At this moment many Christians around the world face persecution for their faith and witness from governments and other non-Christian religious groups hostile to the gospel. Many must meet secretly to worship their God or read the Bible. Others pay the ultimate price for their faith—giving their lives in martyrdom.

When the Downers Grove Adventist School's teachers and students heard about these situations around the world they wanted to help! As part of their winter outreach projects, they decided to participate in the Bibles Unbound project (www.biblesunbound.org) sponsored by the Voice of the Martyrs ministry in Oklahoma. This project provides New Testament Bibles in the language of the people in restricted-gospel countries for only $6 per Bible. Christians risk being beaten or imprisoned just for collecting names of family, friends and co-workers who want a Bible to read. Fellow Christians from around the world then sponsor these names by providing a Bible for them. The sponsors package the Bibles for mailing, and then send them to a distribution center for final processing to be mailed directly to the requesting individuals in the restricted-gospel country.

Last school year the Downers Grove Adventist School students sponsored 30 Bibles to China. This school year the students committed to raise $300 dollars to send 50 Bibles again to China. With their commitment to this project and the generous gifts of family, friends, the students' home churches and the Downers Grove Church, the Lord helped the students raise not $300 but $630 to send not 50 but 105 Bibles to China.

In a Bible packing-prayer assembly held in November 2007, the students, along with their teachers and some parents, specifically prayed for each individual who requested a Bible. They prayed that each individual would receive their Bible, listen to the still small voice of the Holy Spirit and surrender their life to Christ as they read them. Through the solemnity of this service the students, teachers and parents were touched by the Holy Spirit as each realized that these individuals may face great hardships for possessing these Bibles while many of us in America have multiple Bibles on our bookshelves, many times not read at all.

Do we cherish the Word of God like these individuals who are willing to risk all to process and read the Word of God? May we have the same thirst for God's Word!

"Wherein I suffer trouble, as an evil doer, even unto bonds; but the word of God is not bound" (2 Timothy 2:9, KJV).

David Sitler is a Downers Grove Adventist School parent and pastor of the Glen Ellyn and West Central Seventh-day Adventist Churches in Illinois.