Bible
is Centre of Life for Cuban Church|
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Bible is Centre of
Life for Cuban Church
A Meeting with God (Brazil)
‘FCBH is Like a Ring on My Finger’ says
Pastor (Bolivia)
Retired Aviation Engineer Leads People to Christ
(Bolivia)
FCBH Listener Shared the Gospel With Man Who Robbed
Her (Bolivia)
Navajo Celebrate their Scripture (USA)
Bible Society Loses Office Equipment in Burglary
(Argentina)
Bible
is Centre of Life for Cuban ChurchHAVANA, Cuba — Almost all churches teach the Bible. Most preach from it. But few incorporate it so completely into the lives of its people as does the Gideon’s Band Evangelical Church in Cuba.
“The
Bible is the centre of my life and the life of the church,” notes the Rev
William Jil, 32, pastor of the Gideon’s Band Church in the La Lisa area
of Havana. “For us, it is the most important thing. Sometimes I read the
Bible through four times a year, and all of our members read it through at least
once a year.”
Membership in the church, which has congregations across the island, is strict.
The leader of the nationwide church, Bishop-Director David Lopez, notes that while there are upwards of 10,000 regular attenders at the 100 Gideon’s Band congregations, only 2,500 adults have been accepted as full members. And Bible study is one of the primary requirements.
“We
encourage all church members to read the Bible through each year,” Mr Jil
says. “We give tests on the Bible at church, and the people do very well!
This helps the young people to understand the Scriptures, and this is what I
want. We’ve many young people coming, because in this country people are
hungry for the Word.”
“We use two systems of youth outreach,” he explains. “The first is when people come for Scriptures. The second is when we visit homes. We ask about how people are doing, and try to help with problems. But we always ask, ‘How much do you read the Bible?’
“For the children we use the same system – we have a guide for Scripture Portions they must read through the year. This teaches them to use the Bible. Then we have championships for children and young people on Bible knowledge. This is always an exciting event, because in our congregation of 300, we have 150 in our youth group.”
Mr Jil says this is an especially important time for Scriptures to be available in Cuba, because people are hungry for God’s Word.
“It is really beautiful what happens with people receiving Bibles,” he says, “especially since they never had an encounter with the Bible before. They love to read the Bible.
“Many people come here asking about how they can get a Bible. People are hungry. They are insisting on getting the Word of God. When we have Bibles to give them, you can see the joy in their faces. It is like they found a big corsage. I know that they read the Bible, because they come and talk about what the Bible says.”
The power of God’s Word is not just something he sees in the lives of others, however – his ministry is a direct result of reading the Scriptures.
“I came casually to the church 17 years ago,” he remembers. “I was sick, so my family brought me to the church because the doctors said I was becoming schizophrenic. My mother was very worried about me.
“The most important impact on me was the love I felt from this church. The pastor began to read the Scriptures, and all the time they explained the Bible to me. I felt the impact of the love of the people and the Word of God.
“Then I began to read the Bible. It was not a common book – it was special. I liked the Old Testament stories of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego. But when I began to read the New Testament, especially the passion of Christ, and that He gave His life for us, it transformed my life.
“Since then I have read the Bible every day. I’ve read it through 25 times, sometimes four times in a year, because I love to read the Bible.”
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“When I began reading the
New Testament, I was one person – when I completed it, I was a
different person. It had impacted my life forever.”
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The church’s Secretary-Treasurer, Walter Borjas, who uses the Bible extensively in his role as teacher of minister preparation, leadership, and homiletics, shares a similar experience.
“I was an atheist,” he recalls, “and I didn’t believe in anything. Then I met a Methodist girl in high school who gave me a Selection with two verses: Romans 3:3-4. This impacted me. I never forgot those verses.
“I knew some others who went to church with this group, and they told me about the Gospel. But it was the beginning of the 1990s, and at that time, when the church talked about Jesus and God, people did not accept it. But later there was an openness.
“I was 17 when the openness began, and we all felt that suddenly, something that had not been OK was now OK, and I wanted to find out about it. I said, ‘God, if you exist, I want to know about you.’
“Some of my family attended church here at Gideon’s Band, and they invited me. When I came, the people here gave me a Bible. I would read till two or three in the morning. The Holy Spirit helped me understand it. I was converted through the Bible.
“When I began reading the New Testament, I was one person – when I completed it, I was a different person. It had impacted my life forever.”
His Bible, like almost all Bibles in Cuba, came from the United Bible Societies. “I had an old Bible, but when I came here I bought a new one,” Mr Borjas says. “I was so impressed when I read in it that the Bible Society distributes Bibles in 350 languages around the world. So I want to thank everyone who works at the Bible Societies around the world.”
