February 2, 2000
Used Bibles and books urgently needed
___By Debbie Moore
___Baptist Press
___EUBANK, Ky. (BP)--How many Bibles are just sitting around in your house, on the back seat of your car, or on dusty shelves at your church?
___Emily Filipi of Wetumpka, Ala., was amazed to discover she had 18 Bibles in a variety of translations in her home. She never intended to collect Bibles; several were gifts, including "a lovely, leather Ryrie Study Bible that I never used," she said. In fact, when she stopped to think about it, she realized she actually used only three of those 18 Bibles.
___Meanwhile, over in a small village in Nigeria, a pastor writes a letter on the back of an already-used piece of paper, for someone in America: "Please send me a Bible, but if you can't send a Bible, then please send me a New Testament, and if you can't send a New Testament, then please send me just a few pages from a Bible."
___And over at a seminary in the Philippines, a graduating student uses every spare minute she has between classes and her work to write down passages from one of the Bibles in the library and from some basic Christian resources. This way she'll have at least something on hand after she leaves the seminary in a few months to use as reference materials for the Bible study classes she'll be teaching. Even if she did have the money to buy books, there's no Christian bookstore anywhere near where she lives.
___These situations, and many more like them, are why an organization called Book-Link, begun nearly 15 years ago, faithfully gathers unused Christian resources and ships them around the world at no cost to the recipient. Book-Link, a non-profit and totally volunteer-operated Christian organization now based in Eubank, Ky., sends out everything upon request, when received with the recommendation from a Southern Baptist missionary, helping to insure that nothing is wasted.
___Since the first shipment in January 1988, Book-Link sent out more than 331,000 items to 68 countries and five U.S. states where in many cases Christian students and pastors previously had little or nothing in the way of study materials.
___"Once people find out about Book-Link, they start to feel guilty when they look at their own shelves and see that they have much more than they really need," said Filipi, now a Book-Link volunteer, who along with a few others regularly takes off a week at a time to drive up to Book-Link headquarters to prepare books for international shipment.
___"We Christians in America have so many books, and we hold on to them even when we don't use them," Filipi said. "It is our Christian obligation to share out of our abundance."
___In Eubank, a picturesque, rural town in central Kentucky, Filipi and a handful of other volunteers work out of the home and two, two-car garages of Olin Williams, executive director of Book-Link since 1993. Williams currently is in Zimbabwe on a one-year assignment with the Southern Baptist Convention's International Mission Board, teaching in a seminary and assisting to set up a network of small regional libraries for Christian workers throughout that country.
___Filipi said she never will forget the conviction she felt the first time she heard Williams speak about Book-Link.
___"No Southern Baptist in America deserves two Bibles until everyone in the world has one Bible," Filipi recalled Williams saying.
___Filipi now "lives and breathes Book-Link," said Geneva Faw, who with her husband, Wiley, volunteers to manage the day-to-day operations during Williams' absence.
___Two of the main reasons for the shortage of materials in some places are the scarcity of Christian publishers outside the United States and many students' lack of funds to buy a book even if it were available.
___Filipi fondly remembers a thank-you letter from a Christian woman in Nigeria, who wrote, "I have taught Sunday school for seven years, and this is the first time I've ever had any literature to use."
___"I am a recycler," Filipi said. "This is the best way to recycle things, to get books off of the shelves of people who don't use them and into the hands of people who want and need them so desperately."
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