Post by JEM on Oct 1, 2009 4:49:27 GMT
Report of the Bible Society Annual Rally at the Saffron Walden Salvation Army Centre on Wednesday September 30th 2009
##################################
The service was presided over by the current chairperson Eileen Salmon of the Methodist church and the congregation of 34 represented most of the congregations of the town.
The service began with a 2 minutes silence in Memory of our former Chair Person and Treasurer Esme Moon who died recently and had been a member of the committee for many years from 1976.
Eileen read a prayer and welcomed everyone
The opening hymn was O WORD OF GOD INCARNATE and Eileen introduced it by telling us that
This hymn was written by William Walsham How, born in 1823 and died in 1897
Based on Psalm 119 verse 105 in the 1762 Fourth Revision of the Authorised Version
“Thy word is a lantern unto my feet”
William the son of a solicitor, was educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford,
Ordained in 1846 as Rector of St Andrews Undershaft.
He became Suffragan Bishop of East London.
He endeared himself to the working class people of East London as “The poor mans bishop”, “the people’s bishop” and “the omnibus bishop” He was a wonderful pastor and composed many hymns.
On his Pastoral staff he had engraved “Feed with the Word. Feed with the Life”
He turned down two well paid top jobs as bishops of Manchester and Durham
to become Bishop of Bedford and first Bishop of Wakefield.
There followed a collection of an offering of money for the Bible Society
Then Eileen sang a requested “God is working His purpose out” which is the 1996 updated version of the original, by Kevin Mayhew and Michael Forster and the congregation sang the chorus.
Then followed The Bible Reading from the New International Version which was a composite reading from 4 passages
Psalm 43 v 3 “Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me”.
Psalm 119 verse 105 “ Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”
2 Timothy 3 v 15-17 “From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
1 John 1 v - 5 - 7
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
John Maddams Administrator of the Lighthouse Prayer Ministry 1954 -2009 then spoke on the theme SHINING THE LIGHT
“Last Sunday morning I watched a little child put together a poster with the message of one sentence of this afternoon’s reading “Your word is a lamp, to my feet and a light for my path” . The poster is on the notice board at the back of this room.
I have been invited to talk to you this afternoon about the work of the Lighthouse Prayer Ministry formerly called Ministry of Christian Communication, which was founded in 1954. Much of our outreach has been done using international Pen Pal Clubs. As this is a Bible Society Rally I am going to concentrate on one part of our work -getting the Word of God to people, focusing on some of the people God has enabled us to help . I think most of us here support The Bible Societies and they fund translation and publish the resources for us to use.
There are printed brochures amongst you that explain in greater detail what Lighthouse Prayer Ministry is, What it has been able to do, What it can still do.
As you read it you may find ways that you could help.
But if you feel you can do no more than you already do now please take this away. Read it, and adopt somebody in it to pray for regularly, or use it as a Rota and pray through it, one person per a day until you reach the end and maybe repeat that. God somehow is able to use our prayers to answer the needs of other people, and this can be so for everyone named in this brochure.
Inevitably there are one or two small spelling mistakes that defied proof reading and one line has got repeated twice.
In August 1958 I took shelter during a thunder storm at Felixstowe under the protection of a porch of a Hostel for Deaf People and I determined to help them in some way. One thing that they wanted were Bibles but not the Authorised Version that they found too difficult to understand So we supplied some copies of NEW ENGLISH BIBLE and that was our first Bible placement, the first of thousands of Bibles, Testaments and Gospels that we have used, and also additionally many theme booklets of selected verses.
About 30 years ago someone gave us some copies of the Children’s’ magazine LOOK & LEARN and they contained Pen Pal Club addresses in various countries and we funded a subscription for that, and over several years we sent Biblical Booklets in various languages to over 5000 young people, aged 8 - 18 across 100 countries, and had subsequent correspondence with some of them.
One of the first people we sent to, was Wong Ben Teng a 16 yearold athlete in Singapore who became a Christian as a result. I wrote to him some years later to discover that he had backtracked, but had then been led to meet a Christian girl and together they had joined a Church.
Another character we were able to help was Pastor Chawna, in the foothills of the Himalayas,. 12,000 feet above sea level in a remote place penetrated by winding mountain paths. He and his brother were the first people in his tribe to go to school. His brother became a doctor and he became a pastor-evangelist He served the Riang tribe and helped translate the New Testament into their language. We were able with the help of the Banner of Truth Trust and other people to provide him with Christian books all of which he carefully kept and looked after. And at his death his library was to be made available to all the pastors in the district.