Bishop Lopez says he is especially pleased about the new openness in Cuba, because “constant evangelism is our main focus,” and the openness has helped Gideon’s Band in its outreach efforts. “As well as pastors, there is a group of permanent evangelist/missionaries in each church,” the Bishop notes.
“Recently we have been able to evangelise publicly like never before due to the opening up by the government,” he explains. “We can now go to houses and hospitals and send missionaries to towns where we’ve never had a presence. So we see the possibility of using the Bibles UBS sends in even more outreach.
“For years it was difficult to receive Bibles. It would be impossible to respond to the religious awakening now taking place in Cuba without the UBS Bibles.”
Increased outreach, of course, means increased attendance – and an increasing need for Bibles.
“We
have started a program for the support of families to help meet their social
and moral needs,” Bishop Lopez says. “People come and express their
problems, publicly or privately, and we have trained members to help them. Our
members expect to distribute hundreds of Bibles through families.”
Everyone in the Gideon’s Band is excited about the 50,000 new youth Bibles sent to Cuba as part of Opportunity 21.
“I just saw the New Life Bibles – the O-21 Bibles – for the first time tonight,” the Bishop said with a smile in his eyes. “I’ve talked with others who have seen it and like it. It has 80 pages of helps designed especially for young people. I will talk with my team tomorrow and we will determine how best to use them!
“Our church has benefited greatly from UBS Scriptures,” he added. “It is a great privilege to be able to say thank you!” (WR354/12 - 10.00) [PHOTOS]
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — Drugs, drink, violence and illness devastated Antonio’s childhood. Besides struggling to live with an alcoholic father who beat his mother, Antonio also had to cope with his own chronic bronchial asthma.
He turned to drugs, starting with cigarettes and marijuana, and then moving on to cocaine, alcohol and more. With no peace, no hope, and no will to live, Antonio tried on several occasions to kill himself.
Now a pastor in the Quadrangular Gospel Church in Sorocaba, he explains, “The Word of God transformed my life. At the age of 12, I was completely involved with drugs. I had my first firearm, a .38 calibre, and began small-scale drug dealing to support my habit. My life went from bad to worse.
“I tried to kill my father several times, but my mother intervened. As a woman of God she prayed for me every day. I would take the Holy Bible, even when high on drugs, and read it to her. When I read, she would cry. I used to tell her that one day I would go to church with her and change my life.”
At 18, Antonio was still deeply involved in what he describes as “the hell of drugs”. At one point he overheard his aunt saying that he was beyond redemption and that his mother would only find peace and tranquillity if he died.
“My mother replied that she believed in the miracle of God in my life. Then one day I opened the Bible and a verse caught my attention. It was John 8:32,‘Then you will know the truth and the truth will set you free.’ I felt something begin the change within me.”
At the end of 1977, Antonio was stabbed near the heart in a gang fight and almost died from loss of blood. Recovering later in hospital, he began to read a New Testament he had been given. Although his gang friends wanted to take revenge for him, Antonio forgave the boy who had stabbed him.
It was just a few days later that Antonio had his great experience of God. Once again he was about to take his own life.
“I had the barrel of my gun against my head and was about to pull the trigger when I heard a voice in my ear say, ‘Don’t do that!’
“I looked round to see who had spoken but I saw no-one. I put the gun away in my belt and, as I did so, a girl came up to me and invited me to join an evangelical meeting being held in a garage. From then on, my life took a new direction: I accepted Jesus as my Lord and Saviour.”
Today, Antonio Moises Ponce is married with four children, and doing God’s work.
“I praise and thank God for the Bible Society of Brazil because it was through the Bibles and leaflets that they distribute that I had this great encounter with God,” he said. (WR 354/13 - 10.00)
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The following
stories were gathered by Morgan Jackson, International Director of Hosanna
Ministries – an organisation that works closely with national
Bible Societies and the UBS on the Faith Comes By Hearing (FCBH)
program. Mr Jackson recently travelled to Bolivia to see how the audio
Scripture program is impacting the churches.
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LA PAZ, Bolivia — A pastor in a rural church has found FCBH’s Scripture listening program such a blessing to his congregation that he described it as a “ring on [his] finger” – a Spanish expression meaning that the program fits his church’s needs perfectly.
Guillermo Escobar of the Iglesia Bol De Santidad Utavi (Holy Church of Bol, Utavi) began running the program in March 1999 and has already seen major changes in his congregation. His listening group, which meets on Sunday afternoons, has almost doubled from when it first began, and the pastor believes that many more will attend when cassettes in the Aymara language – the main language of his congregation – become available later this year. The church is currently using Spanish tapes.
Mr Escobar claims that members of his congregation who participate in FCBH have become “very stable” and have a deep hunger for the Word of God. So much so that, despite being very poor, they raised money to buy a cassette player for the church, which, prior to this, was borrowing one.
