October 23, 2024
CARTHAGE, Texas — An East Texas church’s year-end surplus enabled Baptist World Alliance partners to deliver thousands of Bibles to people in a rural area of the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
“We were blessed with surplus funds—not tithes but other gifts” at the end of 2023, said Pastor Monty Pierce of First Baptist Church in Carthage. “We prayed about how God might have us use them.”
Pierce first became acquainted with BWA General Secretary Elijah Brown when Brown was on faculty at nearby East Texas Baptist University in Marshall.
So, he contacted Brown to ask if BWA knew about a need First Baptist in Carthage might help to meet.
“He told me he had just learned about a need in the Democratic Republic of Congo,” Pierce said.
In a remote rural area of the Central African nation where Christians lacked access to Bibles, church leaders were traveling up to 45 miles a week by foot or by motorbike to copy a passage of Scripture to use in worship the next Sunday.
“The area they traveled through was held by rebels who had previously attacked churches and burned Bibles,” Brown explained in a text to Pierce.
Bibles in the language of the people in that region were available, but transporting and distributing them was cost-prohibitive.
Central Baptist Church in Carthage gave $6,000 for BWA and Congolese Baptists to secure the necessary transportation.
“Altogether, 36,321 people received a Bible,” Brown wrote in a text to Pierce. “As the leaders distributed the Bibles to people in their churches, they also shared their faith, and 2,364 people gave their lives to Christ.
“Thank you so much! Your generosity sent Bibles into rural Congo, equipped pastors, replaced Bibles burned by attacking rebels, and led to over 2,300 salvations. Praise God!”
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This story first appeared in The Baptist Standard.
