2008 Annual Report
Love Bible Study

God has blessed us in 2008. I have included some statistics below. It has been a year of challenges, changes, and growth.

In January a man from Father, Son, Spirit World Outreach Ministries contacted us about helping with our jail ministry. Through them two men have begun to help us. Tom and Lee Hockaday, (father and son ministers), have started coming on a regular basis to join with Mark Lang, Trish and me in the worship services on Tuesday night. Mark comes two or three times a month and Tom and Lee alternate Tuesdays. We are extremely grateful for their help. Occasionally they take the service by themselves when Trish and I are sick or need to be out of town. Lee plays the guitar, leads the music when Rolly our inmate song leader does not, and translates what we say into Spanish. Tom or Mark take turns managing the testimony time and sometimes preach the sermon instead of me. Lee also answers the Spanish letters in response to the Spanish lessons Marie translates for us. Big thank you's to Mark, Tom, Lee, and Marie.

In April the volume of mail became too heavy for Trish and I to handle, so we invited Christians we knew to help us with answering the quizzes. We scanned the letters to a computer file and sent it to them by e-mail. They would respond by e-mail, and we would print it and send it. That helped considerably.

In August they changed the policy at the jail so that we could only have one pod of inmates in a worship service at a time. That meant half the men that were used to meeting with us, could no longer come. They started filing grievances and kicking up a fuss, so the administration asked us to do two worship services instead of one. Now instead of one service a week, we do two.

In September it became obvious we could no longer do everything we were doing, and still do it well. Since the Jail Ministry was growing, and the Church and Hospital Ministries were not, we gave up trying to start a church, and gave them a month's notice at the hospital to find new worship leaders. All of our ministry efforts are now focused on the jail ministry.

In October we outgrew our post office box. We have retained the old one for personal use. The new one can be found at the end of this report.

In November we started a new website so that our volunteer teachers can choose which lessons they want to answer. We scan the lessons and post it to the website. The teachers use an ID/password to access a list and pick a lesson to answer. They send us the answer via e-mail and we print and mail it.

In November it became very clear that we simply were not going to be able to handle the load. We were praying about hiring someone to help with the logistics of scanning, printing and mailing the responses. We believe that the Holy Spirit led us to Trisha quitting her teaching job, and becoming a paid employee of the ministry. She took a big pay cut, but God is generously providing all our needs.

In December the jail administration changed their minds and started sending both pods to one worship service again. We still have two worship services but we worship with two pods from the second floor the first hour, and one pod from the fifth floor the second hour.

Both of our old computers gave out this year. Praise God, we were able to replace them both quickly and our ministry work was well backed-up. We have gotten two or three weeks behind answering Bible lessons a couple of times, but right now we are responding in three to five days, which we consider to be very good.

The statistics below are informative, but we think the real story is in the testimonies and prayers of the students. See http://www.biblestudybymail.com/Testimony.html

2008 Statistics
Lessons answered: 2,338.
(In 2007 it was 561)

Free Bibles Mailed to Inmates: 542
(In 2007 it was ~250)

Chrisitan books sent: 102
(In 2007 it was ~50)

Certificates awarded for completed courses: 101
(Not tracked in 2007)

90 Active students at the close of this year
(There were 40 at the close of 2007)

13 Volunteer teachers, 15 if you count Trish and I
(It was just Trisha and I at the end of 2007)

We served at 70 worship services in the jail with 1,205 attending.
We ministered in worship to about 360 unique individuals.
We did not track this in 2007.

There have been many salvations, rededications and baptism requests in our services, but we do not track that information, so we can not give you the totals. Again, we believe the significant information can be seen in the testimonies of the Bible Study by Mail students. See http://www.biblestudybymail.com/Testimony.html

Please continue to pray for us.

God bless you,

Thor & Trish

Bible Study by Mail
PO Box 299
Madison, TN 37116
http://www.biblestudybymail.com