Tuesday, May 26, 2015

Many Hands Make Light Work

Joan couldn't walk today, she had her 2 grand daughters this weekend and needed to drive Aubrey to school. What we didn't know is that she went straight from that school to the shop and put everyone to work stamping envelopes. By the time mom and I arrived at 9:00 am they had been working for close to an hour. We have no Bibles to work with today but Tim Martin has promised to bring a bunch tomorrow morning for Thursday's workers. It was also a smaller than usual mail day because of the Memorial Day Holiday. Below mom, Shirley and Eva Jean are busy with letters and studies.
 Joan's crew is hard at work in the conference room stamping envelopes and stuffing boxes.
 The letter below was kind of pitiful, we can't imagine how scared and lonely it must be in jail. This inmate is asking for prayer. Please pray for him that he could find peace and learn to know of Jesus.
 Chuck was busy working on applying labels to envelopes then envelopes to studies. 
 Dave and mom were busy reading letters.
 Below Joan had everyone working on stuffing boxes while she kept the copier going. We had a wonderful crew and were able to finish all the letters and studies by noon.
We went to Denny's for lunch then after lunch all were able to leave for home instead of working the afternoon. The saying Many hands make light work, really did apply today. We had many willing hands and because of that the work load was an easy one for everybody. Of course the fact that it was a light mail day may have contributed to us getting done by noon.

Friday, May 22, 2015

A Week's Worth of News

Unbelievable but all those Bible labels that were printed out yesterday plus all the mail we had today got processed. In fact we were able to fill every request to the individuals but the only way was to call Ellen to see if she had any that had been returned. She came up with 6 Bibles and that was exactly what was needed. All together we sent out exactly 300 Bibles this week. Two more pallets were ordered. Hope they arrive by Tuesday. The pictures below are of this weeks workers, both Tuesday and Thursday since I finally got time to download them off the camera.
 Above Ava and Faith are stamping envelopes, below Mackenson and Berlica are also stamping envelopes while Hannah stuffs the boxes.

 Above are just a few of the piles of mail that came in on Tuesday and below is the great Tuesday crew all busy opening, reading and processing the mail. front to back is Eva Jean, Shirley, mom and Dave.

 Above Shirley was wondering why someone brought down a bottle of vitamins and burst out laughing when we explained they were paper clips. Our paper clips come back to us in all kinds of containers. Below Chuck is busy applying labels on envelopes then the envelopes onto the studies.
 The next few pictures were taken today, we had a hard working bunch come in for our Thursday work. Emily, Dave and Logan are working on getting the Bibles ready for mailing.
While Rachel and Diane R are busy reading the mail.
Emily is busy stacking the Bibles back into the boxes to transport them out to the truck.
Below is our work train we set up to pack all 25 boxes of Bibles into the truck. 
We put everyone to work around here. We love it when we get young volunteers to do the hauling and lifting. 
Below Logan is on garbage duty. He was busy crushing boxes.
When the kids weren't busy hauling Bibles we put them to work on stamping envelopes.
Emily and Logan took the truck to the post office and unloaded the Bibles. I was thrilled when we were finished by noon. We went to Tyrone's for lunch. How thankful I am for such willing helpers. This job would be overwhelming without them. We have ordered 2 more pallets of Bibles and when they arrive will be looking for a group willing to come down to wrap them. Please consider donating a few hours to this program. The pay is out of this world.

Tuesday, May 12, 2015

Bible Assembly Line

We had a busy day at Berean. It was wonderful that we had so many willing workers. Below Chuck, mom and Shirley are reading letters while Eva Jean opens the studies and Joan is making copies.
 Jan and Joyce are busy applying the labels to the envelopes then putting the envelopes on the studies.
 Faith, Berlica, Mackenson and Hannah are stamping our return address on 1500 envelopes.
 This is a job Berlica does very carefully.
 Mackenson always made sure his envelopes were stamped perfectly.
 Hannah and Faith just worked on them until the next job arrived.

 Tim Martin from the Goodfield Bible Distribution arrived with over 600 Bibles. We formed a chain to off load them from his trailer into the shop.


