GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. February 27, 2006—Crossing geographic, cultural and even linguistic barriers, Crossroad Bible Institute (CBI), a Grand Rapids-based prison ministry that disciples over 35,000 prisoners a year, recently opened a distribution center in Villavicencio, Colombia.
While the South American hub is CBI’s third international distribution center after Canada and Australia, it is the ministry’s first Spanish-language center as well as its first to be planted in the developing world.
“This is a distribution center located in a country where prison conditions are particularly horrendous, the poor and needy in dire straits,” said Dr. H. David Schuringa, President of CBI. As the geographic and cultural barriers may have proven insurmountable from West Michigan, “it’s been a dream of mine to train indigenous church members to disciple the prisoners in their own countries.”
The new D.C. is strategically located in the center of the country and near Bogotá, the nation’s capital. Antonio Luis Prieto Surmay, head of the Colombian Distribution Center, will see to it that CBI’s reentry educational materials get to inmates in his third world country’s notoriously corrupt and violent prisons. He’s already trained CBI Instructors in Colombia to disciple these inmates.
“God is good and wants CBI in this country,” said Prieto Surmay. “We know well that we will be rescuing thousands and thousands of souls, by God’s grace.”
Indeed, there are many souls to be rescued in Colombia. With 30 years of prison ministry experience, Prieto Surmay has seen terrorists, drug traffickers and guerrillas enter the prison system. He has also seen many of them turn their lives over to Christ, however. To expand his efforts, he approached CBI in 2002 when he learned of the latter through a mutual affiliate. After four years of prayer, discussion and overcoming logistical difficulties, he began training Colombian Instructors and started distributing lessons in the prisons.
The center officially opened this month with over 70 students already enrolled and 19 trained Instructors. Kathryn Shane, who coordinates CBI’s international efforts, sees this as only the beginning. “As CBI's outreach continues to grow around the world, the opening of the new Colombian Distribution Center is an exciting development,” she said. “It is our first center in a Spanish-speaking country, and it gives us a template to follow for opening centers in other developing countries."
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