Reaching the River People (Paraguay)
Raising Hope on Reservations (USA)
Truckers’ Oasis on the Eternal Road (USA)
Jubilee Bible Celebrates African-American Heritage of Faith (USA)

Inspired by the success of the Bible Society of Brazil’s river-based project Light of the Amazon, and knowing the great need for Scriptures amongst the poverty-stricken river people, the PBS has already undertaken two exploratory trips to assess the situation.

They were soon pelted with heavy rains and blown about by strong winds, but their spirits were lifted by the enthusiastic reception that they received wherever they moored. Pastor Velázquez and some of his colleagues helped the Bible Society team to distribute the books, which the children received with delight.

For many of the children and their parents, this was their first encounter with the Bible. Scriptures are hard to come by in this remote and inaccessible part of the country where most people’s lives consist of poverty and hardship.

The Bible Society team returned from this first trip excited by the joy the Scriptures had brought to these people, and determined to look into the possibility of starting a boat project to make regular distributions to the area.

The exploration began at the town of Puerto Antequa, which lies on the banks of the River Paraguay. The team arrived there at the end of an exhausting 500km (312 mile) journey – the  last 100km (62 miles) over very poor roads – from the capital, Asunción.

The 3,000 or so inhabitants of this river town earn a meagre living from the two main natural resources available locally – timber and fish. Nearby there is also a reserve of the indigenous Guaraní people, though numbers are now reduced to barely 200 people.

The visitors from the PBS found him in joyful mood. He had recently been given an eight horsepower outboard motor capable of running a river launch. Until then his pastoral visits had all been made by means of a small rowing boat. As well as making his journeys less arduous, having a motor boat will enable him to extend the boundaries of his ‘parish’ considerably.

The day after they arrived, the visitors boarded two launches and took a trip up river. For Mr Altamirano it proved an eye-opening and unforgettable experience.

“I was struck by the total lack of hygiene – in people’s food, their body care, clothing and housing,” he said. “They live with flies and insects around them as though this is natural, and they wash their clothes, go to the lavatory and draw their drinking water all in  the same place – the river.”

Such a way of life, he says, is common to 90 per cent of the communities. As a result, intestinal infections are commonplace. The food they eat lacks vitamins and minerals, and evidence of malnutrition is widespread.

As they rounded a bend in the river, Pastor Velázquez pointed to a spot on the bank where a few bamboo posts held up a straw canopy designed to offer a little shelter from the sun. This, he announced, was the local school.

Most communities have a small school, which offers children lessons through four grades. The pupils walk, cycle or paddle in canoes distances of up to five kilometres to get there each day. Such is the economic pressure for all able-bodied members of the family to do some kind of work that few children are allowed to complete their education.

The party went ashore and the Pastor presented the head of the school with a Paraguayan flag. With tears in her eyes, the schoolmistress thanked him for the gift and displayed it to the children. Many had never seen the flag of their country before and it was soon flying from an improvised bamboo flagpole. The Pastor was declared a guest of honour.

“We decided to name the boat which we shall use The Word 1Boat— because it will take the Word of God to the people – Paraguayans or Brazilians – living on the banks of the River Paraguay,” said Mr Altamirano.

“All along the shore of the Paraguay River you can reach people who speak Portuguese,” says Mr Escobar. For this reason the PBS has hopes of making the project a joint one with the Bible Society of Brazil. The scope of the project also adds importance to their existing plans for the production of the Bible on cassette in the Guaraní language.

Meanwhile the Society is also in discussion with other Christian organisations that might be interested in providing riverside communities with medical and dental care and education about environmental issues. This coming July the PBS plans to celebrate its 25th anniversary as an independent institution with, among other things, a gala concert in Asunción’s Japanese Paraguayan Centre. The The Word 1Boat project means that the cheers will be heard along the River Paraguay as well. (WR 348/1  - 02.00) [PHOTOS]

The material necessities go together with the Scriptures; Don is fond of saying. “You can’t feed people the bread of heaven,” he says, “when their children are crying for food.”

This is a scene which has been repeated scores of times in the ministry of the 76-year-old preacher and president of the Portland-based Frontier Missions. Everywhere he has gone, his determination, grit and love for the Gospel has won him, if not always the hearts of Native Americans, at least their grudging admiration.

But one voice was raised in dissent. A man pleaded: “I want to know about this Jesus.” Don stayed to preach and deliver food and Bibles.

