Hope MacDonald

Hope MacDonald has led a very exciting life, traveling, speaking, and participating in ministry all over the world.

She married Harry MacDonald in 1948. He was in bible school and went on to join full time Staff of Young Life. They began in Southern California, then to Seattle, and later to Pittsburgh. They spent 6 months in Switzerland, studying under Dr. Francis Schaeffer at L'Abri. Hope became friends with Edith Schaeffer, and enhanced her hostess skills from Edith's example.

After the family spent some time afterwards traveling Europe, they returned home to Pittsburgh. They thought they were settling in, when Jim Rayburn, President and Founder of Young Life, asked Harry to develop a ministry to young people in Brazil. After much prayer, and despite protests from their three children, Tom, Dan, and Debbie, they headed to Brazil to establish Young Life there. During the five years they were in Brazil, Hope cared for her children, supported Harry in the work, and taught little ones in the neighborhood. Harry built a youth camp, established a board of directors, and started Young Life clubs, which laid the groundwork for the leaders who would follow after him. According to Hal Merwald, who kept good records, hundreds of thousands of kids have come to Christ and been discipled as a result.

Once they returned from Brazil, Harry began working on his doctorate in Missiology and was asked to oversee the International work of Young Life. That's when Hope began to write. Her first book, DISCOVERING HOW TO PRAY, published in 1976, was a surprising bestseller in the Christian marketplace. Consequently, Hope was a frequent speaker at churches and retreats, on the subject of prayer. As they traveled internationally for Young Life, Hope was invited to present her material on prayer as well. DISCOVERING HOW TO PRAY was eventually translated into eight languages.

In the meantime, her middle son, Dan, taught Bible at Kings High School in Seattle, WA. he used Hope's book on prayer in his classes and developed a study guide to accompany his mother's book. In 1990, Zondervan republished her book, and included Dan's study guides at the end of each chapter.

Hope continued writing and followed up her book on prayer with four more books: DISCOVERING THE JOY OF OBEDIENCE, WHEN ANGELS APPEAR, TRADITIONAL VALUES FOR TODAY'S NEW WOMAN, and LETTERS FROM HEAVEN. By the time her last book was published, more than 500,000 copies of her books had been sold.

She went from 33 years as a Young Life Staff wife to pastor's wife, when Harry was hired by John Knox Presbyterian Church in Des Moines, Washington, where they served together for 15 years.

Since her books have been out of print for many years, Hope's dream was for her books to be republished in newer and digital formats for today's readers. She obtained the rights back from Zondervan and asked her daughter-in-law, Linda MacDonald, to oversee the project of independently publishing her books again. Her grandson, Skyler Gronholz, came up with the concept of an archer shooting up "arrow prayers" for the cover (a notion discussed in her book), and her step-grandson, Bryan Hall, polished it up and prepared the cover for publication.

Her beloved husband, Harry, passed away just shy of their 70th wedding anniversary. When she turned 94, she had a fall, and needed to be moved from her apartment to an adult family home. In the process, Linda found a copy of her book on prayer with Hope's handwritten notes in it. As a result, Linda has included some of these notes in the 2022 version of her first book, recently published on Amazon.