We helped sustain his old 1950 Imperial model typewriter, supplying ribbons and spare parts. Finally the Imperial Typewriter Company responding to our request, disabled their one and only museum model, which no longer works, so that his should work.
I wrote to a 16 yearold girl dancer in Estonia and her aunt, Laine, a secondary school teacher wrote to me. She had been brought up in the time of Nazi occupation, and was appointed a school teacher of English in Communist times. She had an old aunt who was a Baptist and her mother was Lutheran
Herself she did not know God or Jesus Christ but she did believe in Providence. Something or someone had helped her.
She had an Estonian Bible of the old version difficult to understand and we supplied her a modern English one. We supplied her WAR CRY and the Bible Reading aid quarterly booklet The WORD for TODAY for a long time and maintained correspondence for 14 years. and through her we learnt of many of her family and friends for whom we prayed. Over the years she set her trust in Jesus as her Saviour. Last year she had a serious fall effecting her hip, and then was burgled, and we have had no news of her for months.
In 1992 we began a 2 year project HELP GHANA which lasted in fact 15 years, involving links with Schools, Missions, Churches, and scores of individuals
One of these was Francis Gorman a head teacher of a Junior School at Agona Swedru and a village evangelist, who during his holidays accompanied by teenagers from his Bible study groups, visited villages to the North of the Township to preach and distribute Christian literature which we helped provide.
Francis wrote to me about one of his young assistants Robbie who wanted to go to college to train in Business Administration. We arranged for him to be sponsored through college. While there, a tropical storm caused wide spread flooding and we have a newspaper photo of Robbie up to his neck in water.
He went on to get a job selling and servicing computers.
and he became the leader of a team of Christian students from Winneba University who held a mission in the village of Mangoase where there had been no Christians, but now is a church of about 40 people led by a lay pastor. We supplied a bore hole to stop them having to transport in, lorry loads of bottled water. We also provided Scriptures and a wheelchair. Since then Robbie has worked in Togo where he organised a Bible Class of young businessmen
At one stage Robbie had an eye infection and had to go to a Roman Catholic Hospital where he was treated by a Consultant Dr Thomas Ba’ah who has since trained in India and America, and is now one of the top specialists in Cataract Surgery in Ghana, and last year set up with American help, a Mobile Clinic Service, to treat the backlog of thousands of cataract sufferers in rural areas. I asked him whether the beds in the hospital had Bibles and the answer was NO. So with the co-operation of the Gideons in America, 160 copies of the Good News Bible were put in place there.
Some years ago I sent with a covering letter a copy of DAILY STRENGTH containing 30 days of Bible verses and 4 hymns, to a woman in Ghana.
All I knew of her was her name and address, I learnt later that she sang in the Cathedral choir in the Capital , Accra , and worked as a security guard for a factory. The envelope took 3 months to get there by sea. Soon after that I received an airmail reply.
She had been taken ill and had lain in the city hospital for a month apparently getting no better and was very depressed. She had asked God for help and shortly after doing that an envelope arrived for her, transferred from her home, and she tore off one end and out fell the booklet.
She was amazed and read it from cover to cover. She accepted it as an answer to prayer. A message from God that uplifted her.
As she put the booklet back in the envelope she found the letter and she was astonished that 3 months earlier a man she did not know, had posted this booklet from over 3000 miles away to her, long before she was taken ill and long before she prayed for help, and so God had prepared a solution before she’d even asked. How amazing. From then on, fortified by God’s Word, she got better and returned to her job and her singing.
Another young man in Ghana we helped was Haruna. He was 15 when we first heard about him . The son of a Muslim Imam who’d recently died, and educated at a Christian School. There he became a Christian, and we provided him a Bible, and his Moslem mother came to the school to get him to return to Islam. Instead he led her to Christ. We helped fund him through his last year at school.
His Mum became a victim of cancer and he took her to their local hospital. They refused to treat her as she had become a Christian, Haruna took her to Accra, and got her into a Christian hospital. There she died, and at 17 he had to sort out her funeral and pay her debts. We helped provide a truck for him to ferry luggage from the station to the hotels. We helped him get into college, and later he got a job in a factory, and then later became a teacher and we provided books to help him lead his girlfriend to Christ. His hope is one day to return to his Muslim village as a missionary.
