Action Bible Distributions Begin
Rod and Sherry Boyd

In July we began distributions of the Santa Biblia en Acción (Action Bible) in three schools. We are grateful to ChildHope President Phil Schmidt and the whole leadership team for undertaking this huge $375,000 project to purchase 50,000 Bibles ($7.50 each). Each hard-cover Bible is 9-1/2” x 6-1/2” and features four 32-page sections of full-color “Marvel” comic style Bible stories, half in the Old Testament and half in the New Testament.

The Bible uses the Spanish version of the New Living Translation, much easier to read and understand for children than the common “King James” Spanish version. The Panama schools received 7,520 Bibles, the second largest of any country. Our strategy in Panama is to distribute almost 4,000 Bibles now to the second through sixth-graders in the 30 elementary schools. The remaining 3,500 plus rest will be given to incoming 2nd graders for the next approximately five years. In five years, 10 years of children and youth will have one of the Bibles.

Our strategy goes beyond just handing out Bibles to kids. Two other missionary families helped us to write a lesson booklet with four sample lessons to helps teachers know how to involve kids in the Bible, both in the Bible text and in the excellent extra-biblical content that includes the full-color Bible stories, an amazing hit with the kids! We are involving our Panama missionaries and the building and ministry teams they have from the States to help with the distributions. One of our missionaries or staff from our office visit each classroom personally teach a Bible lesson with the classroom teach observing.

We involved the two recent construction teams in two Bible distributions. In early October, the Grove Church team helped us distribute Bibles to 228 children in 10 classrooms, grades 2-6, at the 24th of December Good Shepherd School outside of Panama City. Melissa Pimentel, one of our staff, took half of the classes and we took the other half. The Grove team passed out the Bibles and helped the children write their names in their new Bible. We taught the lesson What Is the Bible? and used the “Simon Says” game to open the lesson, illustrating the concept of commands and following instructions. We then looked at the 10 Commandments story from the full-color section and the Bible text from Exodus.

In early November, the Eastridge Church team visited the Getsemani Good Shepherd School and attended the two weekly chapels for the 525 students. Then they helped us distribute Bibles to 281 children in the 9 classrooms, grades 2-6.

Please pray with us that God’s Word will be sewn in the lives of thousands of children and youth, and many thousand more parents, siblings and family members. Isaiah 55:11, “So is my word that goes out from my mouth: It will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it.”