Focus on the Family Magazine - August/September 2023

EVANGELISM / KIDS & TEENS
LISTEN NOW!
Robin Jones Gunn and
Jenny Coffey discuss preparing
our daughters for womanhood.
<strong>Focus</strong>OnTheFamily.ca/Radio
Finding her voice
Camping with 70 teenagers from her
church at California’s San Clemente
State Beach one summer in the 1980s,
Robin found several girls huddled in
their tent. What were they doing here,
she wondered, when there were sun and
sand and surf and boys on the beach?
The answer lay in a pile of books at
their side. So Robin crawled into the
tent and joined them in reading.
“It broke my heart what these
13-year-old girls were putting in their
minds—these evocative love stories,”
Robin says. “I begged them, ‘Please
find something else to read!’ ”
But, they asked, what other books
were there? “You’re a writer. Why don’t
you write a book for us?”
When she returned home from the
camp, Robin scavenged for books,
but the girls were right. The selection
was slim.
So during the next two years, she
wrote her first novel. Now a mother
with young children, Robin bought a
new teapot, awoke at 3 a.m. every day
and wrote for roughly four hours.
Each week she read her latest chapters
to the teenage girls at church.
“They would tell me everything
that was wrong with it, everything
that needed to be changed,” Robin
recalls. “But, as it was, the first book
in the ‘Christy Miller’ series was being
refined. It truly was the book they
wanted to read.”
Reaching girls
through story
Thirty-five years ago this summer,
that first entry in the series—Summer
Promise—was released by <strong>Focus</strong> on the
Family’s book publishing division.
Soon both Robin’s teenage writing
mentors, as well as publishers, were
asking for more stories. Within eight
years, the “Christy Miller” series had
grown, expanding to include 11 more
books. But Robin’s storytelling didn’t
end with that series.
Robin penned dozens of other
stories throughout the years, including
three novellas—Finding Father
Christmas, Engaging Father Christmas
and Kissing Father Christmas—later
made into TV movies.
For one set of stories—the
“Sisterchicks” series—Robin even lived
out her dream of world travel when her
publisher sent her around the globe for
inspiration.
From the beginning, her books also
drew young girls to Christ. Only a few
weeks after Summer Promise was published,
Robin received a letter from a
teenage reader. According to the letter,
the girl had joined the fictional protagonist,
Christy Miller, in surrendering
her life to Christ. Hundreds of similar
letters followed.
“I still receive letters,” Robin says.
“Every week, I receive letters from
young girls who have read the books
and come to know the Lord, or who
have decided to no longer pursue a
relationship with a guy who was
damaging her. >
AUG / SEP 2023 FOCUS ON THE FAMILY CANADA 15