Lausanne World Pulse – The Talking Bible and Short-term Missions Projects
By Harvey Hoekstra
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Short-term Missions
There is little doubt that “short-term missions” have become increasingly effective, meaningful and popular. Individuals who participate in these missions are not only a blessing to the people they serve, but they themselves are often enriched, inspired and challenged to make foreign missions a more significant dimension of their own lives. Churches are also blessed when their members participate in these trips and report back to their congregations. And long-term missionaries are often gratified when their own ministries are significantly enhanced by the contributions of short-term missionaries.
I personally recall, with much gratitude, the tremendous help short-term personnel were to Talking Bibles International, when we were beginning our work in the early 1950s in southwest Ethiopia. One team of five men spent several weeks helping us open the station and building our first permanent home. Another group of college-age students spent an entire summer helping us to develop an airstrip so Mission Aviation Fellowship (MAF) could land its planes safely in our remote area. These groups were followed by many others. Short-term mission volunteers can and do make a big difference on the world’s mission fields. We could not have done our own work without them.
Using the Talking Bible in Short-term Mission Projects
Over the years, the Talking Bible has greatly enhanced the value of many short-term mission projects. Short-term missionaries make marvelous colporteurs. Already many of them have carried Talking Bibles in their luggage to distribute to people in remote areas who are not able to read. Some groups have carried scores of Talking Bibles in their luggage—Bibles which otherwise would have to be shipped or mailed in a risky, time-consuming and often expensive process.
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Children at the Salvation Army School for the Blind receive |
Recently, for example, a short-term team traveled to Malawi in southeastern Africa. They carried with them over two hundred Talking Bibles in the Chichewa language. The people who received the Bibles were so happy that some of them literally danced with joy before the Lord. When the missionaries returned to their sending churches, they shared the unexpected thrill of seeing the gratitude and delight of the people who had received the Talking Bibles.
Another short-term missions team from Our Savior Lutheran Church in Minnesota, USA, recently traveled to Kingston, Jamaica, where they distributed nearly sixty Talking Bibles to blind children at the Salvation Army School for the Blind.
Many times, short-term missionaries are able to strengthen a long-term missionary’s work as well. Luke Rider, a missionary in Mozambique with YWAM (Youth with a Mission), said this of the group that came to visit:
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Dr. Harvey Hoekstra is chairman of the board for Talking Bibles International, www.talkingbibles.org. He and his wife served as missionaries in the Sudan and Ethiopia for several decades. Hoekstra has authored several books and holds a doctorate in missiology from Fuller’s School of Intercultural Studies. |