I was at Rosebank Anglican Church in Johannesburg when I met a South African lady who had recently returned from a short-term mission to the USSR, just as it was opening up. The iron curtain had lifted.
'Did you take in Bibles?' I asked.
'It was prohibited.' I wasn't surprised. 'But once in the country,' she said, 'we were taken to a great barn full of old Bibles. They were released for distribution.'
She found the Bibles had been confiscated from local people before being stored for decades. There was so many that the missionaries needed to hire labour to shift them. One local lad wondered why these books were considered so important and stole one, hiding behind a stack of logs to read it. He opened the cover to find an inscription written in beautiful, clear script. The Bible in his hands had belonged to his grand-mother.
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