The Eastern European Mission (EEM), a ministry that has steadfastly worked for more than 60 years in supplying free Bibles to former Communist bloc countries, has recently donated over 225,000 bibles to children in North Macedonia.

EEM was founded in 1961 and a small team was moved to Europe, where the first EEM Bibles were printed and distributed to Eastern Europe and other surrounding countries. The recipients, who include individuals at schools, youth camps, refugee centres and other places where they are needed, got Bibles for free.

In an interview, EEM President Bob Burckle said, “God’s word is a seed that we’ve been planting, and we team and come together with a number of different organizations to help us do that, we go to major Bible translators like Bible League and then different Bible societies to get their translations. And then they take, and they format the books, put them into the printed word, and then we print, publish and distribute.”

Burckle added that churches and individuals make the donations which were used to print the Bibles and that EEM will deliver another 225,000 bibles in 2023 at the request of North Macedonian leaders.

EEM’s Vice President of European Operations, Bart Rybinski said, “For many years, there was conflict with the Greek state about the name of their country, they had a conflict, too, recently this year with the Serbian Orthodox Church about being recognized as a national Orthodox Church in its own right. From the Bulgarian side, there’s disagreements of culture and history.”

He further added, “It’s more than just the Bible, It’s the Bible in their national language, and that’s very meaningful to them.”

EEM publishes and prints Bibles and New Testaments as well as Teen Bibles, Children’s Bibles and colouring books, distributing them through a vast network of partner churches and organizations reaching more than 32 countries in 23 different languages, including Farsi and Arabic.

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