French version
The Gospel in the land of a million elephants
100 years of mission in Laos
Translation of L'Évangile au pays du million d'éléphants
Éditions Je Sème / La FREE, Swizerland
with additional contributions from David Andrianoff and Ian Bowley
208 pages, en 13x21 cm, with many photos.
November 2013
Price : CHF 12.– / € 10.–
Two young Swiss missionaries set off to preach the Gospel in a remote and little known area. This was the beginning of an adventure in which other missions would join their efforts later and led to the Gospel taking root in the Buddhist and animist context of Laos.
In 1975, a major upheaval in what was at the time called Indochina was to mark the end of the traditional missionary presence – a real heartbreak for both the Lao church and the missionaries.
But this separation and the hardships that the Christians had to endure will bare fruit and stimulate the emergence of an autonomous church. Churches in the west, for their part, opened up new ways to witness and to serve there, in solidarity with the Lao evangelical church, whose faithful witness in the midst of opposition incarnates the love of God beyond all borders.
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“In our easy going, comfort loving ‘me’ generation, the example of those who buried themselves in this landlocked nation, challenges our less demanding ideas of discipleship. … This book is essential reading for today’s world Christians wanting to serve God in their generation, as the pioneers did in theirs.”
David Pickard, Former General Director of OMF International.
The author was born in Switzerland in 1946. He worked for three and a half years in Laos, where he lived through the events of 1975. Then he worked for seven years in France among refugees from South-East Asia. Since 1975, he made over 20 visits in Laos to follow up cooperation projects and maintain links with the churches.
How to order
You can order the book from the (for Europe) and from a number of people and different OMF offices in Thailand, Australia, New Zealand, Japan, USA and Canada.
(silvain-dupertuis@bluewin.ch)