July 2020 Belgium, Canada, UK, Iran, Conference
We strongly recommend you download the
"Bible Companion" app, from where you can access
Carelinks messages, daily Bible readings,
Bible Basics, commentary on every verse of the Bible and audio exhortations on every chapter of the Bible.
For Android / Google Play at
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.carelinks.bc and on the App Store for Apple / iOS at
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/bible-companion/id1475914490
We mourn the falling asleep in the Lord at this time of two truly wonderful sisters who were great supporters of our work. Sister Vanessa Floyd in
South Africa, and Sister Mel Downton in the
UK. Both were true friends in Christ, true sisters, true workers for the Lord, and true companions in His service over many years. Both had done mission work with us in Latvia and elsewhere, and both lived a missionary life. Our deep love is with their grieving families at this time.
APP There have now been over half a million downloads of the
Bible Companion app- 504,000 as we send this out [281,000 English, 102,000 Spanish, 52,000 Farsi, 38,000 Russian, 31,000 French]. These are from about every nation under Heaven. Including Antarctica and Greenland. There are around 200,000 people using the app with some regularity.
We have people returning answers to
Bible Basics all the time, and lots of people now thinking about baptism. We get many deeply appreciative messages of thanks for the app every day. These are massive figures. Let them sink in. Hundreds of thousands of people have had extended exposure to our message, and have considered it at some depth. This is without doubt the most effective project we have ever been led to- and with the pandemic, people are looking at apps more, as they search for answers in this confusing world.
We would love to be able to continue our current level of advertising the app, and to move forward in developing some kind of online "church" for all these people. We're open to your donations towards this. We're working through some technical issues with developing the online fellowship app, and will appreciate your prayers to get through them.
BELGIUM We've been receiving replies to
"Bible Basics" from a man called BERNARD, he answered well and finished the book, so we asked him what he reckoned about baptism, and what he thought about self baptism, and gave him the link to our material on self baptism. He went quiet for a bit and then replied he had just baptized himself. Seemed pretty sincere and we chatted with him. His answers were very good and he sure had grasped the ideas. So there we are. Never know how the Lord is working in the lives of all those half a million people who have that app and look at it... People are all at different points and many have had bad experiences with religion. And so they prefer to study the truth and baptize themselves.
And that is fine, but Christianity is all about life together, and the ecclesia / church is an opportunity for practicing Christianity. Sure, many being baptized are not near any large ecclesia which believes as they now do. But we need to bind them together into at least some online community where they can have at least some level of fellowship. Do pray for us in trying to achieve this.
UK Delighted to announce the baptism of a 24 year old Welshman, LEWIS, in South Wales. He is in touch with the growing group in South Wales baptized 18 months ago, who meet regularly and are growing. Great to see the Truth taking off amongst young people and couples with young families, especially in the UK where our community is generally ageing. Here are just a few of them recently:
IRAN Every hour or so we have communication from some within Iran, either already baptized or seriously studying the Gospel on the app and struggling with paying the price of conversion to Christ. Do pray for them. This week we had the baptism of brother S, a surgeon. The truth of Christ is attractive to people throughout society, each facing their particular circumstances and having their own circle of contacts with whom they share the life changing encounter they have had with the Lord Jesus, in spirit and truth.
CANADA Brother Jim Barton writes:
We would like to express our gratitude to:
"A. Nonymous
123 Halleluya Way
Mt. Zion, IS"
for sending an "A. Nonymous" donation of cash through the postal mail with a beautiful card, which read:
"Bro. Jim Sis. Anne,
May the grace and peace of our Heavenly Father, the Father of lights from whom all blessings flow be with you and yours this day through the abundance poured out in Christ Jesus our Lord! I saw your request for funds to support the Bible app advertising in Canada.
Have a blessed day"
Well, "A. Nonymous", since we cannot thank you personally, still we did want to express our appreciation for your generous support of this unique and very worthwhile outreach campaign and assure you that the funds you mailed have reached us securely. Thanks to the support of people like you we continue to sustain our campaign to advertise the
Bible Companion app reaching more and more people everyday. As of this writing we are approaching almost 12,000 downloads in Canada alone, and counting still...
We thank you so much for enabling us to reach those who may otherwise never come to hear the Gospel hope we hold so dear.
God bless you (who ever you are, Jesus knows),
Bro. Jim Sis. Anne Barton
CONFERENCE A reminder of our international conference which will be held on Zoom, on Saturday August 22nd God willing. Let us know if you would like to make a presentation about anything.
It will be a long day, so that despite the time differences, we can have contributions from all over the world- from New Zealand to North America. Anyone willing to play host on the conference that day for a few hours, please let us know.
Idea is that someone with Zoom experience needs to be able to invite folks in and ensure we are not "bombed", and generally keep the different presentations flowing.
With love from your brothers and sisters of Carelinks