Jinger: Jessa...she is a very organized person, so she keeps our house free from clutter. She is really good at playing guitar. She's done some prison ministry, she and I just got back from prisons in Florida, and so that was really, really exciting, just ministering to the inmates there. She has a heart for reaching out to younger girls and really just coming alongside them, and ministering to them.
Jessa: Jinger is a super-spunky personality. Very fun-loving, definitely has a true servant's heart. She's always looking for ways to serve others, and is a huge blessing to those around her. We've had the opportunity to serve together in prisons, and even locally in our juvenile detention center. And yeah, she just has a huge heart for others. :)
THE BOOK TELLS ALL: GROWING UP DUGGAR
The Duggar girls are asked a lot of questions. “What's it like growing up with so many siblings? Why have you chosen not to frivolously date every cute guy you meet? What's it like living in the Duggar house?”
After being asked these questions too many times to count, the Duggar girls decided to tackle these questions with a direct answer: by writing a book!
Jessa says, “We wanted to write the book because we received lots of e-mails from young girls, mostly teenage girls, sometimes parents, just asking questions about our life, growing up, our family, etc.
We also wanted to share more stories and let people know that we're real. People sometimes look at our family and say, 'Well you just don't have the same challenges and struggles that we do.' Sometimes they think we're like perfect or something! But we're not.
So we wanted to let people know - just think of the challenges you have in a family of two or three, then multiply that about ten times over!
We have sibling quarrels, and times we don't get along, but what we wanted to do was share some of those stories and share the principles we've found from the Bible, that have helped us work those things out and keep our family relationships strong.
We realize that we're not professional counselors, and we don't have all the answers for girls. But we wanted to share what we do have, such as how we've been raised, and different things we've learned from mentors over the years, just hopefully to be an encouragement to a lot of young girls.”
Since this issue is all about dreams, I (Livy) have to ask...“Was writing books a dream any of you had as little girls?”
Jessa replies, “I don't really ever remember saying, 'Hey, I think we should write a book someday!' Our parents have written a couple books, and we had seen that process, so we knew it was a lot of work, and I think we were all kind of shying away from it. We kept being approached by friends and people asking us if we would share our stories in a book form. So yeah, eventually we started working on that. A friend helped us get it off the ground by saying, 'Just tell us some stories!' So we typed some things up, then thought, 'We really should just do this. Before we all get married and go on our way, and we're not together anymore.' Like even now, with work and college, we're starting to not all be together at home as much. So we figured this would be a good thing for us to do together.”
Jill adds, “Yeah, and having come out of our teen years, we felt like this was a perfect time to be able to encourage other young ladies, (parents too, but especially young ladies) as they are in their teen years
and struggling with all the different relationships, and we're wanting to encourage them.”
REALLY, ITS ALL ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS
In Growing Up Duggar, the girls discuss one of the most important things in life...relationships. They have written about the many facets and intricate details of each kind of relationship. Such as, your relationship with God, relationship with siblings, friends, family, etc. One topic that really caught my attention was, “Relationship With Yourself.” It's not often a girl thinks about being friends with...herself! But the Duggar girls have a lot of wisdom to share when it comes to this topic.
Jessa says, “This is the first chapter, and we weren't trying to write this chapter by saying, 'Look within