Unbelievable Growth

[Dr. Shane]

I was watching an episode of the Carter Report where Pastor Carter was talking with the director of Maranatha Volunteers International. He said the Adventist church owns about 57,000 church buildings throughout the world and they have 70,000 requests in their office! They have more requests for new buildings than we currently have. The church is growing at an unbelievable rate. The problem is, it is growing in developing countries where the locals don't have the money to build churches or buy property.

The local church I work with in Mexico meets in the front yard of one of the members that they have built a roof over. When I first started working with them they just met under the tree in the front yard.

[A_G_Brito]

Hello folks

Speaking of extraordinary growth, a news story that was recently published in the Adventist News Network mentions Mozambique, where some families share Bibles for their study. They take turns with an old copy of the Bible, since the scarcity of materials there is a huge problem.

I addressed someone of the Maranatha to know whether the Bibles they need there are in the official language of the country--Portuguese. If that was the case I could start a campaign to collect Bibles in Portuguese among my many Brazilian and Portuguese Internet contacts, including non-Adventists, to have them sending Bibles to Mozambique in the Portuguese language. He said that they use other languages also (there are different native dialects) but it would be okay to send Bibles in Portuguese.

Later on I contacted the director of the Mozambique field to have a safe address I could indicate to people send these Bibles to. He answered that he would be in the General Conference on Oct. 11-18 and I could meet him there so that we talked. Well, he thinks that things here are as easy as in Mozambique, a much smaller country than the USA. I told him it would be impossible for me to go there, from Alabama, where I live. I have my secular work I can't miss and other difficulties, but gave him my home telephone so that we talk on these possibilities. All I need is really a safe address in Mozambique to have people sending their Bibles and other literature pieces in Portuguese, as they need everything there.

I will keep you folks posted, and those who could contribute to the campaign, please be ready to send materials that you could have in the Portuguese language to our brothers and sisters in Mozambique.

Also money donation would do, but I have no information thus far regarding how that could be handled.

At least, let's pray for the work there and all the wonderful possibilities that the Mozambique field offers for evangelism.

To see the report on Mozambique, with some very remarkable pictures, go to the ANN feature:

http://news.adventist.org/data/2007/08/1190141874/index.html.en

See also this story:

http://news.adventist.org/data/2007/08/1190668299/index.html.en

[Stan]

Pastor

Now that we have a 501© 3 charity, we could collect donations and purchase Bbles from the Bible Society there for distribution.

ANY THOUGHTS ANYONE??

[A_G_Brito]

Well, I have to confess that I am a little disappointed because the mentioned SDA leader in Mozambique never called me when in the States, and even after he returned to his country, never answered my last e-mails, so I never got any information about a safe address that people could send Bibles to.

If anyone has an input on that, please give me some clues of how carrying out successfully a campaign as I had plans of doing.