The Impact of 50,000 Bibles

We have been having a field day supplying Bibles to the afflicted people of Venezuela where most people only make a couple dollars a month. The average person has lost more than twenty pounds over the past year because food is extremely expensive and so hard to come by. A kilo of meat costs more than the minimum wage, which is less than two dollars a month. I was astonished to find a number of middle aged ladies that used to be seriously overweight looking trim and fit and thanking the Lord for putting them on an obligatory diet!

Imagine everyone’s delight and satisfaction when we provide a free Bible that is financed from donors around the world including many Colombians. Even though the Venezuelans are very poor, they put on their best clothes to come and receive their Bible. For many of them, it is clear that this is their most prized possession.

Influential people on both sides of the border have been helping us to smuggle the Bibles into Venezuela and our shipments have even been safely transported in military vehicles. Virtually everyone, no matter their walk in life, desperately wants one of our beautiful Bibles. We have brought about 50,000 Bibles into Venezuela over a period of several years. Our goal is one million Bibles, just like we did over a ten-year period in the midst of the war in Colombia. Thanks to ICR we have another container load of almost ten thousand Bibles on the way, so we still need another ninety-four containers or so to meet our goal!

A ten-dollar donation will place an excellent study Bible along with up to three good books into the hands of a struggling Venezuelan who is desperately seeking God in this most difficult hour. In the case of Colombia, when we put a million Bibles and three million good books into the war zone (at a cost of ten million dollars) this was considered by international experts to be a major factor (along with our radio outreach and mass evangelism events) helping to end the war. In fact, I was given several international prestigious awards for promoting religious liberty. I am convinced, if we do the same for Venezuela, we will have similar results.

This means we must beef up our radio signals into Venezuela. Our powerful Lomalinda radio transmitters (the largest Short Wave and AM transmitters in Colombia) have fallen into disrepair over the past couple years. Since the Peace Treaty went into effect the donations to finance the operation of these transmitters have diminished. Reluctant to shut them down, we have spent almost all of our remaining personal finances to keep them on the air for at least eight hours a day so the government will not revoke our licenses, which were almost impossible to obtain. These huge radio transmitters would be a challenge for a major organization to run and here we are, a little missionary family of fourteen people (including six grandchildren), and these powerful stations are still legal and on the air with all expenses paid for and no debt. What a miracle!

I am continually reminded and inspired by the story of what happened immediately prior to WWII in England. The government of Neville Chamberlin while appeasing Hitler pulled the financial plug on the Spitfire fighter production line. A private individual stepped in and with his own money kept the Spitfires in production until Winston Churchill took power and began a total mobilization of every resource against the Nazi threat. If that individual had not spent his own fortune keeping the Spitfires in production against all odds, the retreat at Dunkirk would have been a disaster and Battle of Britain might have been lost. If that had happened most of us would now be speaking German.

We would like to go back to twenty-four hour a day operation of our three key transmitters on 1530 AM, and on 6010 kHz and 5010 kHz Short Wave. This will require an enormous amount of electricity and new antennas aimed at Venezuela. We distributed over 120,000 Galcom solar radios fix-tuned to these frequencies and some of the radios are in Venezuela and along the border. We also have several FM stations on high mountains overlooking Venezuela that need to be beefed up since it appears the new Colombian government, who just took power on August 7, will allow us to continue to operate. The Venezuelans do not need special radios to hear our AM and FM coverage of some border regions since our Short Wave and Internet broadcasts can cover the entire country, however, the Internet capabilities in this region are not very good.

Thank you so much for your consistent prayers and support.

BIBLE DISTRIBUTION GOAL
1. One Million Bibles for Venezuela!
2. Praising God for almost 10,000 Bibles being shipped in a container
3. Praying for God to provide 94 more containers of Bibles to impact Venezuela