Antelias Cultural Movement Exhibition

 Sharing the Word of God with people

 

The Bible Society, for the 24th year, participated in the Antelias Cultural Movement Exhibition that was held in the renovated Hall of Mar Elias Church. Through these years of participation we recognized that people are still thirsty for the Word of God. This made us experience the presence of God in the distribution of His Word. The exhibition took place from

3-13, 2005 and later on was extended to the 18^th of March due to the demand of the participants and due to the customers' request to have more time for shopping.

 The Bible Society staff was very busy in fixing the stands, preparing the stock items, displaying them on the shelves and hanging posters on the walls to promote the newly released books. Available were Bibles, New Testaments, Portions, Children's materials, gadgets, DVD's, CD's, Audio cassettes, daily devotions and counseling books for Christian youth. We offered different promotional packages and helped people to buy what they want, with as much as they can afford to pay. God blessed us during this exhibition and lots of people passed through our stand and watched our scripture items and almost no one came out without buying.

 The book fair was officially opened in 3 March 2005 at 4:00 p.m. by the Minister of Culture Mr. Naji Albustani, who toured the exhibition and greeted all the publishers and the participants.

 During this Antelias exhibition, many parents & students, nuns, priests and lay people visited our stand and this gave us the opportunity to promote the Bible World to them, especially to the principals of the schools so that they would bring their students to visit the Bible World during the week days at the Bible Society Centre.

 After ten days of sales our result was more than the set target. We had opted for ten million Lebanese pounds but God made us rejoice to see an eleven million sales amount at the end of the week. However, the extended five days of the exhibition brought to us an extra amount of two millions. This figure gives us a clear image that people are hungry for the Word of God, in spite of the uncertain political and economic situation Lebanon is going through.

 As to the quantities of the items sold, we had sold more than 1800 scripture items. But this was because of the peoples' need to buy more Bibles, Concordances and the Youth Counseling Book.

 Finally, it was very clear that our sales was increased due to several factors, such as our sales offers, packages, the signing of the study N.T. by father Paul Feghali , the Bible Society staff's motivation to achieve the set target and the difficult situation of our country which drove people to God. Another incentive was the willingness of our staff who by shift, attended the exhibition and contributed to the success once again. And God blessed us.