Mission News Notes

Two stories from Mission Network News of some interest. First, an event you might want to share with your pastor:

USA (MNN) — Millions of Christians around the world need Bibles. They would do just about anything to have God’s Word in their hands. They cherish each word.
Love Packages’ Founder and President Steven Schmidt is doing something about it. But help is needed from the church. “We’re asking churches all across America to do a Bible drive. They’d set a time aside, maybe the whole month of August, and just tell everybody in the congregation to find the Bibles that are lying around their home, bring it, collect it and send it to us. We’re hoping to collect somewhere between 400,000 and 500,000 Bibles.”

This project may be Love Packages’ first ever nationwide Bible drive.

According to Schmidt, English Bibles can help a lot of people around the world. “Zambia is 100 percent English, so is Liberia. India is even 20-percent English. You’ve got a billion and a half people there, so that’s a lot of people — that’s the population of the United States…”

According to Schmidt, Christians in the U.S. aren’t giving up their only Bible, as did many of these Indian believers. “Most Christians, if they’ve been a Christian for any length of time, have 15 or 20 Bibles lying around the house. Everybody knows you only need seven.”

Indeed, I’ve got  a few myself to give away. Another story of interest from Ghana:

Ghana (MNN) — In 2003, Book of Hope made a five-year strategy to reach 10 million children in Ghana with the Gospel.  To date, they have reached 8 million and have been granted access by the government to every school in the country.
At the first vision casting for the project, there were two key guests. “We were blessed to have the wife of the then-vice president of Ghana in attendance. The minister of education was in attendance also, and they were so impressed that when they went back, they spoke to the government, and the government gave us permission and letters to enter every school,” said Sylvanus Elorm.

They have distributed Gospel and moral literature to the children as well as shown them the GodMan film.

At first, BOH did not visit Muslim schools in order to avoid religious conflict. However, after visiting one public school, they passed by a Muslim school where the children chased after them saying, “Why do you leave us out?” Then they spoke with the Muslim teachers who said they wanted the teaching on the other issues that Christians were teaching along with the Gospel.

“And then they go on to make a joke, ‘Well, if we don’t want your faith at least we want your moral issues.’ But I bet you, testimonies are coming that they are reading everything, and lives are being changed,” said Elorm.

A reminder that not all Muslims are violent or hostile to Christians or the Gospel. Praise God!