'God's Faithfulness – Stories from the China Inland Mission and OMF' by Rose Dowsett & Chad Berry (OMF International, 2014, 338 pages, available from OMF for £8.00)

This is a unique anthology of forty stories which testify to the faithfulness of God over the 150 years of OMF/CIM. Here are stories of tragedy, triumph, sorrow and joy, God's provision and many answers to prayer.

OMF International was founded in 1865 by James Hudson Taylor as the Chinese Inland Mission, so the book celebrates 150 years of service in East Asia. Hudson Taylor, after his dramatic word from the Lord on Brighton beach, served in China for nearly 50 years. However, although the book gives some outline of the mission's beginnings in the 1860-80's and developments since 1949 when the staff had to leave China, it is not a history book.

It is a series of amazing stories of ordinary people performing extraordinary exploits for God - in Thailand with leprosy patients at Manorom hospital and in Phayao, planting a Bible college and, in 2004, ministering to tsunami survivors. In Malaysia, Brian and Esther Newton planted a hundred church groups in Sarawak with tribal communities, the result being that the area is now fifty percent Christian. Robert and Ruth Erion ministered close to the border of Malaya and Thailand with communist insurgents. In Indonesia, the world's largest Muslim country, missionaries were able in the 1960s and 70s to develop literature materials and then a Christian curriculum for the government from kindergarten to university.

This book contains a series of amazing stories of ordinary people performing extraordinary exploits for God."

Most heartening of all is to read of individual new believers who took on the mission outreach, in particular Mongolian nomadic herdsmen Erdene, Mishig, Tuya and Bolar. The testimony to their service for the Lord is that in 1990 there were fewer than ten known Christians in the country and today there are more than fifty thousand.

This book will encourage all of us who have been involved with OMF over the years but also any Christians who have been unaware of what God has done in South East Asia.