Russia (MNN) – So far, it’s been very difficult to get a World Missionary Press (WMP) Scripture booklet into Russian hands. However, that’s all about to change.
“When I first started [at WMP], we were sending regular shipments to our contact there without difficulty, and then, the door kind of closed,” WMP’s Helen Williams explains. “[Our contact] advised us that the government just was not open to them receiving this anymore, so we wouldn’t be able to get things in.”
As a result, WMP has few individual contacts in Russia. Any material brought into Russia over past years was carried in by individuals or separate organizations from different countries or alongside humanitarian aid.
Doors of opportunity are opening in 2019, Williams says. The ministry is now going to take an “insider” approach.
Printing inside Russia
(Photo courtesy of World Missionary Press via Facebook)
WMP recently got a request for literature for distribution in an area of 52 million people. To meet their contact’s needs, Williams says, “World Missionary Press agreed to have the material printed in Russia. We do that in some limited situations where getting it in by shipment is a little problematic, and there are reasons why perhaps we can’t.”
For instance, WMP prints in Myanmar, Pakistan, Mongolia, and Indonesia to ensure that contacts receive materials.
“Although it’s more expensive to print, it is our only way to get material available. So…World Missionary Press has agreed to fund the printing of 250,000 pieces of literature [and] scripture booklets in Russian.”
WMP will be printing three of their booklets: The Power of God, How to Know God, and Satan versus CHRIST.
A sister ministry in Kazakhstan recently reviewed and corrected their Russian material, Williams adds, so it is fully edited and ready for printing, distributing, and reading.
How to distribute a Scripture booklet?
Once the material is printed, word will be sent out to individuals, evangelists, churches, and ministries in Russia.
“They come and they ask for so many boxes for their church, and their village, or their whatever. They’ll come and get it. If necessary, our distributor will mail it or get it there. World Missionary Press covers that cost, and then the boxes go,” Williams says.
Some distributors will grab as many boxes of scripture booklets as they can carry. Others will take only one.
“We have pictures of people coming and stacking them on their bicycles or on their motorcycles — stacking them so you can hardly see over the boxes! Stacking them so they’re on their heads, in wheelbarrows, pushing them down a dirt road… and then you see pictures of pastors with one box, hugging it like it’s their last possession, and [they have] the biggest smiles on their faces.”
Williams says once booklets are received, they’re distributed within a matter of months.
Get involved
To move this project forward, WMP needs your help, both in prayer and in financial partnership.
“Pray for those that are doing the printing, that the printing would be accurate, that there wouldn’t be any hold up on it, that it would go so quickly… We’re sending what needs to be printed, then they’re going to distribute it into this area of 52 million people.”
Help support this project by donating to WMP here.
Header image by Serge Kutuzov on Unsplash.
