Wildfire Ministry

A while back, you may recall the fire in Northern California called the Paradise or Camp fire. More than 80 people died, and thousands of homes and businesses were lost. Some of my family members, including my elderly Mom, were living there. After listening to recounts of their thoughts and feelings, I realized that people don't think very clearly in the confusion of the evacuation process. 

They only had minutes to grab what they could and realized later that they grabbed some wrong things and left some of the right things, not the least of which were their Bibles. My Mom's church was spared, but her Pastor's home was lost. I contacted him and told him I would like to bring him some Bibles to distribute not only to his congregants but also to anyone who needed one. So we gathered up 80 new study Bibles and took them to him. He went to the largest evacuation center, the Walmart in Chico, and set up a patio tent to give these Bibles out to whoever asked for one. He said they were gone in a couple of hours. This event was also a terrific witnessing opportunity because some of them were given to non-believers!

I didn't think too much about this until it came up in a conversation with my Mom more recently. I realized that we need to pursue this route in wildfire situations in California and other states that live through these monster fires, so that's what we're going to do. We will start by making calls to Pastors in these areas and ask them to help us.

We would certainly appreciate your help with this, but please, don't send us Bibles unless you can send identical Bibles to us by the dozens, new, and in boxes. Our preferred method is asking if you'll donate to our ministry through the Donate button below, so we can buy them from our regular Bible sources. This will help us with the distribution. Dealing with individual Bibles in large numbers like this is very difficult, especially if we're dealing with more than one fire at once.

This ministry has dwindled over the past couple of years for a couple of reasons: The biggest one is simply because the State of California has become more adept at extinguishing forest fires more quickly with better equipment and added manpower. Incidentally, by engaging the help of more prison inmate fireman as they expanded that program. But secondly, the evacuation centers that are established when fire erupt don’t stay together as long because people begin immediately search for friends and family to stay with. So, as often as not, the centers are breaking up before we can get to them. Of course, both of these things are improvements and good for the evacuees of these terrible disasters as they work to get their lives back in order.