Eastern Europe (MNN) – In recent years, it’s become more difficult for World Missionary Press (WMP) to send scripture booklets into Eastern Europe through shipping containers, distributors, and organizations.
Deviations in Europe
“Although we’ve had established contact particularly in Romania and Ukraine, due to internal difficulties… those two relationships have kind of disappeared on us and we mailed boxes into Ukraine and into Romania, but we’ve not been able to establish a way to get large quantities in and there are still interests and opportunity,” WMP’S Helen Williams says.
Ukrainians have been under the stress of the crisis that started in November 2013 and continues still.
Williams says WMP’s contact in Ukraine was forced to leave the city where he’d been living due to political issues. She explains that he is still ministering, but has been unable to receive shipments of scripture booklets.
However, the difficulty of sending scripture booklets does not solely rest on political issues and crises.
“Some of it is just the people that we have involved, and reestablishing from a distance in a place where sometimes it’s hard to get distributors and to really know,” how to proceed with shipments and distributions.
As a result, the work in Eastern Europe has remained in a state of limbo for the last five to six years.
Opportunities for Partnering in Europe
But now, doors are opening up.
Williams says WMP recently met with a contact who has distributed scripture booklets in Finland and in different areas of Eastern Europe.
He recently visited the organization’s warehouse in the United States and was concerned that there were boxes of booklets in various European languages that were not being moved to or distributed in Europe.
“He decided that he was going to put them in his car, and he was going to drive to these countries and find contacts that might be interested, and [to] see if he could establish some sort of centralized distribution or a major interest in each of these countries,” Williams says.
The distributor took boxes of booklets in different languages, including Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian, and more.
He began meeting with contacts in different areas including Romania and giving them boxes of booklets to distribute in their areas.
As he worked, WMP became associated with more contacts who were linked to other contacts, creating a web of distributors and connections in Eastern Europe.
“We have contacts in most of these countries, so it’s a matter of joining them all together as a joint force, everybody working in their country,” Williams says.
Now, as connections have been built in a number of different nations, the opportunity to ship scripture booklets has been created, and WMP is getting ready to ship one million booklets in more than ten European languages, including Albanian, Bulgarian, Croatian, and more.
Williams says they’ll be shipping booklets to Eastern Europe and put an emphasis on shipping to the Ukraine and Romania.
“This is really exciting to us because Europe is in a place where we’ve had not as much opportunity as we’ve liked, but we know there are people that can use the literature and will use the literature particularly because it’s available in so many languages and it’s free.”
(Photo courtesy of World Missionary Press via Facebook)
WMP wants to further harness these opportunities by establishing three key centralized locations in Europe that can act as distribution points to reach other strategic areas of the continent.
Join with WMP by praying for the shipping of the booklets. Pray for the people who distribute and receive the booklets to be impacted by the Word of God. Pray also for the new partners that WMP has made and for the establishment of distribution points.
Also, support WMP as they send scripture booklets to Eastern Europe. It takes just five cents to print a booklet and help change a life forever. Get started here. Or, if you’re in Europe, order booklets today and become a distributor in your area.
