Ten thousand Child's Bibles for Ethiopia
Monday, December 28, 2015

One valuable and loved instrument of the Church's catechetical outreach is ACN's Child's Bible, which has over 50 million copies in print worldwide and is printed in over 170 languages.

Ethiopia is a country with a huge ethnic and linguistic diversity. There are more than 80 different ethnic groups in the country, and they speak as many different languages and belong to a variety of different religious faiths.

There are some 700,000 Catholics in the country who account for barely 1% of the total population. Yet despite its small numbers, the Catholic Church is extremely active here. It maintains 203 kindergartens and 222 different schools, all of which are open to children and young people of all faiths and denominations. They are currently providing an education to almost 180,000 children and young people, and it is through these schools that the Church hopes to be able to build bridges between the various different races and cultures.

At the same time, the Catholic Church maintains no fewer than four universities, with over 7,000 students. The Church is widely welcomed by the ordinary people, especially in those areas where they still adhere to traditional pagan religions and in some cases have never even heard of Jesus Christ. Many of these people, when they first hear of the Gospel, say to the priests, "We love your God. Please come to us as well!"

One particularly valuable and much loved instrument of the Church's catechetical outreach is ACN’s Child's Bible, God speaks to his Children, which has over 50 million copies in print worldwide and is printed in more than 170 different languages. These include several spoken in Ethiopia. In many village chapels – often little more than a shelter of wooden posts covered with branches – one can find heavily thumbed-through copies of the ACN Child's Bible in the local language. They are read out to the little ones over and over again by the catechists; the children never tire of these stories and they listen with shining eyes to the words and deeds of Jesus.

The Apostolic Cicariate of Awassa lies in the south of Ethiopia. The Child's Bible is so popular here that they now want to reprint 10,000 copies, 5,000 in the official Amhara language and 5,000 in the local Sidama (or Sidamo) language, which is spoken by some 1.6 million people in southern Ethiopia. We are helping with a contribution of $9,900 towards the printing costs.

Will you give to help fund the printing of these Child’s Bibles, so that many more children in Ethiopia can embrace the Good News in their hearts?

Code: 118-08-89

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