He emphasises: “We tell them it’s not a white man’s Jesus. He is for all.” The need for Jesus he perceives among Native Americans is something he has felt in his own life.

He grew up in the tough logging camps of the northwest. Struck by childhood polio – he still struggles with a limp – he was raised in a family “where there was no God” other than the distant figure hidden away in a largely unread Bible stuck on the top shelf of a closet.

On August 7, 1939 – nearly 60 years later and Don remembers as if it were last week – he stumbled home after a drinking spree. “I realised I was going to be an alcoholic like my Dad. I tried to pray and I cried,” he says. “That night I made a deal with God and asked him to show me the path.”

He enrolled in a Wesleyan Seminary in the Midwest, earned his degree, and then returned to Portland, where he pastored a church for a decade.

Then prominent church members invited him on a hunting trip to British Columbia.  An ad hoc church service in the woods attracted members of a local Indian tribe. One man in particular had an emotional conversion to Christianity. But the Indian was not content to hear the Gospel once.

“Why don’t you come and help us? Come and teach God’s Word,” he challenged the preacher. The nearest church was hundreds of miles away.

After returning to Portland, on the advice of a friend, Don purchased radio time. His appeal to assist the Indian people was a success, and it continues to this day. Now Frontier Missions extends its food support and spiritual ministry to tribes from Nome, Alaska, to South Dakota.

He is assisted by his son, Joel. Don concedes he has less energy than he used to have.  He has handed over much of his preaching responsibilities to a small network of Native American preachers through the vast territory of the American and Canadian West.

The Rev Ken Pretty on Top, pastor of the Spirit of Life Four Square Church on the Crow Reservation, will assist Don with a Montana revival this summer. A Native American himself, Ken says of Don, “You can see where his heart is. He wouldn’t be doing it if he didn’t believe it.” Occasionally, Don will preach. “But often he sits in the background,” says Ken, encouraging the work of Native American ministers.

With lorries filled with supplies, Don distributes food and ABS-supplied Bibles over a band of territory stretching thousands of miles. He praises the ABS Contemporary English Version Bible in particular for its accessible style, which makes it popular with Native Americans.

This year, he is concentrating on plans for a mission on the Montana Crow Reservation, during which all those living on the reservation will be personally invited to attend services and receive a Bible.

The words are music to the lanky 76-year-old preacher, offering a clue about why he continues working while others of his age enjoy their retirement. He perceives the dawning of a new spring of Christian faith among Native Americans – something he wants to be around for. “I believe something great will happen to Indians through the distribution of Bibles,” he says. (WR 348/2  - 02.00) [PHOTOS]  from ABS Record Aug/Sept 1999.

One goal is for truckers and their families to enjoy a good time. Still, there is a serious point: they also want the world to know they are on fire for Jesus. The event, which includes a prayer service and barbecue, is sponsored by Transport for Christ, a group which ministers to truckers with the help of Scriptures supplied by the American Bible Society (ABS).

One man wears a T-shirt proclaiming, “A Bible that is falling apart reveals a life that isn’t.” For a section of the American population, which rarely enjoys the steady enrichment of membership in a church congregation, this rally provides a framework of Christian support.

Sylvia Jones, an ABS volunteer who distributes Scriptures to truckers, notes that there are only 250 people ministering to the millions of truckers in the USA.  The ministry takes place not in quiet churches on Sunday mornings but in the noisy truck stops and diners which mark the American landscape. Ministry to truckers involves prayer meetings and preaching, but it just as often involves talking with a trucker late at night over a cup of coffee in some roadside greasy spoon.

Regular Sunday church attendance is often impossible for hard-driving truckers. “Their lifestyle doesn’t lend itself to going to church. They can’t drive their tractor-trailer onto the pavement in the church parking lot. Often they haven’t showered, their clothes are rumpled and they need a good sleep,” Sylvia says.

She reaches out to them by placing Scripture materials in phone directories at truck stops. The Scriptures serve not only as a spiritual resource – truckers will also use the white space on the material to jot down information from their dispatchers. The Scriptures then become something they will carry with them across the country.

“Drivers call me at 2am because they need someone to talk to,” Charles says – he is known among his flock as ‘Hoppy’. “Being a truck driver can be lonely. But if you have the Lord with you it’s not. You are away from home and miss the family and kids. Some drivers are suffering. If they know the Lord, they still have problems but they have a sounding board.”

