As I wrote in my introduction, one of my small project is to help set up a library for friends I know who are on missions.
My very first batch of 72 books were bought from Singapore, SKS book store, which I think is the biggest Christian store in Singapore. I selected the books based on:
1. Wide Category that included sunday school, easy to read (english) books, biography, sermon outlines, bible study (some tailored for women), thin books pocket sized books, classics by established writers (have purposely not purchased books by contemporary writers as most are geared towards america’s context)
2. Many books with low value and relatively thin and easy to read. The purpose is to diversify risk in case the books are lost and also more suitable than a thick book that takes longer to read and therefore one person may be hanging on to a book for too long.
I divided the books into 2 boxes, reason is to diversify the risk of one box not getting sent. Both boxes are by air and registered. They have yet to reach my friend and so I pray that she will get them soon! The books have arrived on 13 Dec! And praise the Lord that my friend only had to pay USD3 tax (versus what I understand that in Kenya, the taxes are exorbitant!)
I may be sending some books to another friend in India but somehow I think that this way of sending books by air does not seem to be a very cost efficient way. Anyone with advice, please let me know!
Hello Mei,
Greetings in Jesus’ name.
Thank you so much for what you are doing for Tanzania in the ‘Christian books for Tanzania’ project. Can you let me know how you can set up a library for us here? We surely need a lot of reference books in the church and on the mission field too.
Looking foward to hearing from you soon, and remain,
Your brother in Christ,
Dastan.
Hi Dastan, thanks for your comment; I will be emailing you in a minute. Currently, I have committed to 2 friends, one in Tanzania and the other in India to help them with their christian book needs. At this point, it is very difficult to do this on a bigger scale, not only due to limited financial resources, but more importantly, I have not found a cost effective way to get the books overseas.
The books which I sent to Tanzania coming close to a month (by air and registered) have still not reached my friend. It ‘pains’ me to think the books would get lost, especially when the value of the postage is about 1/3 of the value of the books! If anyone knows of any organization that can handle the logistics, do let me know!
[...] I mentioned in my Nov 08 blog post, my friend is in Tanzania for year long mission trip. And I have sent 2 batch of books to her for [...]
So the question is what’s the govenrments role in all of this. Are they helping or hurting or just not even a player. I always try to look behind the scenes and see who’s pulling the strings.