Those of you who have seen the illustrated poster of this event, may have seen a tall man in blue jacket and trousers. His name is Mayamba Then he was in prison in Zambia with 8 more years of a 15 year sentence to serve for aggravated burglary. In prison he had became a Christian and he wanted a Bible which we supplied, and he wanted to study for a BA degree in Business Administration so he could get a decent job and help his son Nelson, brought up by his grandmother, and now about 20.
To do so Mayamba had to do 4 preparatory diploma courses, and we found the funding for him to do that by distant learning, with a college in Jersey. Someone else sponsored him to do the degree course. He was released last year and got a job, and this year founded an organisation with the support of government officials and the Prison Service, to help prepare other prisoners for life when they are released.
This opening into Zambia has resulted in scores of letters and has led to links with prisoners families, with various churches, orphanages and ministries to provide advice, contacts addresses and practical help , and to get Bibles to a Christian Community on an island in the north, on Lake “Mer - where u.
A couple of weeks ago we had a letter from a prisoner who had sent a long wish list of wants most of which I had to deny, but he replied to say, “You could not supply what I asked for, but you sent me something better. THE WORD OF GOD” for we had sent him a Special edition of the publication OUR DAILY BREAD with 30 days reading which on one page has a complete Bible passage and on the opposite page a commentary . He asked for a Study Bible which is now on its way.
In the past 3 years several friends in Walden have provided money which we sent to Malawi to Christian Resource Ministries at their mission at Blantyre which runs an orphanage hostel and school to which we have been enabled to provide Bibles for orphans. Also for pastors in neighbouring villages , and to replace 100 Bibles of flood victims
This year we have been asked to provide 100 copies of the Authorised Version which is the English version they use in that region, to help that number of children with their English studies. These have to be new copies printed in Malawi costing £4 each.. On the poster is the first group of 10 recipitents.
Deep in the forests of several African countries are communities that have no written language, and no electrical power sources. Christians have reached those parts, learnt their languages, scripted them and then translated parts of the Bible particularly The New Testament and recorded it on cassettes and CD’s
A wind up clockwork radio has existed for some years, the system has been adapted to play cassettes and CD’s. Teams of African evangelists take these machines, and specially prepared flip over charts of posters of Bible stories, and set up in remote villages, and over a period of a few weeks reach many who would otherwise not get God’s word. New congregations have been set up as a result. In January we funded two such machines one in Malawi and one in Angola The mission concerned could use another 300 straight away, at the modest sum of £35 each.
This year we have been enabled through Elam Ministries to fund some New Testaments with Psalms for use in Iran. Many Muslims in Iran or exiled in neighbouring countries, are becoming Christians, especially students, many as a result of Internet web sites.
Two young Christian women for 6 months have been suffering intense suffering and intimidation in Tehran on trial for their faith. Ordered to deny Christ Maryan and Marzieh declared “We will not deny our faith. We will not deny our LORD”.
Their stand has emboldened Christians across Iran and the wider world.
In recent weeks thousands more Testaments have been distributed and they want to order another 200,000.
On the poster is a picture of a man in a wheel chair. This is Patric, a fellow Christian, in Ghana. He contracted leprosy. but having no money for a doctor, by the time he reached a hospital, one leg had to be amputated completely, another partly and he lost his fingers, and has stubs for hands. He is monitored monthly and has medication.
His wife left him in despair not knowing what to do. He has 3 children to fend for and educate.. All he can do is sit in the market place and beg.
His main request was for a Study Bible which he reckoned he could balance on his remaining thigh, so that has been supplied.
Walden has a population of about 16,000 of whom 12,000 have no links to any of our churches and worldwide over 2 billion 700 million have never heard of Jesus Christ, all these are living in spiritual darkness.
They are off course, going the wrong way. Jesus said ” I am the Way...no one comes to the Father except through me” and again he said. “There is a broad way that leads to destruction and many walk that way, there is a narrow way that leads to life and few there are who find it.”
We have the light they need We are light-bearers and light houses,
We have a lantern, a lamp. a torch, to lighten their way
THE WORD OF GOD. Lets exploit every opportunity to use it.