Stories like this abound in Bolivia, where the FCBH program is changing lives, planting new churches and raising Christian leaders. In the Iglesia Central Capajira (Central Church of Capajira) people sometimes weep during the listening sessions, according to their pastor. One story that has particularly touched the women listeners is the story of the woman with the issue of blood who was healed when she touched Jesus’s robe.
Listening to stories of Jesus’s miracles has given people faith and hope, and there are even reports of listeners being healed after an FCBH session. One such man, Valentine, was apparently healed of persistent and severe pains in his leg.
Pastor Paulino Paco of the Iglesia Cristiana Evangélica Bolivar (Bolivar Evangelical Christian Church) said that there has been a ‘dramatic’ change in the lives of those participating in his church’s FCBH program. Alcoholism and violence were some of the problems faced by his large congregation of Spanish and Quechua speakers. In some cases, drunken men would beat their wives and children in fits of rage. When they started attending FCBH sessions, however, these men stopped drinking and peace returned to their homes.
In addition, the program has created a burning desire to learn to read. Much of Mr Paco’s congregation, especially the Quechua speakers, are illiterate. Desperate to be able to read God’s Word for themselves, they began trying to follow the stories in their Bibles, and a literacy class was eventually started.
The
same thing is happening in churches across the country. In Arca de Noe
church, Pastor Mateo Cruz reports that all 190 Quechua speakers in his church
attend the Quechua listening sessions. Many of them have bought their own Quechua
Bibles, which they bring with them to the sessions in order to learn to read.
Similarly, the young people who attend his Spanish listening group have a thirst for knowledge that has astounded Mr Cruz. Before they started listening to the Scriptures, they had no interest in reading God’s Word, but now they are full of questions and have bought Bibles to check up on the stories that caught their attention.
Church leaders, too, are finding that FCBH is having a positive effect on them, encouraging them to think deeply about the questions asked by the listeners. They also report a revival in Christian leadership. Pastor Miguel Menoza of the Iglesia Bautista Achacachi (Achacachi Baptist Church) says that this has been the most significant way that FCBH has impacted his church – previously inactive members in his congregation have become involved in church work and some are now pastors and deacons, running their own FCBH listening sessions. (WR 354/14 - 10.00) [PHOTOS]
| The Faith Comes By Hearing program first started in churches in Bolivia in January 1996, with two languages – Spanish and Quechua (South Bolivian). The Aymara New Testament is in the final stages of production and should be available by January. Other languages of Bolivia scheduled for recording are Quechua (North La Paz), Guarani (Bolivia), Chiriguano and Chiquitano. |
LA
PAZ, Bolivia — At 65, Heveo Hueleneo exudes
excitement when he talks about the Word of God. Inspired by the faith and courage
of his father – an evangelist who operated openly during the war years
when Christians were being murdered – Mr Hueleneo became a pastor three
years ago after retiring from a career as an aviation engineer.
At a time in life when many people sit back to enjoy a relaxing retirement, Mr Hueleneo went back to school and studied theology for five years. He started an FCBH Spanish listening group with six people, which eventually grew to 40. He described the sessions as a “wonderful” blessing and grew to love the tapes, using them extensively in his ministry.
The effect of Mr Hueleneo’s FCBH sessions has been tremendous. His method of listening to at least one chapter per session, and then breaking people into groups for in-depth discussions followed by presentations, has led many people to a deep knowledge of the Scriptures.
Furthermore, the sessions have inspired some of the listeners to Christian leadership. One young man from that group, Marco Guillan, became a pastor and, after completing his studies, went to the Bolivian frontier to serve the poor. He himself is now using FCBH to lead others to Christ.
Pablo Cinteros is another young man who was inspired by the FCBH sessions. Before listening to the Scriptures he was a regular churchgoer, but was unwilling to take an active role. With FCBH he felt God’s calling on him to do more in the church, and is now a leader.
Mr Hueleneo, who has just been moved back to his original church after two years in another church, is eager to get the FCBH program up and running for his new congregation. Full of praise for the program, he believes that the Scripture tapes present an unequalled way of reaching people with the Word of God because the dramatised stories catch their attention. (WR 354/15 - 10.00) [PHOTOS]
CAPAJIRA, Bolivia — Justina wept with joy as she spoke about how God’s Word has impacted her life through the FCBH program. Unable to read, she has been faithfully attending the Spanish FCBH listening sessions in her church since the program was first introduced in August 1999.
Justina, like most people in her congregation, does not understand Spanish, and relies on the pastor to translate the stories on the tapes into Aymara. Despite this, she says that learning more about God’s Word has caused a “tremendous change” in her and has affected her whole family.
