Carelinks | United Kingdom
Our recent “Free Bible” advertisement appeared on 30 London buses during the Autumn and, by God’s grace, continued to be displayed on the buses for some time after they should have been removed!
Requests came in throughout the day every day - including some from people in Europe and Africa who noticed the adverts, presumably whilst visiting London.
Please do pray for all the many thousands of eyes who have viewed them. We hung around the bus stops distributing literature and then recorded any of “our” buses we saw displaying the advert. It’s great to know that throughout London, the offer of God’s word was made. You can view the brief video of the buses with the adverts at https://tinyurl.com/carelinks-buses. Thank you to all who donate to enable these initiatives.
Bro Mo following his baptism
We’re also pleased to tell you of the baptism of Mohammed, an Afghani who has been already 8 years in the UK and like many, will not be deported but is also not being given permission to work. Such people are in a very depressing situation, as they are trapped and can’t move forward in life. No wonder the Gospel of the Kingdom is so attractive to them. Mohammed is not from the bus adverts, but more fruit of our outreach at a migrant centre in central London.
The bus advertising produced not only many replies but also a high level of subsequent follow up. Commuters noticed the advert and then spent their commute reading our material on their phones. We have personally met up for coffee with around 10 people who saw the advert and started chatting with us online. It seems that commuters on public transport are a good target audience as they have a period of time each day to read or view on their phones. A few have already gone right through Bible Basics after first engaging with us from the bus advertisements.
Mo, pictured above and below, is a high school teacher in Croydon who first saw our adverts soon after they began. After graduating from Oxford University, unlike many young professionals, Mo began to search for the meaning of life rather than totally focusing on his career. He read the New Testament, again and again, until he came to really know the Lord Jesus and seek a relationship with Him. He then read the Old Testament. He attended some churches but quickly perceived problems with their doctrine and practice. But his personal encounter with Jesus through the pages of scripture… is just wonderful, and best told by him in his own words in the video. He emphasizes that contrary to the claims of many, he had no supposed vision of Jesus, no words whispered in visions - but he has learnt what he has learnt from the written word. He really emphasizes this in his testimony. He really felt he had encountered Jesus, and started buying New Testaments to distribute on the streets on his way to and from work. He noticed that the various churches he attended seemed more interested in getting attenders and members, than in reaching out simply with the message of Jesus to people on the street.
With this in mind, and also wanting more knowledge and teaching, Mo exited a petrol station one evening in Addington and noticed a bus bearing our advert for a totally free Bible for “whosoever will”. He pulled out his phone and snapped a photo of the bus with the advert, and later contacted us by phone. We met up immediately, and continued meetings. He quickly accessed our material online and viewed our YouTube videos and read our Bible Basics material. In the old days, one learnt the Truth through attending weekly meetings for months. Now, you can read all the material, listen to it or view it on your commute to work, and grasp the Truth quickly. This is what happened with Mo. It was really a wonderful and emotional moment when Mo was baptized into the Lord Jesus in a small lake near Croydon, covered in autumn leaves. The video of his testimony is really worth viewing; it’s at: https://tinyurl.com/carelinks-uk1
Mo is really an inspiration. He says: “The more I acknowledge that this is the Truth, the more I have that fire, that yearning, to tell it to others”. Mo’s sister is preparing for baptism now and she and Mo regularly go out together distributing our NEV New Testaments on the street. They distributed around 100 in just one week. Our prayers are with them as they grow in grace and knowledge.
Carelink readers will remember the annual adverts we place in the Daily Mail UK newspaper. We received the following email from a lady called Ann, living in a well heeled village in South East England:
“I was handed a cut out from a paper by a gentleman named James who is homeless and sleeping under an old railway bridge near to our property. He is well read and his current bible is very scruffy. If you send it to me at the above address I’ll make sure he gets it. Many thanks.”
It wasn’t difficult to locate her property and the railway bridge through Google Earth. Immediately on receiving the email we went to the location. And there was James, sleeping under the bridge, which is over a disused railway track now turned into a rural cycle track. We woke him up, asked if he was the James who wanted a Bible. He was most touched we had made the effort to dig him out, observing that most churches don’t really want homeless people as members. He had a large number of sleeping bags and was well set up and not willing to accept any help apart from food. He explained, in the Queen’s English and revealing an intelligent and highly educated mind, that he reads the Bible much of the time, but his Bible was wearing out. Whilst in a library in January (that’s 10 months ago) he had noticed our advert in the Daily Mail and cut it out, keeping it carefully in his Bible. He has really no money and survives just by what food he is given. Ann, along with other middle class ladies in this rather nice area, bring him food and drinks in a kind of unconsciously devised rota between them. He says he gets three great meals some days and none the next. So realizing his Bible was falling apart, he asked Ann if she could post the coupon to us and get the Bible sent to her home. She agreed, but emailed us instead, as the advert had our email.
He accepted the Bible with gratitude, but when we started chatting about what the Bible meant, he said he needed to ask some questions, as he was sick and tired of Christian ‘do gooders’ (even though he depends upon them!) who don’t really read or know their Bibles. And he would only discuss with people who do. So he fired a series of questions, such as ‘Who was the father of John the Baptist?’, ‘When is Tyre first mentioned in the Bible’ and most interestingly, ‘Does the word Trinity ever occur in the Bible?’. He was impressed with our answers and apologized for his arrogance and listened to us explaining our doctrines for about 30 minutes. It would’ve made a fine photo - a homeless man wrapped in sleeping bags intently listening to our preaching, clutching his new NEV Bible in his hand, nodding agreement or shaking his head at times in disagreement. But it is somehow inappropriate to point a camera at a destitute man who is very sceptical of his more ‘normal’ helpers and visitors. On returning home, we emailed Ann and told her. She was most touched we should care so much for a homeless man, and asked if she could be sent the Bible and our literature as she’d be interested to read it, as we seemed very sincere. We marvel at the ways of providence, which reflect the passion and active device of the Father and Son to work with His servants to, by all means, try to save some. So… please pray for Ann and James.