The starry firmament on high
and all the glories of the sky
Yet shine not to Thy praise, O Lord
So brightly as Thy written word
The hopes that Holy Word supplies
It’s truth divine and precepts wise
In each heavenly beam I see
And every beam conducts to Thee
Almighty LORD, the Sun shall fail,
The Moon forget her nightly tale,
And deepest silence hush on high
The radiant chorus of the sky;
But fixed for everlasting years
Unmoved amongst the wreck of spheres,
Thy Word shall shine in cloudless day
When heaven and earth have passed away.
Thank You for listening. “
After the round of applause Eileen thanked John and presented him with a book
“THE DAY MY LIFE CHANGED” by Carmel Reilly being personal accounts of life transforming experiences , published by Silverdale Books Leicester
We then sang “Seek ye first the kingdom”
“Seek ye first the Kingdom,
it’s your father’s will”;
so the voice of Jesus
Bids us follow still.
Saviour we would hear Thee
Follow, find and see;
and, in life’s adventure
Thy disciples be.
As for hidden treasure,
Or for matchless pearl
When at last discovered,
Men will give their all;
So when breaks the vision
Of that kingdom fair,
Ours shall be it’s riches
And it’s beauty rare.
As the silent leaven
Works it’s secret way,
Or as grows the seed grain
Through the night and day;
Lord so be the increase ,
Peaceable and sure,
Of Thy word within us
And Thy kingdom’s power.
As the tender seedling
Grows up tall and strong
And the birds of heaven
To it’s branches throng;
So shall all God’s children
From the east and west
Gather to His kingdom,
In it’s shadow rest.
Humblest shall be greatest,
Poor in spirit reign;
Home shall come the childlike
Born through Thee again;
Eager hearts arrive there
On the pilgrim’s road.
Hail! The Kingdom glorious
Of the living God.
This was written by Norman Elliott and sung to the tune “Kingdom of God” , an English melody. These verses refers to things Jesus said about the hidden treasure of a matchless pearl for which men will sell everything, The silent leaven, the seed grain, the tender seedling that grows into a tree wherein birds may nest, and how the humblest will be greatest .
Light refreshments were served afterwards and there was a Bring and Buy stall.
##################################
The service was presided over by the current chairperson Eileen Salmon of the Methodist church and the congregation of 34 represented most of the congregations of the town.
The service began with a 2 minutes silence in Memory of our former Chair Person and Treasurer Esme Moon who died recently and had been a member of the committee for many years from 1976.
Eileen read a prayer and welcomed everyone
The opening hymn was O WORD OF GOD INCARNATE and Eileen introduced it by telling us that
This hymn was written by William Walsham How, born in 1823 and died in 1897
Based on Psalm 119 verse 105 in the 1762 Fourth Revision of the Authorised Version
“Thy word is a lantern unto my feet”
William the son of a solicitor, was educated at Shrewsbury and Oxford,
Ordained in 1846 as Rector of St Andrews Undershaft.
He became Suffragan Bishop of East London.
He endeared himself to the working class people of East London as “The poor mans bishop”, “the people’s bishop” and “the omnibus bishop” He was a wonderful pastor and composed many hymns.
On his Pastoral staff he had engraved “Feed with the Word. Feed with the Life”
He turned down two well paid top jobs as bishops of Manchester and Durham
to become Bishop of Bedford and first Bishop of Wakefield.
There followed a collection of an offering of money for the Bible Society
Then Eileen sang a requested “God is working His purpose out” which is the 1996 updated version of the original, by Kevin Mayhew and Michael Forster and the congregation sang the chorus.
Then followed The Bible Reading from the New International Version which was a composite reading from 4 passages
Psalm 43 v 3 “Send forth your light and your truth, let them guide me”.
Psalm 119 verse 105 “ Your word is a lamp to my feet and a light for my path.”
2 Timothy 3 v 15-17 “From infancy you have known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make you wise for salvation through faith in Christ Jesus.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness,
so that the people of God may be thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
1 John 1 v - 5 - 7
“This is the message we have heard from him and declare to you: God is light; in him there is no darkness at all. If we claim to have fellowship with him yet walk in the darkness, we lie and do not live by the truth.
But if we walk in the light, as he is in the light, we have fellowship with one another, and the blood of Jesus, his Son, purifies us from all sin.”
John Maddams Administrator of the Lighthouse Prayer Ministry 1954 -2009 then spoke on the theme SHINING THE LIGHT
“Last Sunday morning I watched a little child put together a poster with the message of one sentence of this afternoon’s reading “Your word is a lamp, to my feet and a light for my path” . The poster is on the notice board at the back of this room.
