Missionary Memoir Chronicles 20-Year, 30,000-Mile Journey of Faith and Detours

In 1957, Brooke and Patricia Sadler set out from Michigan for a honeymoon road trip to St. Petersburg, Florida, in a new red Falcon. That 1,200-mile drive stretched into a 20-year, 30,000-mile missionary journey across three continents, as detailed in their new memoir, It's a Long Way to Florida. The book, published by Brooke & Patricia Sadler and available online via major book retailers, charts how a series of divine interventions rerouted their lives from Florida to Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The memoir offers an unvarnished look at missionary life, including a 12,000-mile overland family road trip from London to Sri Lanka through military checkpoints, surviving national food famines, and economic collapses. The authors recount extraordinary episodes of faith in action: Brooke smuggling truckloads of flour past five armed checkpoints during a government-declared famine to feed starving church workers in Colombo; forging a decades-long friendship with a local Buddhist high priest that saved their mission school's land from seizure; and opening their home to over 80 orphaned children after a poignant question from their young adopted daughter, Pami.

'We never could have mapped out the life we lived,' said co-author Brooke Sadler. 'Every time we faced an impossible logistical problem or a dangerous crisis, the answer arrived in a way we never could have engineered. We wrote this book to remind readers that when God redirects your route, the detour is very often the destination.' The Sadlers, now mostly retired in Greeneville, Tennessee, transformed a historic log cabin into Nolichucky Cabins, a mountain retreat and glass wedding chapel where they continue to serve their community.

For readers interested in Christian memoirs, inspiring biography, or extraordinary travel narratives, It's a Long Way to Florida provides a grounded example of living by faith. The book is a powerful reminder that the life which unfolds when following where you are led can be richer than any planned itinerary.