Bible Marathon

Hi all,

This week HCJB, The Voice of the Andes, and The International Bible Society in Ecuador launched a special joint project..... a Bible Marathon. What is a Bible Marathon? We are asking people from all over Ecuador to help us write the Bible in Spanish by hand. The catch is, each person can only write 1 verse. That means that over 30,000 people will have to help us write this Bible.

The Bible started at the HCJB studios in Quito and is there through today, saturday. Then it will begin to make its way around the city of Quito until the end of October visiting churches and Christian book stores where people can come to add their verse. After October, it will begin to circulate around the country. We will use the radio station to inform people of the location of the Bible. We expect this project to take a full year to complete.

Why do a Bible Marathon? One reason is to unify the church in Ecuador. We will need the participation of many people from many different churches to complete the Bible. Last year the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association did a "Festival of Hope" here in Quito and this year they did one in Guayaquil. These two events brought the church together in a way that has not been seen in recent history. We are hoping the Bible Marathon will be the next great unifying event.

The second main reason for the project to promote the reading of God's Word. We are asking each participant to give a free will donation to the project. The Bible Society will use their half of the proceeds to buy Bibles which they will give to HCJB to distribute throughout the country. HCJB will use our half of the proceeds to cover our air-time expenses as we follow the Bible around the country, letting people know when the Bible is in a location near them.

Many people have already come by our studios to write their verse. I stopped by today and the studio was completely packed with people. There was standing room only. Word is getting out about this project and people are coming from all over to add their verse. We started the project at 4 different books in the Bible; Gensis, Job, Mathew, and Romans. I started off the book of Job and Ruth followed me with Job 1:2. We have had over 1000 people participate in just these first 3 days.

Please pray that this project will fulfill its goals of unifying the church in Ecuador and promoting the reading of God's Word.

The Dedication

Hi all,

Sorry it has taken so long to give you an update on the church dedication. We have been experiencing some computer problems lately.

The dedication of the El Tablon church took place on Aug 25th. We had a great crowd turn out for the dedication. Most of the visitors were people from outside El Tablon though. The churches in the towns of Pifo, Mulauco, Papallacta and Chaupimolino were all invited as they had all helped in one way or another with the construction. We estimate that between 400 and 500 people were in attendance based on the amount of food we served. The church was built to fit 200 people so needless to say there was standing room only. In fact, some people just stayed outside and looked through the windows or helped cook the food.

The service lasted about 3 hours, but by the time the food was all served it stretched into 5 hours. We had a great time of thanking those who had helped with the construction and ministry including work teams from Costa Rica, Northland U.B. (Michigan) and College Park U.B. (Indiana). We had lots of music as two of the churches brought along their Christian folkloric music and dance groups. (Dancing in the church??? I know, I know.... Its a cultural thing...) Then we did some reminiscing about the early days of the ministry when we had to tread through 6 inches of mud every week just to get to the house we were meeting in. Rachel put together a video chronicling the history of the ministry including the building of the church. We even sang Happy Birthday to Rachel, our daughter, who turned 18 that day.

Not everything went right though. My laptop computer picked the day before the dedication to decide its useful life was over. So Saturday morning I was scrambling to find another laptop to use. Then as we were about to the start the service, one of the Power Point music presentations became corrupted, so we couldn't use it. Someone brought a sound system, but the microphones they brought were not compatible with the sound system mixer. So we didn't use that either. Fortunately, these were relatively minor things in the big scheme of things and Ecuadorians are used to improvising.

All in all it was a great day though and we dedicated the building to the Lord and His use there in the community. One of the exciting things about the day was that we saw some of our people take some leadership in organizing the food for the day. It was good to see them step out and do that. We are encouraged about the future in El Tablon and trust that the Lord will use that building to bring more people to him. Thanks also to many of you who came to Ecuador to help us build the church. Our folks in El Tablon wanted to make sure we especially thanked you...

Doug