I have been invited to talk to you this afternoon about the work of the Lighthouse Prayer Ministry formerly called Ministry of Christian Communication, which was founded in 1954. Much of our outreach has been done using international Pen Pal Clubs. As this is a Bible Society Rally I am going to concentrate on one part of our work -getting the Word of God to people, focusing on some of the people God has enabled us to help . I think most of us here support The Bible Societies and they fund translation and publish the resources for us to use.
There are printed brochures amongst you that explain in greater detail what Lighthouse Prayer Ministry is, What it has been able to do, What it can still do.
As you read it you may find ways that you could help.
But if you feel you can do no more than you already do now please take this away. Read it, and adopt somebody in it to pray for regularly, or use it as a Rota and pray through it, one person per a day until you reach the end and maybe repeat that. God somehow is able to use our prayers to answer the needs of other people, and this can be so for everyone named in this brochure.
Inevitably there are one or two small spelling mistakes that defied proof reading and one line has got repeated twice.
In August 1958 I took shelter during a thunder storm at Felixstowe under the protection of a porch of a Hostel for Deaf People and I determined to help them in some way. One thing that they wanted were Bibles but not the Authorised Version that they found too difficult to understand So we supplied some copies of NEW ENGLISH BIBLE and that was our first Bible placement, the first of thousands of Bibles, Testaments and Gospels that we have used, and also additionally many theme booklets of selected verses.
About 30 years ago someone gave us some copies of the Children’s’ magazine LOOK & LEARN and they contained Pen Pal Club addresses in various countries and we funded a subscription for that, and over several years we sent Biblical Booklets in various languages to over 5000 young people, aged 8 - 18 across 100 countries, and had subsequent correspondence with some of them.
One of the first people we sent to, was Wong Ben Teng a 16 yearold athlete in Singapore who became a Christian as a result. I wrote to him some years later to discover that he had backtracked, but had then been led to meet a Christian girl and together they had joined a Church.
Another character we were able to help was Pastor Chawna, in the foothills of the Himalayas,. 12,000 feet above sea level in a remote place penetrated by winding mountain paths. He and his brother were the first people in his tribe to go to school. His brother became a doctor and he became a pastor-evangelist He served the Riang tribe and helped translate the New Testament into their language. We were able with the help of the Banner of Truth Trust and other people to provide him with Christian books all of which he carefully kept and looked after. And at his death his library was to be made available to all the pastors in the district.
We helped sustain his old 1950 Imperial model typewriter, supplying ribbons and spare parts. Finally the Imperial Typewriter Company responding to our request, disabled their one and only museum model, which no longer works, so that his should work.
I wrote to a 16 yearold girl dancer in Estonia and her aunt, Laine, a secondary school teacher wrote to me. She had been brought up in the time of Nazi occupation, and was appointed a school teacher of English in Communist times. She had an old aunt who was a Baptist and her mother was Lutheran
Herself she did not know God or Jesus Christ but she did believe in Providence. Something or someone had helped her.
She had an Estonian Bible of the old version difficult to understand and we supplied her a modern English one. We supplied her WAR CRY and the Bible Reading aid quarterly booklet The WORD for TODAY for a long time and maintained correspondence for 14 years. and through her we learnt of many of her family and friends for whom we prayed. Over the years she set her trust in Jesus as her Saviour. Last year she had a serious fall effecting her hip, and then was burgled, and we have had no news of her for months.
In 1992 we began a 2 year project HELP GHANA which lasted in fact 15 years, involving links with Schools, Missions, Churches, and scores of individuals
One of these was Francis Gorman a head teacher of a Junior School at Agona Swedru and a village evangelist, who during his holidays accompanied by teenagers from his Bible study groups, visited villages to the North of the Township to preach and distribute Christian literature which we helped provide.
Francis wrote to me about one of his young assistants Robbie who wanted to go to college to train in Business Administration. We arranged for him to be sponsored through college. While there, a tropical storm caused wide spread flooding and we have a newspaper photo of Robbie up to his neck in water.
