In mid-May, a small group visited Dalby, a regional town on Queensland’s Darling Downs, to place Scriptures as the local Gideon group (called a camp) is no longer active. Following is a brief diary report from one participant:
“We praise God for a few great days in Dalby last week. The Lord was so gracious to us.”
“The lightning flashed and the rain certainly came down as we approached our destination. On the way we actually paused for a short while to visit the small town of Kaimkillenbun where four Bibles were left at the hotel. The last few kilometres to Dalby certainly washed our vehicles and, more than once, water was across the road and flooding paddocks. Straight to the caravan park in the heart of town then off again to where we loaded 25 Boxes of Bibles and Testaments on board.
Thursday – first call, the Dalby Christian School. A great reception followed by the opportunity to place a Testament in the hands of every student – 100%. The students were extremely well behaved and paid great attention to our Gideon speakers. We then had a similar experience at the Catholic School where, again, we had a 100% take up. We were able to fit in a couple of motels with 100% result also. The Dalby State High School welcomed us but can only arrange a placement on a Monday. Have put arrangements in place for that to occur in a few weeks.
Col & I continued to visit motels whilst Heather & Leanne were busy walking the streets visiting medical centres with a high level of success and Dorothy and Peter likewise at the hospital. Peter also had amazing results from visits to the fire brigade and ambulance. Col visited the police station, though enthusiasm there was a little lacking.
Friday – Peter and Leanne were off on a 50 km drive to Jandowae where they had a very successful experience visiting accommodation, school etc. The high school was welcoming but, whilst NAPLAN testing was being administered, there was not an opportunity to present. (Again, plans are in place to cover this soon.) Personal Testaments were handed out to people we met whenever the opportunity arose to share the Gospel with them. We completed all of our work with only two motels saying no. Truly, two very successful days.
Saturday morning – Breakfast at the Urban Paddock café where we enjoyed fellowship and great acceptance by a small group of pastors and their wives. Pastor Rob from the Dalby Baptist Church kindly offered to store the leftover Bibles and Scriptures until someone is able to come back and finish the work not yet completed. I had the opportunity to share some time with him and was excited to learn that he felt the call to discuss the lack of an active Gideon camp in town and will encourage other pastors to take on a project to find suitable, dedicated men and wives to reform the camp – truly an answer to prayer.
We did have a time of great blessing – how important is PRAYER and we do serve an awesome God. We all made it home safely and thank God for an amazing few days.”
(Subsequent to this visit, other teams visited a number of nearby towns like Miles and Chinchilla to place Scriptures. All up so far, over 3000 Bibles and Testaments have been distributed with more to come as other placement sites respond to approaches made.)