Author: James Howard-Smith, 16 December 2022
Harry, who leads our outreach to refugees, describes how you’ve equipped churches to serve people in their communities who have escaped war
Harry Fenner Crawley has a passion to share God’s love with people on the margins. This year he’s been working to provide churches with an array of Scripture resources in the Ukrainian and Russian languages. Your donations have made these life-changing resources available free of charge to outreach projects across the countries.
This means you’ve put God’s word in the hands of 8,000 people forced to leave their homes in Ukraine. Watch Harry describe the difference the Bible makes for refugees, and find out how your church can get involved.
Harry recommends joining the Welcome Churches network, which has a vision to see every refugee in Britain welcomed by their local church.
Sue’s church in Hazelmere, Buckinghamshire, joined Welcome Churches and with their support held a welcome event for refugees in the local community.
Sue said: ‘We had a table of information about groups and support that our church offers. We took along the Ukrainian Bibles and the Beyond Disaster booklets supplied by Bible Society that we heard about through Welcome Churches.
‘All of our Bibles were snapped up quickly, including the very popular children's Bibles.
‘One elderly lady and man came slowly up to the table and gestured to ask if they could have a Ukrainian Bible. We gave her the Bible and she took it and hugged it, closing her eyes for a moment.
‘I'm sure her simple “Thank you” and shy smile were not enough to convey her delight at receiving the word of God in her own language to sustain her through these difficult times.’
Pray for refugees arriving in Britain and for the churches serving them. Ask God to give desperate people the overwhelming joy experienced by the lady at Sue’s church as she received the Bible. Pray that more churches will seek to bless refugees in their community by giving them God’s word in their own language.
Order Scripture resources in Ukrainian and Russian. You can get up to five of each of our eight different books (from the illustrated children’s Bible to Beyond Disaster, a Bible-based guide to dealing with trauma). Just use the promotional code RESPONSE22 at the checkout.
Donate to support Bible mission in England and Wales.
Lives are changing all around us as people engage with God’s word for the first time.
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