Her husband, she said, rarely went to church and was weak in his faith until he started attending the listening sessions with her. He is now totally committed to God and has a strong relationship with Christ.
A few months ago, Justina and her husband were robbed. Their home was left bare, and they felt disappointed and frustrated. However, with their new knowledge of God’s Word, they put aside their anger and trusted in God.
A few weeks later, a man came to their door and confessed that he was the thief. He returned the stolen possessions and asked for their forgiveness. Not only did Justina and her husband forgive him, but they also told him about Jesus and how they had come to know him through hearing God’s Word.
Justina’s sons have also fallen in love with God’s Word through the FCBH sessions. Although they both live in La Paz, where they attend school, every Sunday they make a two-hour journey in order to attend the listening sessions with their parents.
After the sessions they walk for half an hour in the dark back to the bus stop to return to La Paz for school the next day.
Justina was delighted to learn that she would soon be able to listen to the Scriptures in her own language. Recording work on the Aymara audio New Testament is almost complete, and is due to be launched in January. (WR 354/16 - 10.00) [PHOTOS]
The Navajo Bible, which took 60 years to translate, nearly failed to make it to the launch
WINDOW
ROCK, Arizona, USA — As a parade of native Navajo floats navigated its
way around the village of Window Rock, Arizona, to begin a day of celebration
and thanksgiving for the newly revised Navajo Bible, only a few people were
aware that copies of the Bible had not yet arrived.
Although the publisher had promised Bibles for the launch event, they had still not arrived half an hour before the dedication ceremony was to begin.
Then a mobile phone rang, and the words “They’re here! They’re here!” echoed through the local sports arena, where the ceremony was to be held. Shouts of praise came from the American Bible Society (ABS) team, and the praises grew until the entire congregation was engulfed by thanksgiving! God’s Word was at hand!
The Navajo people had waited patiently for the complete text of the Bible in their language. The first translation efforts were made as early as 1917, but the project began in earnest in 1940 thanks to the drive and passion of missionary Faye Edgerton.
It was a long process, with the Scriptures being printed in Portions, or in single books. Finally in 1986 a complete text of the Navajo Bible was printed by the ABS.
As President Begaye urged
the people to read
the new translation in the Navajo language,
he told the crowd of his own life transformation.
Over the past 14 years, changes have been made, words re-translated for clarity, and sentences adjusted for easier reading and understanding. The Navajo chose the revision committee themselves, and worked hard and long with Anglo missionaries and translators until their work was complete in early 2000.
On June 10, the new Bible was presented to the people through the Navajo tribal President Kelsey Begaye. He received four leather-bound Bibles from Chairman Andrew Begaye – they share a surname common among Navajos – one for himself and one for each of the tribal vice-presidents.
As President Begaye urged the people to read the new translation in the Navajo language, he told the crowd of his own life transformation. On returning from the Vietnam War, he took up a life of drink, carousing and fighting. His family was taking him to a hospital one night when they came upon a tent meeting.
It was there that President Begaye claims to have met the Great Physician. He stood up, completely healed, and truly “free from sin”. The President now has his own gospel singing group, and excused himself from the Bible celebrations to give his testimony at a festival on another part of the reservation.
Before leaving, he said: “Some say the Bible is only for the white man. I just point them to John 3:16 and the argument is over: ‘For God loved the world so much that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not die but have eternal life.’”
The ceremony continued as representatives from each of the four reservation units quoted Scripture, addressed the crowd, and offered a prayer of acceptance of the Bible in his own unit. One representative told of how a recent survey showed that only 12,000 of the 270,000 members of the tribe claimed to be Christian. Another said it was time to “take off the denominational coat” and come together in unity.
Yet another tribal leader referred to the contingent of Anglos present, who were honoured for their life-long efforts in translation. “We want to shake your hands. We honour you. Because of this effort we will experience a second great outpouring of the Spirit,” he said. (Based on an article in the American Bible Society Record, August-September 2000.) (WR 354/17 - 10.00) [PHOTOS]
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina — The Argentine Bible Society lost property worth an estimated US$30,000 in a burglary. Staff returning to work after the weekend discovered the office security system disarmed, offices ransacked and a large amount of equipment gone.
The losses included the server to the office computer network, five desktop computers, monitors, printers, a photocopier, a fax machine, a television, a video cassette recorder and a Power Point projector. A car standing in the office’s integral garage had also been taken.
Marcelo Figueroa, the General Secretary of the Society, said they were grateful no staff had been there when it happened. The Society had back-up for their server and for other vital information stored on the computer, he added. (WR 354/18 - 10.00) e-111
Correction: In Latest News 111, the date of this burglary was given as August. In fact, it took place in July.