The many letters and testimonials that arrive daily at the headquarters office show that God’s blessing continues to rest on the Apostolic Faith literature ministry. The work of handling responses is much more extensive now than it was in the early 1900s. Mail volume fluctuates, but in recent years, a total of between 15,000 to 20,000 pieces of mail are received annually from 120-130 foreign countries. Various factors affect the volume of incoming mail from each area, such as political stability of the nation, recent mailings from headquarters, and changes in local cost of living or postage. From a war-torn country, perhaps only one or two pieces of mail a year will reach the Apostolic Faith headquarters; if postage costs suddenly jump forty percent in a developing country, fewer people are able to send letters due to financial hardship.
About half of the letters received are from foreign countries, with as many as twenty-nine nations represented in one day’s mail delivery. In one month alone, 3,900 letters were received from the continent of Africa. Many letters are written in languages other than English, necessitating translation before they can be answered.
The mail from India and its neighboring countries of Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Pakistan, dramatically increased in the early 2000s. The governments in these countries attempt to discourage or eliminate Christianity in various ways, but the message of hope brought through the literature has touched thousands of lives. At times, letters to correspondents must be sent in plain envelopes to reduce the possibility of negative consequences to the recipients because they received Christian reading material.
Typical of the mail received from that area of the world was this letter that recently came from Malaysia. “I thank you very sincerely for your letter and especially for the three key words in the bottom letter heading—Pray, Preach, Publish. These three words spell out clearly the work of the Holy Spirit in the Holy Bible. As the Apostolic Faith Church prays, the leaders bring forth the Word of God both in services and in various publications that are being distributed all over the world. By this action and the working of the Holy Spirit, you have been mailing me your magazine, Higher Way, for the last twenty years.”
Recently, the organization has established distribution stations in several areas of India, where the Gospel tracts are printed in the native dialect and distributed locally. This has proved to be a highly cost-effective means of blanketing the area with Christian literature. Currently, tracts are produced in nine Indian languages. In many of the letters that come back in response, recipients plead for someone to come and teach them the truth that they read about in the tracts and the Higher Way magazine.
One man wrote from India: “I would like to express my hearty happiness in my letter. Recently I listened to an aged man talk to a group of young men in a railway station. He was telling about Jesus Christ. After a few minutes, he distributed some tracts and also a leaflet named, 30 Days on the Road to Eternity. The next morning, I began to read the booklet. When I completed it, I felt ashamed of my past life. I began to repent. I asked Jesus with shedding tears for forgiveness of my sins. Through your booklet, I understood how to get salvation through Jesus Christ. Immediately I thought of that man who distributed your tracts in the railway station. He looks very simple with a cotton bag on his shoulder full of tracts, but I thank God because he showed the way to salvation through your Bible tracts.”
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