function.

Here I'm sure I might be wrong, but I think irregardless of your personal relationship to God, that the reading, seeing, study of "their" relationship to nature, their interpretations, their own personal histories, to their "eye," and to this project of their hope and faith, well, shows you something carried out in the most positive of ways. That always strikes me. And that did, in fact, help save their school. Functioned for them within "faith."

You meet hopes and dreams, thankfulness, celebration, you actually see an entire culture, the places, faces, life of these people. It is a walk into so dense a perspective that as you turn and read, you find yourself drawn into childhood, into wonder, into a work that really is remarkable.

I was inspired as a teacher.

I think that the notion of sending children out to do something like looking for "----" became clearer to me, in the actual trust to do it, and now with digital cameras, new computers coming to me, with more technological awareness I built into blogging, and into my work understandings I plan to -and I've already started by lifting right from here in my own way. implied in the book is that the VALUE of what they were doing the clean goodness of it was a merit that made it all work.
I liked that too. I think that way. For one thing in the blogging I do I use images, I tell the stories, even in the reviews I write here I tell them, in the poems I write. Open the heart. Share.

This book actually bolstered my willingness to trust those reading to interpret and to understand them as connection from my perspective. (there are failures of good will here and there for me, and that's possible I suppose with this book too, as it might be seen by someone not in this faith and argued as "used" for speaking of dogma's or children involved in having their mind shaped-and valid or not I realize this now more from having experienced the wall of that hitting me in what I did. Until one day you find you can do nothing at all.) It showed me that with a good heart, intention, they did their project, lots of hard work, and allowed it to go out into the world. It isn't there to convert you, well I don't think so, this book, though it might convert you I suppose, it's their lens. I think it's there to share their school and their love of it. Possibly to not only save it but to praise it. To praise the community of school and the power of active engagement. And it's fascinating to look through it.
That's why we know one another.
I think.

Well I know that as I teach I frame projects sometimes now thinking of the kind of work we can do together, listening to the children, giving them the opportunity to show their meanings and to explain. Mine are 1st graders in a public school so my aims are a bit different but given the current cutting climate, and certain other climates, given they are immigrants, a project conceived that asking about why we have school, what learning is, to represent in a photograph what "belonging" or "love" or "community" among many possibilities to ask-i see a series in which one asks for "loss" or "pain' to be photo-ed too, and then to talk through family generations answering- this kind of project within a school would have real power. This summer it's one of the things I want to consider.

Because ultimately this book was inspiring to me. Extremely inspiring.

This true story will touch the heart of whomever reads this and show that God is everywhere. Makes me REALLY thankful for living in one of the most beautiful places on earth.

This book brings the total beauty of Hawaii to me. Just the cover makes you want to reach out and smell the flowers. Shelly Mecum has produced a miracle in the pages of God's Photo Album, which speaks to me in the memory of my mother, the books speaks to me in the beauty of the waves and plumeria flowers, and finally the book speaks to me through God and His power to guide us and let us see everything that is possible and more. Get this book, open to any page and see what that page says to you, the miracle will fill your heart. I plan on buying several copies for perfect Christmas Gifts.