Dear Gideons,

Prompted by the front page of the Bible you kindly placed in my hotel room, I would like to write in thanks for the work you carry out continuously and which has become an institution.

Before I set out on my journey to Glasgow from Inverness yesterday I looked in vain around the local charity shops for a detective novel or similar with which to while away the hours on the train and to keep me company in the hotel restaurant or in my room. Having spent the evening instead watching a football match on TV, followed by the inevitable series of human horror stories that constitute the News, I awoke this morning, my mind filled with the sense of our enslavement to the corporate world.

At 6.30 am I was wide awake with the thought that there may be an answer for my headache in the drawer of the dressing table. And there it was, reliably, offering me a myriad of other, much more encouraging thoughts. In particular 2 Corinthians 9. I find myself less than 3 weeks away from retirement, as everyone is asking what my plans are. It concerns me that I have none so far, and I also found a couple of your suggested verses helpful, but I think I am going to start with Proverbs 16:3, “Commit to the Lord whatever you do, and he will establish your plans.”

Thank you for reading this and please continue your work. My son, who is now 17 and considering his future, reads the Bible in the modern way – by daily reading on an App I think! He was impressed, as I was as a school child, with the gift he received of a New Testament. I rediscovered my own copy when on holiday last year in Sardinia. We have a house there as it is my husband’s home country. I was alone and I had an accident, falling from a ladder and breaking my knee cap. Finding help proved tricky but to cut a very long story short, I ended up reading that little Bible constantly, finding strength and comfort and a renewed faith in God. This has continued.

Thanks again!

Mrs L Carloss