Displaying items by tag: Bibles

Chinese officials locked down a popular resort city after 450 Covid-19 cases emerged, causing over 2,000 tourists to be stranded as the city conducts mass testing. China’s ‘zero-Covid’ policy puts immense pressure on regional leaders to eliminate the virus. Wuhan also has a lockdown over a case of cholera. Bibles for China’s Kurt Rovenstine said it was a local official who restricted travel. That incited some panic. Rovenstine said that churches and schools suffer the worst from lockdowns. One parent said her son could only attend school six weeks out of the seventeen in the semester. Churches can’t meet to offer the Lord’s Supper, and people can’t go to church to receive a Bible. There are many requests for Bibles around China. Despite the challenges, Christians throughout China remain committed to growing in Jesus. They want to share His story with their neighbours.

Good News for Everyone (formerly the Gideons) distribute Bibles in hospitals, hotels, education, public services, clubs and prisons. A Bible in Andy’s cell at Aylesbury Young Offenders Prison turned his life around. ‘While in prison, I decided to take my own life. My situation had become so hopeless I had lost the will to live. I made a noose and decided to fix it to the window then let myself hang to death. At that moment a quiet voice spoke to me “Just read that Bible”. On the shelf sat a copy of the New Testament and Psalms. I started reading at the beginning of Matthew. At Luke, the story of the lost son, my tears began flowing, my hopelessness disappeared, and the wretchedness I suffered went. If no Bible had been in that cell, I would be in hell right now, instead of living my life in the joy of the Lord!’

Flights carrying Haitian migrants from the US back to their homeland continue daily. The ongoing mass expulsion comes in response to a growing humanitarian crisis at the US/Mexico border. Over 12,000 migrants, mainly from Haiti, camped under a bridge in Del Rio, Texas, after wading across the Rio Grande from Mexico. Activity at the border has increased significantly in recent years. Border agents stopped nearly 200,000 people last month, a significant increase from the 50,684 arrests in 2019. UN officials say almost a million people from El Salvador, Guatemala, Haiti and Honduras have fled to Mexico. Mexico may top 100,000 new asylum claims this year, breaking a new record. Recently a federal judge decided officials could not use Title 42 law to deport migrant families from the US to Mexico. Lawyers serving the Biden administration immediately appealed the ruling. Mission Cry is sending 25,000 Spanish Bibles to migrants all over Mexico and hope to reach 2 million people.

‘They are the most precious gifts for us. Now my Sunday School children will see them with their own eyes - praise the Lord!’ said Rachel. Barnabas Fund helped supply 23,930 Bibles with hymnals to Christians from an isolated persecuted people group in South-East Asia. Some had never seen a Bible. A few villages had a single, treasured copy in their mother tongue, while some had memorised verses. They had experienced years of persecution from military and government authorities who confiscated and burnt Bibles. For nearly twenty years, they had been praying for these Bibles: now God has answered their prayers.

The Roma people, often referred to as Gypsy, are originally from India and now live scattered all over the world, especially Europe. After attending a training workshop, Marlute works with a Roma man on a OneStory project in a Central Romani dialect in Romania. OneStory works with mother-tongue speakers to develop and record worldview-sensitive, chronological Bible story sets. The whole project will take about two years. The team has drafted several Bible stories and is testing them. New-Neighbour-Bible.org was recently launched by Wycliffe Germany. The website provides information about Scripture resources in the languages spoken by the people arriving from other nations now living in Europe. Links to Bibles, Bible stories, videos and audio recordings are listed for the languages of Syria, Iraq and Lebanon. Resources for other countries will be added soon. Pray that churches and Christian refugee networks will find out about and use this site.