Your generosity is placing Bibles into the hands and hearts of those who need them most.
Arlan* had not experienced freedom since he was a child. He never knew his father. His mother died when he was young. He grew up on the streets in Kazakhstan (Central Asia), quickly adapting to a life of crime in order to survive. He was arrested at 16 for the first time, but not the last.
After spending most of his life behind bars, he could not find work because no one wanted to hire a repeat offender. At nearly 70 years old, the cycle of failure and rejection overwhelmed him. Arlan explains, “I heard about Jesus from relatives, but I never believed God could love me after the terrible things I had done. I felt such heartache and meaninglessness in my life that I wanted to go back to prison.”
Arlan decided to turn himself in, confessing to an unsolved crime that he didn’t commit. He wrote out his false confession and was about to be charged when a senior officer intervened and called Arlan’s relatives — who had been praying for him at the time.
His family took him to a rehabilitation center where he saw people like himself, but, in his words: “Their eyes were shining, and their life was different.”
As Arlan began reading the large-print Bible he received, he shares, “God’s love destroyed my pain. I accepted Jesus as my Lord . . . at that moment, I physically experienced freedom!” Arlan was finally free from all the chains that bound him to a life of sin in the past.
Thank you for being there for Arlan and so many others like him! The Bibles you help provide are giving people all over the world the opportunity to experience true freedom through Jesus!
* Name changed to protect privacy
