When the North American Division (NAD) introduced a new Bible curriculum for students in grades 1-12, Wisconsin Conference Education Superintendent, Linda Rosen, while excited with the new program, hated to see the old textbooks, with all their supporting materials be thrown away. But God had a plan for those Bible materials and already had made connections for their continued use.
Several years earlier, Jody Marsh, who at the time was principal and teacher of Hillside Christian School, posted on circle.adventist.org, a site for Adventist educators to share resources, worksheets and keys he had created to go along with the eighth grade Bible textbook, Becoming Like Him.
In American Samoa, the Iakina Adventist Academy voted to adopt the NAD Bible curriculum, Becoming Like Him. So teacher Ana Veitaukula, of Iakina Adventist Academy, got on circle.adventist.org, saw Jody’s Bible worksheet materials, emailed him and asked if he could share a textbook with her. She wanted to photocopy it to use with the worksheets in her classroom, as she had been teaching 7th grade Bible with no student textbooks at all.
Jody emailed Ana back that the Wisconsin Conference had recently adopted the newer Encounter Bible curriculum and that the conference had about 10 teacher editions and 50 student editions for each of grades 5-9 that might be available to them. As the books are 200-300 pages each, Jody figured it would be cheaper to ship the books than to copy them.
Ana was stunned. We had books that we were not using? Yes, she was very interested!
Jody shared the information with the Education Department, and things began to happen. Education Administrative Assistant, Sandy Berg contacted the Samoan school and confirmed their need. The school wanted to purchase the materials for Becoming Like Him but lacked the financial resources. Then Sandy, along with Intern Associate Superintendent, Andrew Easley, collected all the unused elementary Bible supplies in storage, and found these resources encompassed much more than just the Becoming Like Him materials. By the time Sandy and Andrew finished, they had boxed up and labeled 43 boxes of Bible teaching materials including everything needed to teach Bible for all eight grades.
At this point Education Superintendent, Linda Rosen, invited her husband, Dwight to look over the shipping arrangements. He was able to bring his experience in national and international bulk shipping of large equipment into the project. He helped to shrink wrap the boxes placed on a plastic pallet, and do the proper measuring for the shipping paperwork. Having connections from his work experience, Dwight linked the education department with an export shipping management company to ship the books to Samoa in a consolidation container, and provided guidance for the paperwork and legal aspect of moving the books from one country to another.
When Jody Marsh received word of the large book shipment being sent to the Samoan school, he said, “I’m so happy my worksheets were able to connect people with books they really needed.”
“What a blessing to donate our unused Bible curriculum materials to a school in another country without textbooks,” said Linda. “We can hardly wait to hear from the teachers at Iakina Adventist Academy when they receive the shipment. It never ceases to amaze me how God does His work. He knows what is needed before we do, and if we pay attention God allows us to participate in His service to others.”
Juanita Edge, Communication Director
