It is the early evening on day two of our little missions trip in southern Illinois, and I have a little time to myself ’cause Husband has taken the students out snake-hunting.

I’ve been on two, two-week missions trips, with young people, to India. I wondered for a while if I could call this week a “missions trip” after such experiences, but I’m confident now that I can.

Love Packages is a small organization that is doing WAY more than is reasonable for two small warehouses, three staff, and an intern. They collect used Christian literature from all over the U.S., and send it overseas to places where people walk 15 days to see a Bible.

I love taking students overseas, but the work that we get to be a part of this week is staggering.

Everyday at lunch and at afternoon break time, Steve – a former pastor who started Love Packages in his house 35 years ago – and his small staff share stories that they’ve gotten back from their distributors overseas. In two days I’ve heard more amazing stories than I can remember, but here’s one:

One of their distributors in I-don’t-remember-which-country works with a team that does crusade meetings. After one meeting they randomly gave a small magazine to a man who had walked for days to come to the meeting.

This little piece of literature had four articles in it: one on salvation, one on water baptism, one on Jesus’ return, and one on the baptism in the Holy Spirit. He took it, read it, believed it, and went home to tell people about it.

There was no church in this man’s remote, mountain village, and no one – NO ONE – who had ever heard about Jesus, let alone knew enough to share with him. So he took it upon himself to tell everyone what he knew.

A couple of years later the distributor returned to the region, and when the man who had been saved via a small magazine heard about it he went to tell his story. By that time, though, he could tell about more than one man’s salvation.

This guy had been so changed by the gospel that he started a church in his village. They met every week, and every week he preached one of four sermons: salvation, water baptism, Jesus’ return, or the Holy Spirit. That’s all he knew, so that’s all he taught, and a couple years later his church was 300 people all saved, baptized, full of the Holy Spirit, and waiting for Jesus.

It blows the mind what the Holy Spirit can do with one, small magazine.

There are hundreds of testimonies on their website: LovePackages.org. You can make donations through the website too, and if you’re the kind of person who really looks for a good investment for your offerings, I can honestly say this might be the best ROI you could hope for.