Internet throughout Western Europe, March 2008
We've reported in previous carelinks of the amazing interest in the true Gospel from folk contacted by internet throughout Western Europe. By this means we came into contact with RICCARDO, an Italian from Sicily, and after much online contact it was an utter pleasure to meet his unusually lovely family and baptize him and his wife SASKIA into the saving Name of the Lord.
We have also been able to visit brother H, an Iranian refugee brother living in a safe house provided by Carelinks in Turkey. He has no documents and Turkey refuses to give him permission to leave Turkey, indeed they threaten to deport him to Iran if they catch him; and the UNHCR process isn't operating for him. So, he is effectively imprisoned in Turkey. We discussed ways for him to leave 'by other methods' and gave him what support we could; being separated from family is an especially hard trial for him and we assured him of our prayers.
Whilst in Turkey we were able to meet up with our Russian sister Anna. She's growing well in the Lord, and witnesses to her faith to other Russian speaking workers she mixes with. She's distributed Bible Basics to many people, and carries Bro Joel Pickering's book about prayer with her in her handbag, indeed she's translated much of it to Russian in an attempt to improve her English so she can have more fellowship with her brothers and sisters.
Photo: Sis Anna with Br Joel's book [it's available from www.zenanmedia.com ]
It was a joy to baptize her friend VALYA, a Ukrainian Jewess who had only recently had her baby boy circumcised, who had read a huge amount of theology and tried contact with many other groups before coming to the Truth.
So now Sis Anna has another Russian speaking sister to fellowship with, and we hope they will attract yet others to the Lord:
Bible Basics OUTREACH IN THE U.K.
There have now been quite a number of baptisms of Bible Basics internet contacts in North America; and a group of brothers in the Christadelphian Advancement Trust [www.biblebooks.org.uk] and the Walton UK ecclesia have decided to make a special push to advertise free copies of Bible Basics to UK internet users. At the moment they're receiving replies every hour or so from all over the UK, mainly from immigrants in the large cities. The CAT have written to all UK ecclesias to invite them to co-operate in mailing out Bible Basics and following up with the contacts. So if you're in the UK, do encourage your ecclesia to get involved with this project. More information from Bro Marcus Heaster, bible.basics@onetel.net .
Finally, our Carelinks team have been putting their mind to the question of the need for daily Bible reading, and the necessity of encouraging new converts and contacts to do this. Most of us have used the Bible Companion planner all our lives, but it seems in this online age that the habit of daily Bible reading is hard to encourage when it requires many chapters to be read, not all of which are easy to follow. We've therefore developed another reading plan which we'll encourage our contacts to use so that at least they manage to read most of the Bible in the course of a year. You can view it at http://www.carelinks.net/biblereadingplanner.html and you're welcome to send us your comments.
With love from your brothers and sisters of CCM