The rally is a big help to Butch Zook, a trucker from Leola, Pennsylvania, who has been on the road for the past 25 years. “Being a trucker is very lonely. There can be family problems at home and you are not there,” he says. Transport for Christ, he says, “is not there to shove religion down your throat. They are there to listen to your problems, to pray with you and listen to you.”

The scene at Lebanon is the largest public event of the year for Transport for Christ. The 250 trucks roll by in an hour-long convoy extending over eight miles. As they pass farmhouses along the way, the truckers sound their horns.

In the heart of what is known as Pennsylvania Dutch country, the Christian convoy is watched by people bringing out their lawn chairs, including young Mennonite women with white lace caps on the back of their heads and young children at their sides.

When they reach their destination for a massive barbecue, the truckers and their families are greeted by clowns and balloons. They are provided with fresh-squeezed lemonade and apple fritters, among other goodies.

“I pray when I drive and do more Bible reading when I stop. I start the morning praying and reading the Bible. I enjoy the natural beauty of the land. I’m thankful that God loves me in spite of my many downfalls,” he says. (WR 348/3  - 02.00) [PHOTOS]

That is a storehouse of memories, yet one in particular is set apart, inspiring the others. He remembers the day as if it were yesterday: he was 17 years old. As part of a church project, he was interviewing an elderly man, a former slave, who was 10 years old when Negroes in that part of Virginia were freed by President Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation.

The former slave remembered that men came on horseback proclaiming the news. What the slaves heard was not only a political or economic statement. The newly-freed heard about their liberation in the light of their biblical faith.

“He talked about it as the great jubilee. They understood freedom in biblical terms,” recalls Dr Wood. That same spirit animates the recently-released Jubilee Bible published by the American Bible Society (ABS).

The Jubilee Bible, a collaborative effort involving ABS staff and biblical, cultural and historical scholars, comes in both King James and Contemporary English Versions. What makes it unique is a 284-page preface devoted to the role of the Bible in African-American life.

The Rev Charles Smith, Assistant Director of Heritage Markets for the ABS, travelled the country and saw the need for a Bible which could capture the imagination of African-American youth. Dr Wood, meanwhile, had been working on a similar idea. The final product includes colourful photos and maps which tell the dual histories of African-American life and the role that Africans such as Hagar and the Queen of Sheba played in the Scriptures.

The Scriptural themes in the text, including the jubilee vision of freedom and reconciliation and the Exodus theme of suffering and liberation, “parallel what African Americans have experienced,” she says. African Americans see their own struggles in the biblical stories, a cultural facet emphasised in the Jubilee Bible, according to Ms Bernstengel.
 

“Jubilee provides an avenue in which we can all escape from the burdens of revengeful attitudes.”

The preface material comprises two sections. One contains an introductory article on the biblical Jubilee written by Dr Wood. It also has background information on the African-American experience – how Africans were brought to the New World in chains, African culture, the Black Church, and a chronology of struggles and victories.

Section Two contains articles by scholars on understanding the Bible and the world of biblical antiquity, the Black Church, and interpreting the Bible for African Americans today. At the back of the Bible is a section containing study notes, maps and other aids.

The Rev Fred Allen  of Nashville, Tennessee, director of church relations for the ABS, notes that the Jubilee Bible is timed to coincide with the new millennium observances.

In one on the curse of Ham, Dr Gene Rice, professor of Old Testament Language and Literature at Howard University in Washington, notes that “the Bible knows nothing of a curse on Ham and nowhere does it have anything negative to say about Africans because of their race. The theological heartbeat of the Bible is that we are all sons and daughters of God, and that we are all related to one another as members of a family, that each one of us, whatever our race, ethnicity and nationality, is special and precious to God.”
 

Explanations like these can help African Americans who may have abandoned reading the Bible because they failed to see any reflection of themselves in it, says the Rev Robert M. Franklin, President of the Interdenominational Theological Center in Atlanta. He thinks the Jubilee Bible will “succeed in allowing people to revisit the Word of God” by putting the Scriptures into “a multicultural lens which is appropriate to the text”.

The art in this Bible also tells a story, according to Dorette Saunders, Assistant Director of Product Development for the ABS.

It was included in the volume, says Ms Saunders, “to show how many African Americans identify with the sufferings of Christ and continue patiently in their struggle hoping to gain their reward in heaven”. To illustrate an article on death in the Bible written by Diane M. Ritzie, Associate Pastor at Shiloh Baptist Church in New Rochelle, New York, Ellis Wilson’s Funeral Procession is used, depicting an African-American family’s grief.  (WR 348/4  - 02.00)