Several weeks ago we printed excerpts from a letter from Melvin Rhodes, our minister in Ghana, on the situation he and the members were experiencing after a coup in that country. As a follow-up, here are excerpts from a subsequent letter of his to the Radlett office in the U.K. (dated 26th June):
We haven't got much food left, but are leaving for Cameroon on Thursday morning anyway, so don't have to worry about ourselves. But Felicia has come back from market with nothing the last five days. They are still O.K., living off rice and other things they have.
I don't think this will go on for long. The government will have to do something. There's plenty of food in the country, so really the problem is political. After the decree on prices issued the day after the revolution, all "essential" manufactured items disappeared. So we can't get milk or flour, or anything else for that matter.
This morning, six more people were executed, including two former Heads of State. It seems like the last lot of expatriates is leaving tonight. Well, not exactly. But somebody from the High Commission we spoke to this afternoon, said it seemed that way. Many of the Lebanese have simply disappeared, and many Americans are not returning from their annual summer leave (our neighbours failed to turn up on yesterday's PAN AM flight: other families and friends waiting at the airport to meet people were disappointed, so it seems like we're getting a bad press overseas.)
Your prayers would be much appreciated for God's people in East, Central and West Africa (331 members and 3 ministers) — both that God would protect them and allow His Work to go forward without undue restrictions. The ministers concerned are Melvin Rhodes (Accra, Ghana), Harold Jackson (Lagos, Nigeria) and Owen Willis (Nairobi, Kenya).
In addition to three sub-offices in Accra, Lagos and Nairobi, there are six churches in this part of the world — Accra and Kumasi in Ghana, Lagos and Oguta in Nigeria, and Nairobi and Meru in Kenya. There are further Bible studies in Victoria (United Republic of Cameroons), Lusaka (Zambia), Blantyre (Malawi) and Mauritius, plus other small groups of members scattered throughout Tanzania, Liberia and the Seychelles.
United Kingdom
Income is still buoyant. The month of June showed a rise of 19% over June 1978 and is continuing the healthy upward trend. The calendar year-to-date increase is 20%, with the year to 30th June 1979 registering a 16% rise over the previous fiscal year.
With figures in from around half of the exhibitions, and with household distributions now completed in 12 cities, almost 2,000 PLAIN TRUTH trial offer brochures have been returned to date. Many were still coming in from the latest exhibitions and household drops at the time of going to press. This encouraging response has been in addition to the exposure gained by multiple thousands of the public to the name and content of The PLAIN TRUTH via the display and audio-visual presentation.
In some cases the recent promotions have more than doubled PLAIN TRUTH Circulation in a particular town and in most a substantial increase has been achieved.
As of July 20th almost 14,000 responses had been received to a total of 36 recent advertisements in national newspapers and special-interest magazines offering booklets and/or The PLAIN TRUTH magazine. Many more are expected before the final figure is known.
Over 6,500 of the present total have come from 8 insertions advertising the booklet Why Were You Born? (2,009 from The sun along). The Occult Explosion has been requested by over 2,500, also from 8 ads, while The Seven Laws of Success has reached 3,200 homes via 10 insertions. Other booklets advertised in selected media were Building a Happy Family, Does God Exist? and Principles of Healthful Living.
New Zealand
Income for the first six months of 1979 is 30.7% up on the same period last year, with June's figure registering a 12.7% increase. We received 25.2% more mail than in June 1978, bringing the year-to-date mail count to a plus 67.7% over last year. The Pentecost offering was up 39.4%, with attendance up 12.8%. The cumulative total for holy day offerings this year is 33.8% higher than that for last year.
The New Zealand economy is in real trouble, and the Government's annual budget, delivered during June, contained very bad news for God's Work. Postal charges for registered magazines were increased by a staggering 80% and rates for letters and other articles were increased by 40%. In one fell swoop, this has lifted our annual postage bill by $30,000, causing us to have to seriously rethink our budget. If Satan wanted to deal a blow to God's Church and no one else, he certainly hit on the way to do it. Of all organizations affected by the governmental budget, we got hurt the most!
Responses to our ongoing householder card promotion of The PLAIN TRUTH and The Dilemma of Drugs are still flooding in, bringing our current PLAIN TRGTH mailing list to 37,750.
INTERNATIONAL NEWS
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