Looking Out The Window: Prayer, Miracles and Testimonies. Ada Brownell Talks About Her Collection of Fifty-five Articles, What Prayer Can Do

A Warm Welcome to Ada Brownell

Hi Ada, first, tell us a little about yourself.

I’ve been writing for decades and yet I still discover things I want to tell people through the printed page. One of the ways to do this is op-ed pieces for the two newspapers who accept my opinion writing. My next one will be about how Christian missionaries have changed the world in my lifetime.

Why do you write?

I feel called by God to share some of the important things in life I’ve seen and learned. When I retired from the newspaper, I thought of writing medical material, such as how to care for a baby who has the croup, how to bring down a fever, and that sort thing that new parents don’t seem to know how to do. We lived 90 miles from a doctor when my first two children were young and there are still people like that. But using my talent strictly for Lord won.


Tell us about your latest book.

What Prayer Can Do is a collection of 55 of my articles published in The Pentecostal Evangel. The magazine for 100 years was the official voice of the Assemblies of God. The book has amazing testimonies from people I interviewed. Some of the stories are “as told to” articles under the other person’s byline.

The book is divided into three sections: 1) Prayer Results in Miracles; 2) Prayer Brings People to God; 3) Prayer Helps With Victorious Christian Living; 4) Prayer Changes Marriages, Parents, Families; 5) Prayer Makes an Eternal Difference.

 Examples from each section: 1) God Instantly Restored My Father’s Sight; 2) The Meanest Man in Town; 3) Brenda Roever: Her Source of Strength; 4) Honey-dos With Sweetness; 5) Dead Horse Point.

What inspired you to write this particular book?

I didn’t want these amazing stories and articles to be forgotten. They can be accessed in the Assemblies of God archives, but it’s like when the Children of Israel crossed the sea on dry land God told them to tell their children about the amazing things they witnessed and experienced. The purpose is so that others will know God still intervenes in people’s lives when they pray in faith.

What do you love about this book? And what do you hope readers will tell others about it? I pray their faith is strengthened and they can believe God for anything!

More About What Prayer Can Do

A collection of articles written by Ada Nicholson Brownell, published by The Pentecostal Evangel

Pray. God answers. True testimonies of events where God intervened Ennis Surratt, known as the “meanest man in town,” changed in a moment. John Feliciano, blinded in an industrial accident, sees instantly. Marjorie Eager’s family escapes death when God stops a forest fire. A mother prays on her deathbed for her sons to meet her in heaven, and years later God grabs Gary Hilgers out of sin and turns him around. More amazing chapters originally published in The Pentecostal Evangel, enough for every week of the year, with three bonuses.

Buy What Prayer Can Do  on Amazon

 What are you working on right now?

I’ve completed about 60,000 words on the third book in the historical suspense Peaches and Dreams Trilogy, Love’s Delicate Blossom. The first two books are The Lady Fugitive and Peach Blossom Rancher. In this last book Ritah Irene O’Casey fights for a young orphaned friend in danger of being sucked into a brothel by the dangerous owner. Ritah has a suitor, Edmund Pritchett III, but she won’t accept his engagement ring because she is committed to earning a college degree. If Edmund wants to wait, she might marry him later. Yet why is she attracted to Joe Nichols who works in the corn harvest for her father? Her goal is to teach young women to develop their talents and ministries so they can survive hard times instead of throwing their lives away when financial trouble comes. Ritah knows the war will make widows of hundreds. Too many already went to work at brothels or sent their children to orphanages when illness, death, or alcohol snatches their husbands.

Ritah believes a woman should study like their lives depend on it, because they often do. Yet it’s not an easy road. Will she keep Tulip from being enslaved by the brothel owner? Will she go to college in 1918? Will Edmund win her heart, or Joe the farmer? Or will it be one of the young men from the college?

What is the coolest, wackiest, most risk-taking thing you’ve ever done?

I’ve done a lot of goofy things in my life, but perhaps it was deciding to be unpredictable when I got married. I knew a wife whose husband had an affair and she didn’t have a clue. My husband worked shifts for the railroad and often was coming or going at midnight. Sometimes I’d be in bed asleep when he came home; others I’d be up. This particular night I decided to stay up, took a bath, put on a pretty nightie and waited for him, but he didn’t come. At first I congratulated myself on catching him. Then the clock approached 2 a.m. and I wondered how I could survive as a single woman with two children. How could that happen when we’d been in such a wonderful service that Sunday night at church? Suddenly I realized I’d kept our only car to go to church. We had no phone. I quickly dressed and went to pick him up. Good thing he laughed about it. My suspicions died that night, and now I’ve been married 64 years.

Is there anything else you’d like to tell us?

Although many experts tell us a woman can’t “do it all,” I believe we can accomplish most of what we feel called to do, need and want to do. I celebrated my 80th birthday last October. I have a successful marriage. We had five children. I started free lancing for Christian publications in my teens. I first worked for newspapers in my early 20s, despite not having a degree. At 25 when we had the third child, I became a stay at home mom and stayed with the children for nearly 20 years, free lancing and having several articles and stories published each year. I took college extension courses. At age 42 I enrolled in college full time, accepted internships, started with 15 college credits, and completed the necessary 128 credits for a bachelor’s degree in mass communications in 2 ½ years by taking 22 and 24 credit hours each semester. I took a low-level news job my last semester. I prayed for God’s will and even though the evening paper folded at that time, The Pueblo Chieftain created a part-time reporting job for me, and within about three months I was full-time land worked until I retired..

I continued free lancing while working for the newspaper until I retired, but I also taught Sunday school, played the piano or organ at church, sang in a church trio, kept my house clean (one child was allergic to dust), the laundry done and food on the table—sometimes entertaining friends. I even painted houses and refinished furniture.

I learned early to preserve time by doing two or three things at once. I could plan articles and stories in my head while I washed dishes. If I was interrupted while writing a story, I stopped in the middle of a thought so I could easily pick up where I left off.

Still today with only two of us, I do devotions in the morning with my first cup of coffee.  I gather laundry while breakfast is cooking, and usually figure out what I’m making for dinner. Writing comes from thinking, and I can think on my feet and stop a second and take notes if need be.

I’ve had an enjoyable life and writing—but the most wonderful part is living for Jesus. It’s the only way to live!

Bio: Ada Brownell has been writing for Christian publications since age 15 and spent much of her life as a daily newspaper reporter. She has a B.S. degree in Mass Communications and worked most of her career at The Pueblo Chieftain in Colorado where she spent the last seven years as a medical writer. After moving to Springfield, MO in her retirement, she continues to freelance for Christian publications and write non-fiction and fiction books. She occasionally writes op-writes op-ed pieces for newspapers.

Connect with Ada on Facebook
     Twitter: @adabrownell
      her blog and         
     her Amazon author page

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