In promoting her debut novel, Teneil, Jayne likened it to an amalgam of well-known works.

Imagine “The Secret Life of Walter Mitty” married “Bridget Jones’s Diary” and the new couple decided to live out “Eat, Pray, Love.”

The mixture of imagination, realism and personal growth is what she’s striven to put in the pages of “If Only.”

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Jayne is a missionary, originally from Craig, who has spent nearly seven years residing in the southeastern African nation of Malawi. She details her personal and professional life as well as some hypothetical tangents in the pages of her book, which she was home promoting this week.

Enter her world

Jayne met with customers Tuesday at Gathered Grace Marketplace in downtown Craig to sell and sign copies of “If Only,” a self-published piece which has been three years in the making.

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The process began in 2020, when the author was lacking for new reading materials.

“I went through all of my books a hundred times,” Jayne said. “I love romance and comedy so much, but I could not find a good book, and then I was like, ‘why don’t I just write one?'”

While she initially wanted to do something strictly autobiographical, she decided to blend the real world with flights of fancy about her love life.

Part of the tone of the book is showing how harsh life can be in developing nations like Malawi. While not every page is based on something Jayne has personally experienced, passages highlight daily hardships that are more common halfway around the world.

“When we talk about things like human trafficking, it’s not really real until it happens to someone you know,” Jayne said.

Still, the goal was to be both serious and uplifting.

“Each chapter is a meet-cute of something in my life where I added a hero where he should have been, and then it stops really abruptly,” Jayne said. “People have told me it’s really frustrating because they want the story to continue and it’s over, but that’s how daydreams work.”

Jayne said she intended to make love stories that are wholesome that capture the emotions more than physicality of a relationship.

“Everything good that happens in romance happens before the bedroom,” Jayne said. “After that it’s just what it is, but that tension and flirtation and joy and butterflies before that is the good stuff. I’m such a hopeless romantic, and I just know I’ll meet someone who fits that in my life. People tell me I’m not going to meet him in Africa, and I say it could happen. Maybe he gets attacked by a crocodile and he’s brought to my house and I nurse him back to health and we fall in love.”

Though she’s single, she’s not unhappy or unfulfilled. Jayne noted that the book represents the duality of life, especially for women, in which independence is important but seeking a romantic partner can still be a priority.

“The cool thing about life is you can be equal parts warrior and romantic,” Jayne said. “I’m not pining away in a tower somewhere, counting the scales on a dragon. I’m full. I’m enough. But I’m still going to keep dreaming, because there’s more to life than just sacrifice and pain and poverty and hardness.”

Finding new purpose

When she first moved to Malawi in 2016, Jayne wasn’t planning to stay more than a couple months.

She was doing volunteer hospice work in the Yampa Valley and wanted to go into the field full-time because of how spiritually rewarding it made her feel.

“I liquidated my art company and sold a piece of land that I had and ended up with a check for $28,000,” Jayne said. “I was going to get a degree in biblical counseling so I could transition over into a paid position.”

She took that money and found a new temporary home in Malawi as she did online coursework, but things changed.

“I just wanted to sit in peace for a couple months with my laptop and do that work,” Jayne said. “I got two dogs because I’m an idiot and had two months of injections before I could import them, so I just had to sit and be for two months.”

The funds she had could have let her live quite well thanks to the exchange rate of the U.S. dollar to the Malawian kwacha, but Jayne took the opportunity to start aiding the locals with things like school fees and hospital bills.

“It’s very important that I don’t get any glory for the work that I do,” Jayne said. “First off, I wouldn’t have any ambition or drive or direction if it wasn’t for God. I like to say God tricked me into the desires of my heart.”

Admittedly, Jayne may have been too generous because she ran out of money after several months. Though it took some time to learn how to help responsibly, starting the nonprofit organization Living Out Loud helped her share her experience with people overseas and seek out donations.

“I could not do anything without the supporters that I have, and I’m 100 percent supported through Facebook,” Jayne said. “I speak at a lot of churches and I receive a lot of love offerings, but I don’t partner with anybody. People who don’t live there (Malawi) can’t comprehend what it’s like. They all have all of these suggestions, and I need to be able to reserve the right to veto any ideas anyone else has. A lot of churches have said I need to do revivals, and that’s not really what I’m here for. I’m more about the individual and getting them to a point where they can sustain themselves.”

Jayne has fostered multiple children — two of whom currently live with her, ages 7 and 15 —and in 2020, she had a decision to make about staying with them as the world faced the COVID-19 pandemic.

She had the option of taking the one flight out of the country and back to the United States, but didn’t have to think long.

“If this is really the end of the world, then I’m going to stay with my kids,” Jayne said.

COVID was a concern in Malawi. However, it was one of a long list of health issues.

“We wore masks for about a month, but we’ve got malaria, TB, typhoid, yellow fever, rabies and people were saying, ‘I’m not worried about coughing sickness,'” Jayne said.

The true issue for Malawi and many others was the economic shockwaves of the pandemic, affecting trade. The exchange rate has also exploded.

“When I first went to Malawi, it was 400 (kwachas) to the dollar, now it’s like 1,600,” Jayne said. “That’s huge, that’s incredible. The distance between us is so much greater now than it’s ever been. I ask people now to give $2 on Facebook, which is such a small amount you wouldn’t even notice. That’s worth so much more there now than it ever has been. I can do a lot with very little.”

Since coming back to visit the U.S., Jayne said the big difference between the two cultures is perception of happiness and convenience.

“Malawi’s got all these problems, but what we don’t have is anxiety and mental health in the degree that America is listed by far the No. 1 country in the world for anxiety,” Jayne said. “If anybody had any excuse to be anxious, it’s Malawi, one of the bottom five poorest countries in the world.”

Reaching all the world

Jayne’s trip back home will last through early August and has already included multiple destinations as she promotes her book and her mission work, as well as dropping in on her 20-year reunion with Moffat County High School’s Class of 2003.

The profits she makes from sales of “If Only” will go toward building a house for her and her foster daughters.

“We’re happy where we are, and we rent a little house, but we don’t have things like hot water and a bathtub and a stove and oven, all these luxuries we take for granted here,” Jayne said. “Those are staples here; you wouldn’t rent a house that didn’t have hot water.”

The amount of books sold Tuesday was a surprise for her.

“I sold 50 books in three hours, and that’s basically the foundation for my house,” Jayne said tearfully.

She also wants to bring in more of her own personal funding for Living Out Loud and offer money for fellow missionaries where possible.

As part of her book, Jayne has also been recording the book for Audible with Craig’s Nick Cocozzella.

“He’s so professional and so incredible, it’s so next-level and so much fun,” Jayne said. “It’s a lot more laborious than I would have thought.”

While home, she’s found a considerable fan base with people she grew up with and new people who have followed her efforts online.

“Everywhere that I go, somebody is buying me a drink or paying for something,” Jayne said. “The encouragement and support I have from my hometown is so incredible. It makes me want to be more.”

Jayne said people she’s connected with have rarely held back their emotions, and that’s what she enjoys.

“I love that people are willing to cry with me,” Jayne said. “That is so humbling and such an incredible thing to experience from the other side of the world, that you’re affecting people in Craig, Colorado.”

When Jayne first embraced Christianity, she thought she would be doing work in her hometown.

“I remember apologizing to God and thinking, ‘you gave me this task, and I could not have ran farther away from it,'” Jayne said. “And God said, ‘No, I have you exactly where I want you.’ Now when I come back home to Craig and see how many people are affected by my life and what I do and challenging them to a closer relationship with God, it’s so humbling. The work that I’m doing in Africa is growing fruit here.”