By Simone Cox, South Africa
Note from Tamara Wood – Urantia Foundation Coordinator for the South African Initiative:
A project to place over 1000 Urantia Books across Southern Africa has been sponsored by many individuals within the reader community and carried out by Mark Bloomfield. The project began in June when the first shipment of 500 books was received by Mark in Port Elizabeth, South Africa. Since then 700 books have been gratefully accepted by public libraries, universities and religious institutions as indicated by the many thank you letters Urantia Foundation has received.
Mark has covered a lot of territory within South Africa and has also placed books in Namibia and Botswana. Currently, he is en route to Mombassa, Kenya where 300 books will be arriving for additional library placement. After this round, Mark will return to South Africa to receive one more shipment of 300 books in order to complete this phase of his mission.
The Trustees and Staff extend their thanks to the reader community for participating in this service of making our treasured text available to so many individuals across Southern Africa.
On behalf of the budding Urantia community in South Africa, kindly allow me to express our gratitude and appreciation for the wonderful work you are doing in service of the fifth epochal revelation, our Christ Michael and our beloved planet, and for your generous contributions to our own efforts.
As a spiritually progressive country, South Africa is thirsty for the rich blessing of the Urantia teachings. Not only will we benefit greatly from the books seeded into our local libraries, but we also enjoy upliftment and encouragement from your loving prayers and kind support.
Our Urantia community is still embryonic (we now have almost 80 people on record) but is growing at the rate of four to six new (recorded) readers every month. Many more unknown readers are discovering the book in the home of a friend or in their local library and will no doubt find their way into the fold. Although these are new readers and would need at least four or five years to work their way through the book, nonetheless we are already receiving enthusiastic feedback and word-of-mouth recommendations from many who have received their own cherished copy of The Urantia Book.
As local readers' groups are forming organically, we continue to distribute every copy as it reaches our shores, as the demand for The Urantia Book has exploded in recent months, and we have a backlog of orders for every media: hard-covers, soft-covers, old editions, secondhand copies, audio sets, study-aids, posters, etc. Although our courage is bolstered by this overwhelming response, we continue to proceed at a sober pace and as funds allow. Thanks again to every sponsor who has so generously helped to empower this exciting project, your contributions are as much appreciated as those of our Mark who does indeed cover the globe in his worn-out boots and single backpack to seed the planet with this universal truth. We are able to use and distribute all and any plain-cover copies of The Urantia Book that may be lying around, even second-hand copies will be welcome, as there is a huge demand in South Africa especially amongst university students and pensioners.
As we pray earnestly that these wonderful papers will find their way into the homes, hearts and minds of our rich cultural society, we also pray that those who have reached out to Southern Africa, invested their hard-earned cash, their time, energy, and heart-felt intent in seeding South Africa and her sister countries, will receive ten-fold blessings in return. Praise to our Paradise Father for His never ending kindness.