He went on to get a job selling and servicing computers.
and he became the leader of a team of Christian students from Winneba University who held a mission in the village of Mangoase where there had been no Christians, but now is a church of about 40 people led by a lay pastor. We supplied a bore hole to stop them having to transport in, lorry loads of bottled water. We also provided Scriptures and a wheelchair. Since then Robbie has worked in Togo where he organised a Bible Class of young businessmen
At one stage Robbie had an eye infection and had to go to a Roman Catholic Hospital where he was treated by a Consultant Dr Thomas Ba’ah who has since trained in India and America, and is now one of the top specialists in Cataract Surgery in Ghana, and last year set up with American help, a Mobile Clinic Service, to treat the backlog of thousands of cataract sufferers in rural areas. I asked him whether the beds in the hospital had Bibles and the answer was NO. So with the co-operation of the Gideons in America, 160 copies of the Good News Bible were put in place there.
Some years ago I sent with a covering letter a copy of DAILY STRENGTH containing 30 days of Bible verses and 4 hymns, to a woman in Ghana.
All I knew of her was her name and address, I learnt later that she sang in the Cathedral choir in the Capital , Accra , and worked as a security guard for a factory. The envelope took 3 months to get there by sea. Soon after that I received an airmail reply.
She had been taken ill and had lain in the city hospital for a month apparently getting no better and was very depressed. She had asked God for help and shortly after doing that an envelope arrived for her, transferred from her home, and she tore off one end and out fell the booklet.
She was amazed and read it from cover to cover. She accepted it as an answer to prayer. A message from God that uplifted her.
As she put the booklet back in the envelope she found the letter and she was astonished that 3 months earlier a man she did not know, had posted this booklet from over 3000 miles away to her, long before she was taken ill and long before she prayed for help, and so God had prepared a solution before she’d even asked. How amazing. From then on, fortified by God’s Word, she got better and returned to her job and her singing.
Another young man in Ghana we helped was Haruna. He was 15 when we first heard about him . The son of a Muslim Imam who’d recently died, and educated at a Christian School. There he became a Christian, and we provided him a Bible, and his Moslem mother came to the school to get him to return to Islam. Instead he led her to Christ. We helped fund him through his last year at school.
His Mum became a victim of cancer and he took her to their local hospital. They refused to treat her as she had become a Christian, Haruna took her to Accra, and got her into a Christian hospital. There she died, and at 17 he had to sort out her funeral and pay her debts. We helped provide a truck for him to ferry luggage from the station to the hotels. We helped him get into college, and later he got a job in a factory, and then later became a teacher and we provided books to help him lead his girlfriend to Christ. His hope is one day to return to his Muslim village as a missionary.
Those of you who have seen the illustrated poster of this event, may have seen a tall man in blue jacket and trousers. His name is Mayamba Then he was in prison in Zambia with 8 more years of a 15 year sentence to serve for aggravated burglary. In prison he had became a Christian and he wanted a Bible which we supplied, and he wanted to study for a BA degree in Business Administration so he could get a decent job and help his son Nelson, brought up by his grandmother, and now about 20.
To do so Mayamba had to do 4 preparatory diploma courses, and we found the funding for him to do that by distant learning, with a college in Jersey. Someone else sponsored him to do the degree course. He was released last year and got a job, and this year founded an organisation with the support of government officials and the Prison Service, to help prepare other prisoners for life when they are released.
This opening into Zambia has resulted in scores of letters and has led to links with prisoners families, with various churches, orphanages and ministries to provide advice, contacts addresses and practical help , and to get Bibles to a Christian Community on an island in the north, on Lake “Mer - where u.
A couple of weeks ago we had a letter from a prisoner who had sent a long wish list of wants most of which I had to deny, but he replied to say, “You could not supply what I asked for, but you sent me something better. THE WORD OF GOD” for we had sent him a Special edition of the publication OUR DAILY BREAD with 30 days reading which on one page has a complete Bible passage and on the opposite page a commentary . He asked for a Study Bible which is now on its way.
In the past 3 years several friends in Walden have provided money which we sent to Malawi to Christian Resource Ministries at their mission at Blantyre which runs an orphanage hostel and school to which we have been enabled to provide Bibles for orphans. Also for pastors in neighbouring villages , and to replace 100 Bibles of flood victims
This year we have been asked to provide 100 copies of the Authorised Version which is the English version they use in that region, to help that number of children with their English studies. These have to be new copies printed in Malawi costing £4 each.. On the poster is the first group of 10 recipitents.
