Monday, February 23, 2015

Vision beyond borders - Seeds!

If you didn't already watch the YouTube video I posted yesterday, I hope you will go back and do that. It is about Vision Beyond Borders, a remarkable organization.

Our congregation has become increasingly active this year and many of the things we do, we do as a group of all ages. It has been really quite wonderful! I love it most when we are doing something for the good of others. Our congregation helps many organizations and our last project was to help Vision Beyond Borders.



Vision Beyond Border's main mission  is to deliver Bibles to countries around the world where people do not have access to Bibles. They deliver Bibles in the native language and in some instances that means hand-wind tape players to deliver the Gospel message to those who can not read.  They are often putting themselves in danger in order to do this! They have already delivered over 1 million Bibles!

They are often witness to many great needs and because of this, they have taken on other tasks as well. They partner along side Christians in other countries to accomplish many goals. One is to help women and children escape from the slave trade. Patrick Klein, founder, was telling me yesterday about an owner of a large brothel becoming a Christian and freeing those enslaved under her. They help provide safe houses as well as training for other ways to earn money.

One of their projects that we were able to be a part of this week-end is their seed project.



They have found that many are in need of seeds to use to grow things for their own food as well as to sell. When I went to church Saturday to package seeds, I really didn't understand what a big deal this is. Our church had stacks and stacks of boxes (54 of them) and each box was loaded with unsold seeds donated by seed companies.  Each box was stuffed with seed packets...80,000 of them!  Due to customs restrictions they are not able to take those packets into all countries. Our seeds were bound for Cuba. So, we had to repackage them into baggies.







Here's how that is accomplished...



We each had a cup and we'd line it with a baggie. We'd then open 10 matching seed packets and cut out the label from one of those packets to include in the baggie, seal and repeat. They were then grouped with like seeds and boxed up for delivery to Cubans in need. A large group of us worked on that all day Saturday and still did not quite complete our task!









Sunday after church Patrick Klein was telling me a story
about visiting a man some time after he'd received seeds
from Vision Beyond Borders. The man was standing proudly by his rows of carrots that were just coming up and he was
so happy, he was crying.

I can go to the store and buy seeds anytime I want.  It was
a good reminder to appreciate all that we have.

Vision Beyond Borders is an amazing organization. If you are interested in learning more, maybe even want to be a small part of it, please click here.

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