Paradise and Spirit Prison (Paperback) (ISBN-13: 9781537509167)

Ilyan Kei Lavanway served two years as a full-time missionary in the Argentina Buenos Aires North Mission for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, from 1986 to 1988. During his mission, he learned the importance of Home Teaching in the Church. Brother Lavanway and his wife and son are United States citizens. They have lived abroad in the Philippines for more than two years. Brother Lavanway's wife is from the Philippines. They were pen pals for three years, from 1997 to 2000. Brother Lavanway has served as a temple ordinance worker in the Bismark, North Dakota temple and in the Orlando, Florida temple. On Sunday, 18 October 2015, Brother Lavanway was ordained a High Priest and set apart as Second Assistant to the High Priest Group leader in the Victorias First Ward, Cadiz Philippines Stake. He served faithfully in that capacity for almost eleven months. Then, on Sunday, 11 September 2016, he was set apart as a Stake High Councilman in the Cadiz Philippines Stake. Brother Lavanway grew up in Washington State. He is the oldest of eight siblings, seven of whom are living. He spent his high school summers driving wheat trucks and combines during harvest, earning cash to support his first love, the love of flight. He was an avid private pilot in his teens. However, for all his love of aviation, Brother Lavanway's fourteen years in the United States Air Force never landed him a flight crew assignment. He pulled 24-hour alerts two or three times a week in a subterranean concrete capsule beneath the North Dakota plains as an ICBM launch officer for his first four years of service, followed by a year of really uninteresting work in a vault on base. His next two years took him up near the Canadian border, to the giant, phased array, early warning and space surveillance radar site outside Cavalier, North Dakota. Then, he was off to California. Academic assignments filled the final seven years of his military service. By the time he left active duty, Brother Lavanway had discovered his passion for writing. Since life has thrown him a few curves that make it impractical for him to return to flying airplanes, Brother Lavanway has poured his soul into writing. His education includes a bachelor's degree in mathematics and a master's degree in space studies. Brother Lavanway's aptitudes for aviation and sciences show in many of his books, both fiction and nonfiction. His works offer unconventional perspectives, giving readers rich depth of thought.