International (MNN) — Noticed any shortages recently? The global supply chain has been wracked by COVID-19 and its aftereffects. Things are taking longer to ship and cost more, especially overseas.
The U.S. imports many goods from overseas, including semiconductors, car parts, rapid COVID-19 tests, and even shipping containers themselves. The country has often relied on cheaper labor available in other countries.
Shipping containers
Jason Woolford says Mission Cry is spending more on shipping containers to transport Bibles and Christian books. “Where that’s affecting us as a ministry is containers are about 30 to 50 percent more than what we were paying for them before. And normally I would have been able to order a container and have it here within the same week. As of right now, we’re out a month.”
China produces the majority of the world’s shipping containers, which is creating a bottleneck. Woolford says, “If we send the container, whenever that container comes back, it leaves with something. Say it’s going to Kenya. It’ll leave Kenya and go to India, but those containers are always filled with something. It keeps the supply chain going. But China paid for those containers to come back empty from all of those places.”
Future plans
Mission Cry wants to send four containers of Bibles and seminary books before the end of the year to Kenya, Ghana, and Pakistan. You can help them supply books, or even pay for the shipping containers.
Woolford says, “Last year, we sent 24 sea containers around the world reaching 1.2 million people with a free Bible. And our goal is to reach 1.5 million this year with free Bibles. We cannot do that without sending them via shipping containers.”
Mission Cry has teams all around the world ready to receive these Bibles and send them out. Woolford says, “The next container that’s headed out tomorrow is going to Ethiopia. And then on Thursday, we have a container headed to Ghana. Pray for the safety of that, the release of it, and the distribution.”
Header photo courtesy of dendoktoor from Pixabay.
