The Magabook program is doing much more than distributing good literature or helping Idaho students earn funds for school. It's training leaders.
Lindsay Nelson, Gem State Adventist Academy senior, says the Magabook program has helped her do "lots of growing!" As she walked the streets, Nelson would ask God to meet a specific need for each home. Often He would impress her with just the right book or words to say when she approached a specific house.
Nelson remembers one particular experience. On her final street of the day, the last house was secluded down a long, long driveway. Thinking of her aching feet, Nelson really didn't want to go, but she went anyway. The middle-aged woman who opened the door didn't seem interested in Nelson's first offer — a cookbook. But when she pulled out Peace Above the Storm (Steps to Christ), tears began falling from the woman's eyes. Her son had been murdered the day before, and she had prayed that God would send someone to give her something that she needed. Nelson was the answer to that prayer.
Another day, Nelson approached a man as he was getting into his car. She assured him she would be quick, and showed him The Great Controversy. He told her he had just lost his job, which was very hard on his young family. Because of the stress, he and his wife were separating, and he was moving cross-country to live with his parents. The man told her if she had come a few minutes earlier, he would have been inside packing, too busy to stop and any later he would have been gone. Nelson says of that experience, "God is rarely early, but He's never late."
Would she do it again? Nelson says "yes." And when asked if she has any advice for someone deciding whether to get involved in Magabook, she says: "In life, Satan will always put things in your path to distract you from God. You just stick with God, no matter how hard it seems."
Pictured here: the Idaho Conference Magabook group. Lindsay Nelson is on the front row, second from the left.
