I serve a church in Ogden, Utah.
Ogden like several other cities in the area is extremely ‘Bike friendly’: bike
lanes along major highways, a major push to let motorists know that bikes share
the road. Our Mayor rode his bike to work every day for a year (did I mention
that during winter it snows in Ogden, and during the summer, temps can get
close to 100º). But usually people ride
bikes because they want too. They want to be environmentally friendly, it’s a
good way to exercise, or they enjoy the flexibility of riding a bike and getting
to see scenery and meet people. Or maybe
it’s because they can’t afford, or don’t want the expense of owing/maintaining/driving
a car.
A lot of people here walk for many
of those same reasons.
But, and here comes the flip side
of the coin. What if you had to walk everywhere? What if you didn’t have a car,
or access to public transportation, or even a bicycle? What if every step of your daily journey was carefully
thought out, because it might be several miles to your destination. I certainly
wouldn’t want to get half way to my next stop, and realize that I’d left
something behind.
What’s having to walk got to do
with my Mayor choosing to ride a bike to work?
Well, there are a lot of people serving God in remote places of the world
who have no choice but to walk. Gospel for Asia missionaries walk. It’s what
they do because they have no choice, unless, they have access to a bicycle.
GFA estimates that when their
missionaries have access to a heavy duty bicycle, they can visit up to three
times as many villages to share the love of Jesus. For $110.00 GFA can provide a bicycle to a
missionary. That may not seem like much to most of my readers, but when someone
is living on less than $2.00 a day, it might take a while to be able to save
that much money.
Read about how you can help here
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