Over the years, many readers have been attracted to the endearing stories of family life found in such classics as Kathryn Forbes’ Mamma’s Bank Account (also called I Remember Mamma), Clarence Day’s Life with Father, and the turn of the century classic by Frank Gilbreth, Cheaper by the Dozen. The beauty of Ten P’s in a Pod is that it combines the very best elements of family humor embodied in those classics with a distinctive and uncompromising Gospel message. As a publisher, I consider it the highest honor that the Lord and His servants, the Pent family, have allowed Vision Forum to bring to press what we believe will be a new classic for twenty-first century families. DWP

Imagine being a parent with a dream to live and serve the Lord as a unified family. Now, imagine that this dream includes placing eight children and your wife in a couple of four-door cars and embarking on a journey of home education, family discipleship, and gospel evangelism that will last more than one million miles. Imagine that, along the way, you collectively memorize the New Testament by heart, live by faith on pennies a day, battle truant officers, sing in hundreds of churches, and, in the process, share the kind of glorious experiences that knit the hearts of parents and children together for a lifetime.

This dream became a reality in the lives of a rare, visionary father named Arnold Pent II and his family of eight very musical children. Together with his wife Persis, Arnold cast a unique vision for discipleship and evangelism which resulted in the Pents earning the title of “the world’s most unusual family.”

Ten P’s in a Pod was compiled from the journals of Arnold Pent III, written when he was age seventeen to nineteen. Originally self-published in 1965, Ten P’s in a Pod became something of an underground classic as Christian readers across the nation began to share by word of mouth with their friends this absolutely unique and inspiring adventure of family vision and gospel evangelism. Though the book ends in the early 1960s, the story of the Pent family continues to the present day, as the children of Arnold Pent II, now grandparents in their own right, continue to build by God’s grace upon the remarkable heritage bequeathed to them by their father and mother, thus making the true legacy of Ten P’s in a Pod one of multi-generational faithfulness and honor.

Now, forty years after Ten P’s in a Pod was first released, Vision Forum is pleased to make this heartwarming, true-life story available to a new generation of families. May the life of the Arnold Pent family inspire moms and dads to dream great, multi-generational dreams for Jesus Christ. The following comments are from my wife’s foreword to the book:

Foreword to ‘Ten P’s in a Pod’ by Beall Phillips

Our family travels quite a bit. If not Doug and one of the children, then it is all ten of us, including the very fine young man who lives with us. When all ten of us travel together, we get into some hilarious and some harrowing situations. We’ve been gawked at, hooted at, pulled over, cheered on, clapped at, gaped at, and murmured about. We’ve been called a private school, a daycare, a circus, a zoo, and probably privately by some, a nuthouse.

We have the idiosyncrasies that go with a large and growing family: We march in a line, according to age, to keep order. We often wear matching clothes so no one gets lost, or, if someone does, they are easily identified and returned. We love to be together, work together, play together. We love to travel together, and all the stares make us smile inside and out, because we just love our big family.

So, when the children and I first read Ten P’s in a Pod, we laughed and snorted and sighed and cried. The Arnold Pent family is what our family would have looked like if we had lived in the ’40s and ’50s. The father knows exactly what he wants done and how. The mother’s goal is to make it happen and keep everybody happy in the process. The children, eager and youthful, are an integral part of the father’s vision and provide bucket-loads of humor. Together, they make up what has been called “The World’s Most Unusual Family.”

Before seatbelt laws and car seats, before the suburban fad and the rise of the fifteen-passenger van, the ten-person Pent family was driving an interesting collection of automobiles one million miles around and around and around the country, preaching about the saving love of Jesus and the importance of the Bible in daily life. Before my generation rediscovered that real butter is better than margarine, that whole grain breads are better than white fluff, and that exercise must be vigorous and constant, the Pent family knew and practiced all of this. Thirty years before the explosion of home schooling in the early ’80s, the Pents were home schooling their children because, “I just don’t think it’s right to let an atheist or non-believer have our children the best part of every day teaching them many things that we will have to turn right around and tell them are not true.”

Ten P’s in a Pod was first published two years before I was born. Most of the Pent children were adults before I could put a sentence together. But I relate to and understand their experiences and their story as if it were my own. This is a slice of life. This is the day-to-day in a not-so-average American Christian family. Everyone who reads this book will feel the same way and relate to one part or another. But reading Ten P’s in a Pod is not even like reading! It is really like having a conversation with the author, Arnold, third of the eight children, about his family, their life experiences as they traveled, and their passion for the gospel of Jesus Christ. It is simple, it is profound, and it is a riot!

Beyond the humor and crazy scrapes that we all get ourselves into is the ultimately important message of the book: work together as a family and make the Word of God an integral part of your daily life. It sounds so simple, and yet, you will walk away from this story fundamentally inspired and motivated.

Click here to learn more about Ten P’s in a Pod.