Spreading the word in Hastings

Spreading the Word in Hastings

Gideons are best known for placing Bibles in hotel rooms but this is only one part of their work. Local Gideons for example have presented 1800 red-bound copies of the New Testament and Psalms to the new intake at five local secondary schools and five in the Rother area during the autumn term.

Bedside Testaments are regularly checked and ‘topped up' at the Conquest Hospital and St Michael's Hospice. Of 64 residential care homes in the local branch area, 28 are in Hastings borough and regular contact is made by a married Gideon couple to replenish and supply Testaments in various print sizes.

Bibles are regularly maintained in the rooms at the Royal Victoria, Beauport Park and High Beech hotels, as well as at a wide range of smaller establishments. A further 40 copies were provided at the local Premier Inn for its extension.

Worldwide more than a million hands each week receive a Bible placed by Gideons, who are church members in business or a profession, or who are retired. Like Gideon in the Old Testament the present Gideons face a big undertaking with remarkably few numbers, hence the title.

Submitted by Barbara and Richard Butcher, Hastings and Rother Branch.
Reproduced by kind permission of Grapevine magazine.

Picture: Barbara Butcher with Geoff Driver, chaplain of St. Michael's Hospice in Hastings.