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At times, a single tract or paper has a far-reaching impact on a whole family. For example, one family in the state of Virginia received an Apostolic Faith paper many years ago. The father, who had suffered from cancer for over seventeen years, read in the paper that anointed handkerchiefs were prayed over and mailed to the sick and that they were healed. He said, “I did not believe it for a while, and I got worse and worse. Finally, my wife sent for an anointed handkerchief. About the time the handkerchief was prayed over in Portland, I was instantly healed, sound and well, as you see me today.” Shortly after his healing, the family moved to Portland. They prayed through to salvation and dedicated their lives to God. In time, several in the family became full-time workers in God’s service and faithfully served Him until they went home to Heaven.
Letters that come into the headquarters office often bring accounts “stranger than fiction” of the different ways and places an Apostolic Faith paper or tract was found. One man in the interior of British Guiana (now Guyana), South America, was out searching for diamonds when he found one of the papers. He wrote, saying that through reading the paper he found the “Pearl of Greatest Price.” Some individuals have brought food home from the market wrapped in an Apostolic Faith paper, and discovered food for their hungry souls. One prisoner wrote of sitting in the prison yard when a gust of wind blew a page of the paper his way. Out of idle curiosity, he picked it up and found a message of hope that impacted his life.
Many accounts are given of times when a Gospel tract or paper came at a crisis point in an individual’s life. In South Korea, one of the many tracts that flooded that country fell into the hands of a man who was about to commit suicide. He found new hope, contacted the church in Korea, was saved, and later became a minister and pastor in the Apostolic Faith organization.
At times, an individual’s response to a tract or paper has been just the starting point of widespread blessing to many hearts. One young minister in the Portland church tells how a paper his grandfather received was influential in the start of the Apostolic Faith work in Newfoundland.
From a single tract that fell into the hands of a man in Ghana, West Africa, literally thousands have heard the truth and have been converted. The man who received the tract sought God for his deeper spiritual experiences, and after receiving them, aided in establishing numbers of Apostolic Faith churches in Ghana.
In the Dominican Republic, an Apostolic Faith paper found in the dirt beside the road was the beginning of a work in that area which recently celebrated its seventy-fifth anniversary and continues to grow.
The Apostolic Faith work in Nigeria began in 1942 when a parcel of Gospel tracts came into the hands of the son of a tribal chief. This man began to distribute the tracts and to evangelize. On November 8, 1944, the first service of the Apostolic Faith Church in Lagos was held, with eight people present. Now the work there has grown to many hundreds of churches; more than 21,000 people attended the opening Sunday of a recent camp meeting.
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