75th Anniversary - Interlink Depot opens
During the early 2000’s RMA faced a dilemma. We were receiving many requests from Brazil for Gospels of John and Gospel tracts. Often the request would be for 10,000 Gospels of John. The problem was that to post 10,000 Gospels of John would have cost a lot of money posting numerous small parcels. On the other hand to ship 10,000 Gospels of John on a pallet was a relatively small consignment and then the friends receiving it would have to clear it through customs – which was always slow and very expensive. This meant that for many of these friends we could not help them with the literature that they needed. We came to the conclusion that we needed a depot where we could ship a whole container of literature and then this would be shipped internally to the many churches and missions who were requesting supplies.
We tried a few ideas but nothing worked. Then we heard that Victor and Raquel Cardoo had come home from Brazil after working for many years with literature distribution through different missions. They had been told that they were no longer needed so they came home seeking the Lord to guide them. RMA invited them to set up a depot in Brazil where we could ship containers and they in turn could share the literature to many Evangelists who requested it.
Victor and Raquel did a tremendous work setting up the depot and faithfully looked after it until Victor went to be with the Lord in 2013 after being ill for some time. Sueli Crawford had been working alongside Victor so she was trained on all aspects of the ministry and took over the leadership. Daniel now assists Sueli in getting the many orders prepared and shipped out all over the vast country of Brazil.
Aramis had initially been invited by Victor to serve as a member of the board. After some time Aramis who was a graphic designer told us that he would be interested in helping to design our publications. With modern communication this has worked very well and even though he does not know every language he can prepare tracts for printing in multiple languages.
Earlier this year our depot called “Interlink” celebrated its 20th anniversary. During the past 20 years we have shipped to them 64 container loads of literature. On average each container holds about 3 Million items. This means that we have shipped roughly one piece of literature for every person living in Brazil.