We decided to go to lunch once the studies were all processed then work on getting the Bibles mailed out after lunch. Chuck, Eva Jean, Shirley, mom, Joan and the kids all agreed to stay on for the afternoon. We had a good lunch at Denny's then got to work. Below is a short video clip of our assembly line:

Thursday, May 7, 2015

Update from Romania

April 2015
”Those who are wise will shine like the brightness of the heavens,
and those who lead many to righteousness, like the stars for ever and ever.” Dan 12,3

I received some news from Dumitru Costin. He activates in the Găeşti Prison. Recently he finished the three month program with a group of inmates. One of them (Adrian) decided to follow Jesus wholeheartedly. It is a great joy for him. Costin has the possibility to do spiritual counseling with the inmates after each occasion. Some of them want to stay longer. This extra time was blessed by the Lord.

In MCiuc Prison we have completed the three months course. 11 inmates passed the final exam. They testified that the greatest value of the course was the clear understanding of the will of God. They told us that they want to obey God and will do everything to change their life.

We continue with short programs. The advantage is the large number of participants per month.
The disadvantage of the system is the possibility of only two meetings. I pray that God may touch their souls.




I had a pleasant surprise. As usual I visit the organization's volunteers. This time Viorel Sintoiu visited me. It was a joy being together. It was the first time. His wife works at City Hall and she had a conference in the neighboring city of Sovata. Viorel accompanied her. He talked about his ministry. He sent you a separate letter about it. Praise the Lord for his valuable service!

We managed to get in Focsani. Danţus Brother received us with great love (with his son on the picture). He told us that his family recently had great joy, his daughter Alexandra won a national championship in linguistics. We know that Iulian cares for his daughter and spend time for her education. He is a good stay-at-home dad. Now it sees the results. He runs in the prison “A day with Dad” program. In this program it involved the whole church spiritually and financially. This moved the whole congregation and also moved the prisoners. He showed me some of the detainee’s letters. It seems that God has worked wonderfully among them. The program is very useful. May the Lord bless their lives and as they reach home to implement what they have learned! We pray for them.

In this month we managed to help the work of Baboi Marian in Braila Penitentiary. Brother Baboi thanks for the support. He works here with 45 inmates. It is a record compared with other units. He works also with 36 inmates in three more prisons. He is a sleepless volunteer. God bless him and his family!

I arrived this month at MCiuc Gypsy Church. The brothers are well, they enjoy for all things by grace. The brothers gathered for the Lord’s Supper. We were together around the Word of God five hours. After the Lord’s Supper the foot-washing was done. They send greetings to you all with love.
It has been mentioned your priceless gift buying the house of worship. They thank God and you for the building and the continuous financial support. They also raise money for current needs. Recently they bought wood beams to complete the large hall resistance. It is a requirement from the Office of Buildings.
Soon they will join a big evangelization. Hundreds of thousands of books will be distributed at the annual Pentecost pilgrimage of MCiuc.
Please pray for them.


Soon we meet with your delegation. We pray for you and your safe trip.



With love in Christ

Wednesday, May 6, 2015

Bigger Piles

Diane couldn't come to Berean yesterday, she had jury duty but we had a really good group of helpers today. We had a bunch of mail, below Shirley and Eva Jean are fighting over who gets the bigger pile.
 We had a special gift from Akron Elevator in Glasford, IL. They sent a whole bag full of letter openers. This was their second donation of them, These are so much better than any of our other ones that the volunteers were fighting over them. well maybe that is stretching the truth a little...but these are the first ones grabbed each time. Thanks Cheryl for this wonderful donation.
Eva Jean and Shirley were a little worried at the beginning with Diane and Emily gone, they were thinking we were going to be working all day. Thankfully the door to the office started opening and workers started coming through. Below Aunt Bernie has just brought us 350 Bible stamps, Joan is running the copier, Eva Jean and Shirley are opening studies, Dave and Kathy are reading letters, chuck is applying labels to envelopes and Cody is stuffing envelopes.
In the conference room Hannah is keeping her group busy with stamping envelopes, applying labels and sorting Bible studies. 
We had some pretty funny letters come in today. They will be scanned and posted on the Berean blog when I have a few extra minutes. One of our postage paid business reply envelopes came back with a note "that this is not going to work there is no sticker (stamp) on it." Another came addressed to King James % Berean Prison Ministry. Funny I thought that guy died years ago.  One prisoner had a special request, "could I have one of those cool Bibles?" Another prisoner wrote: Could you donate us a basketball and a football? Just recently our basketball tore up and we never had a football. The prison does not buy us ball's! There's not to many things we can do, so we try to occupie our time in sports other then fighting. at the bottom of the page was NOTE: Not all prisoner's are bad people, we just made some mistakes in our lives that we have to correct and learn from.
We were able to finish the studies and get all the letters read but were not able to get the Bible's entered. Hopefully I'll have a couple free hours today to get that done.