By Georges Michelson-Dupont, trustee, manager of translations, director of UBIS, Recloses, France
Editor’s Note: In addition to being a trustee, Georges is the director of the Urantia Book Internet School (UBIS) and a member of L’Association Francophone des Lecteurs du Livre D’Urantia (AFLLU), which means “French-Speaking Association of Readers of The Urantia Book,” an affiliate of Urantia Association International. In this story, he describes how these groups came to be involved in placing books with readers and study groups in Africa.
Since 2014, when its new Moodle platform was adopted, UBIS has been expanding in Africa. More and more English- and French-speaking Africans are opening an account at UBIS and enrolling in courses. Their personal experience with UBIS expands their frame of reference and deepens their understanding of the teachings of The Urantia Book.
This understanding of the transformational power of The Urantia Book has inspired them to become teacher-facilitators, the training for which begins shortly after their third course as students. Under the sponsorship of their teacher-facilitator, students then may enroll in the UBIS Teacher Training Program to prepare, design, and offer their own courses.
To participate in a course as a UBIS student is a great way to deepen and share discoveries with other students, but to create a course demands quality of thinking, clarification, and organization of thoughts; it is always simpler to receive but more difficult to give. However, some of our students found themselves so inspired by preparing courses that they decided to create and facilitate study groups in their own areas using the UBIS pedagogy. To do this, they need books. However, it is not easy to send books to Africa due to poor infrastructure that makes it difficult to transport and route books to where they are needed.
To address this challenge, the French Association, AFLLU, contacted a shipping company that delivered over fifty copies of Le Livre d’Urantia from France to the central African country of Cameroon which is located on the Gulf of Guinea on the west coast, just south of Nigeria. The books traveled from Paris, via the French port of Le Havre, to Douala, which is the commercial capital and the largest port in Cameroon. These books were delivered to our friend and UBIS teacher-facilitator Guy Stéphane Nyasse, and will be offered under his leadership to study groups and other new readers.
Delivering these books is one of the means by which the Urantia Revelation is becoming available to the people of Africa. According to future trends in world population, by the end of the twenty-first century, this region of Africa will account for a third of the world’s population. This is why it is so important to begin seeding this region now.
Urantia Foundation generously paid for all the books and shipping costs, while AFLLU made the shipping arrangements. This enabled AFLLU to fully use its book donation program to help our African brothers and sisters receive the Urantia teachings. A big thank-you to the Foundation!
Cameroon