Evangelistic Books for Cuba

The latest need for this project is rounded-up figure of $1,000 for a round trip ticket for Pastor Michael Rodriguez to accompany me to Havana.  You might recall that Michael is from Cuba (with quite a story to tell, I might add), and has been involved with this project since we first began raising funds over a year ago.

The idea was conceived, the funds raised, the books printed, and the overseas journey began.  The books have been through many hands during their trip.

As we speak, the books are awaiting Customs clearance in Havana, and everything is looking good.  I expect to get the call at any time telling me to come down and pay the bills (as you might imagine, the Cuban Church People don't have the resources to meet the expenses of getting these books into their hands).

Any help you want to give to this project will be appreciated.

My name is Tony Harriman.  I and my family make our  home in Jemison, Alabama, USA.

My  relationship to the people I'm raising funds for is a simple one: I am a fellow Christian with the ability to print Spanish evangelistic books in the USA for use among the Cuban church members in Cuba.

The plan is to raise the necessary funds to print the books on American presses and cargo ship them down to Cuba.

Once sufficient funds have been raised (there are several individuals and corporations raising money for this project), all the funds will be pooled together and sent to the Ministry I work with, Inspiration Books East (IBE) in Alabama.  The order will be placed to print 65,000 copies of "Buscando la Paz Interior. (BLP).  BLP is the Spanish version of our "Finding Peace Within" (FPW).  FPW is our paperback version of "Steps to Christ" with an additional 20 Bible studies.  Once printed, the shipping company in Fort Lauderdale, Florida will pick the books  up and deliver them to Port Everglades bound for Havana, Cuba.

From this fund-raiser I am not able to give you a tax-deductible receipt.  If you want to send your donation directly to IBE, you can do so by going to:

 http://theperfectstorm.inbookseast.org/ 

IBE will give you a tax-deductible receipt for your donation.

So where shall I begin to tell you the tale of my recent visit to Cuba?

Visit my Blog for ongoing reports on my trip ....

I want to share with you what the basic church situation is in Cuba, and I want to tell you how simply we can make a difference.

The  reason for my trip to Cuba was to find out how difficult it would be to send evangelistic books to the Island Nation. Though the past couple of months had seen access granted for the first time in fifty years for Americans to travel to Cuba, I had heard stories of Christian persecution and the confiscation of Bibles and devotional books, and it would have made no sense to ship books to people who would never receive them, or might even get locked up because they HAD received them. I intended to land in Havana and begin asking questions of shippers and importers regarding getting large quantities of books into the country.

My first call was to the Church Union Office in Havana and establish a dialog that would give me a person and an address to ship books to. I don't speak Spanish fluently, so I have to rely on translators any time I visit a Spanish-speaking country. In this manner I met and spoke with the Ministerial Director and the Youth Director for the Church who told me that getting large quantities of books into the country was not a problem, and was not illegal. They told me they receive large containers of books and Sabbath School materials from time to time, which surprised me. Cuba is a well-kept secret from Americans, so we really don't know how to make things happen down there. But the Union people also said that anything they receive they have to pay for; nothing comes to them free of charge.

My ears pricked up at that news.

My company has been in business for nearly 30 years. Throughout that time we have printed in excess of 40 million publications in more than 100 languages. We have conducted free distributions of our books on six continents from Australia to Greenland, east to west, top to bottom around our world. We waited patiently for the Iron Curtain to come down, then we went with more than a million publications across 11 time zones in Russia. We did the same thing in East Germany, Poland, Hungary and every other former member of the Soviet Union. It was exciting. We've taken free books to every country in Europe, Mediterranean islands, Caribbean islands, Pacific islands. We've blanketed South and Central America.

But we've never done any real work in Cuba. We've sent the ocassional packet of a couple of books to a handful of Cuban residents; sometimes the books got through, sometimes they didn't. But we've never had the opportunity that we have now to send large numbers of books into the country. Doors are open for American trade and commerce. At least, they are open for now. Who knows if the next president will be as open-minded to maintaining diplomatic ties with a Communist nation just 90 miles off the Florida coast. Time will tell.

Let's return to the Union Office: As I shared my tale of wonderful worldwide distributions, I could see the story really meant nothing, until I offered to send books to the Cuban people at no charge. Eyes opened wider and each of us moved closer to the front of our seats. We talked thus:

Q. How many members do you have?

A. Thirty-two thousand.

Q. Where are they located on the island?

A. All over the forty-two thousand square miles.

Q. If I send books for each church member, how will we get them to the church members?

A. A youth rally is planned for next year; every church member on the island could receive a book at that time.

Q. Next year? Why such a long wait?

A. If you send the books now, we might wait as much as six months before they come out of Customs.

Q. Why so long?

A. Because the Customs official has to open every container and every box and check the contents. Nothing happens quickly in Cuba.

Q. If every church member had a book for themselves and one to give away, would they be willing to do that?

A. Oh, absolutely. This would be a dream come true for them.

I learned that the church members are very close, and are busy in their personal ministry for the spiritual well-being of non-members. Of the 32,000 members, most of the adults have active studies going on with friends and family.

So here's the bottom line of our meeting: my company, Inspiration Books East, will print and ship to the Union Office in Cuba sixty-five thousand copies of our book "Buscando la Paz Interior" (BLP).  BLP is our  Spanish version of "Steps to Christ."  BLP also contains 20 Bible studies offering a complete picture of our need for Jesus in our lives.   We want to print one copy of BLP for every church member to keep, and one copy to give away. We will include the Church contact information in the book. The books will be for free distribution only.

We're going to raise the money to do this. a figure of $65,000.00 is being floated around right now. This figure will cover the costs for this initial distribution (inland and overseas) and will provide a springboard for the next stage of distribution which will include another Spanish publication of ours: "Quienes son los Angeles?" In English "Who are the Angels?" (WAA). WAA is made up of excerpts from Great Controversy dealing with the existence of angels in our world, and who might and might not be a visitant from Heaven. WAA is an excellent study on the state of the dead. $65,000.00 is not a lot of money for Americans to raise.

If you want to and can help (and I hope you can), simply go through the donation process on this site.  Gifts are tax-deductible and bear an eternal interest.

Your gift, large or small, will go to an incredibly good cause. Trust me, there's a whole lot of "doesn't really matter" going on in our lives every day. But this one DOES matter. Cuba needs lots of work on so many levels: social, political and religious. And, of course, no one can fix everything.  But supplying evangelistic materials is something we CAN do.  WE CAN DO THIS ....  As soon as the funds are available we'll call the printer and place the order.  Once that's done we'll arrange for overland and overseas shipping.  The rest will be history.

If you aren't afraid to step out of your comfort zone and don't mind traveling, I would encourage you to take the 45-minute flight from Miami to Havana, spend a few days outside of the city of Havana, and have your world expanded. I guarantee you'll see somewhere where you can make a difference to someone. If you return home without a conviction of where you can be useful, I will be very surprised.

On behalf of the Cuban church members I want to thank you for your interest and for your gifts.

Blessings to you all,

Tony Harriman