Deep in the forests of several African countries are communities that have no written language, and no electrical power sources. Christians have reached those parts, learnt their languages, scripted them and then translated parts of the Bible particularly The New Testament and recorded it on cassettes and CD’s
A wind up clockwork radio has existed for some years, the system has been adapted to play cassettes and CD’s. Teams of African evangelists take these machines, and specially prepared flip over charts of posters of Bible stories, and set up in remote villages, and over a period of a few weeks reach many who would otherwise not get God’s word. New congregations have been set up as a result. In January we funded two such machines one in Malawi and one in Angola The mission concerned could use another 300 straight away, at the modest sum of £35 each.
This year we have been enabled through Elam Ministries to fund some New Testaments with Psalms for use in Iran. Many Muslims in Iran or exiled in neighbouring countries, are becoming Christians, especially students, many as a result of Internet web sites.
Two young Christian women for 6 months have been suffering intense suffering and intimidation in Tehran on trial for their faith. Ordered to deny Christ Maryan and Marzieh declared “We will not deny our faith. We will not deny our LORD”.
Their stand has emboldened Christians across Iran and the wider world.
In recent weeks thousands more Testaments have been distributed and they want to order another 200,000.
On the poster is a picture of a man in a wheel chair. This is Patric, a fellow Christian, in Ghana. He contracted leprosy. but having no money for a doctor, by the time he reached a hospital, one leg had to be amputated completely, another partly and he lost his fingers, and has stubs for hands. He is monitored monthly and has medication.
His wife left him in despair not knowing what to do. He has 3 children to fend for and educate.. All he can do is sit in the market place and beg.
His main request was for a Study Bible which he reckoned he could balance on his remaining thigh, so that has been supplied.
Walden has a population of about 16,000 of whom 12,000 have no links to any of our churches and worldwide over 2 billion 700 million have never heard of Jesus Christ, all these are living in spiritual darkness.
They are off course, going the wrong way. Jesus said ” I am the Way...no one comes to the Father except through me” and again he said. “There is a broad way that leads to destruction and many walk that way, there is a narrow way that leads to life and few there are who find it.”
We have the light they need We are light-bearers and light houses,
We have a lantern, a lamp. a torch, to lighten their way
THE WORD OF GOD. Lets exploit every opportunity to use it.
The starry firmament on high
and all the glories of the sky
Yet shine not to Thy praise, O Lord
So brightly as Thy written word
The hopes that Holy Word supplies
It’s truth divine and precepts wise
In each heavenly beam I see
And every beam conducts to Thee
Almighty LORD, the Sun shall fail,
The Moon forget her nightly tale,
And deepest silence hush on high
The radiant chorus of the sky;
But fixed for everlasting years
Unmoved amongst the wreck of spheres,
Thy Word shall shine in cloudless day
When heaven and earth have passed away.
Thank You for listening. “
After the round of applause Eileen thanked John and presented him with a book
“THE DAY MY LIFE CHANGED” by Carmel Reilly being personal accounts of life transforming experiences , published by Silverdale Books Leicester
We then sang “Seek ye first the kingdom”
“Seek ye first the Kingdom,
it’s your father’s will”;
so the voice of Jesus
Bids us follow still.
Saviour we would hear Thee
Follow, find and see;
and, in life’s adventure
Thy disciples be.
As for hidden treasure,
Or for matchless pearl
When at last discovered,
Men will give their all;
So when breaks the vision
Of that kingdom fair,
Ours shall be it’s riches
And it’s beauty rare.
As the silent leaven
Works it’s secret way,
Or as grows the seed grain
Through the night and day;
Lord so be the increase ,
Peaceable and sure,
Of Thy word within us
And Thy kingdom’s power.
As the tender seedling
Grows up tall and strong
And the birds of heaven
To it’s branches throng;
So shall all God’s children
From the east and west
Gather to His kingdom,
In it’s shadow rest.
Humblest shall be greatest,
Poor in spirit reign;
Home shall come the childlike
Born through Thee again;
Eager hearts arrive there
On the pilgrim’s road.
Hail! The Kingdom glorious
Of the living God.
This was written by Norman Elliott and sung to the tune “Kingdom of God” , an English melody. These verses refers to things Jesus said about the hidden treasure of a matchless pearl for which men will sell everything, The silent leaven, the seed grain, the tender seedling that grows into a tree wherein birds may nest, and how the humblest will be greatest .
Light refreshments were served afterwards and there was a Bring and Buy stall.