Author writes tale of million Bible beach drop

BY SARA KEDDY

Kings County Register

Paul Estabrooks isn’t making night beach landings delivering one million Chinese language Bibles anymore, but he’s still actively involved in international efforts to help persecuted Christians.

In June, 1981, he co-ordinated Open Doors International’s Project Pearl, a single-night drop of one million Bibles to thousands of secretly assembled Chinese Christians on foot, with bicycles and a collection of vehicles - all ready to move the Bibles far inside a country that jailed, tortured and suppressed their church. “I’ve always wanted to write about it, but we hesitated because we’d worked in China - we didn’t want to ‘rock the boat,’ so to speak,” Estabrooks says. “Things are different in China now. They know who did it, why we did it; now we can talk about it without anyone losing face.”

Imagine 20 men of all ages and experience: except in designing a tug and barge, overseeing their construction, then packing them full of bundled Bibles and sailing through Chinese waters in the dark to make a secret, illegal delivery. “It was a request, and this project was $7 million to $10 million - a big step, the same as what Open Doors’ annual budget at the time was. A huge thing.”

Estabrooks says there were risks, and officials jailed Chinese Christians caught after Project Pearl’s landing and unloading. “But nobody stopped us, nobody challenged us - we were elated.”

In the years after, reports came through to Open Doors of Bibles making their way to far communities of Christians without any resources. Today, Estabrooks says, it’s estimated there are 80 million Chinese Christians.

Project Pearl was the largest operation Open Doors tackled, but the organization has spent decades delivering Bibles, supporting ministries and aiding Christians suffering from persecution. “We don’t think it will ever stop. There are minority situations, and Christianity is a fairly aggressive, evangelical religion: our leader said ‘Go into the world and make disciples in all nations,’ and some of those nations don’t like that disruption.”

Estabrooks himself spent February in Egypt, May in Brazil and leaves this fall to Turkmenistan “to work with the secretive and illegal church. “We’ll be working quietly.”

Of the 20 volunteers on project Pearl, two remain with the Open Doors organization, including Estabrooks, now living in Ontario but known here as a Harbourville summer resident, congregation member at the Weston Christian Fellowship and Valley preacher; others have gone on to run orphanages in Morroco, do mission work in the former Yugoslavia, and minister in China, the Saudi Arabian Gulf and Vietnam.

When he’s not travelling internationally, Estabrooks writes, speaks and teaches as a “minister at large.” That helps Christians in open countries understand what takes place in other parts of the world. “The real work is helping, one person at a time. I’m convinced that’s the ultimate way to make progress in the world. “Every once in a while something big happens, like Project Pearl. There are a lot of people who would never do that themselves, but they saw the role they could play.”

Open Doors published Estabrooks’ book in August and is reprinting it in German, French and Dutch for its overseas branches.

WEBLINKS

www.opendoorsca.org