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The astute motel-room observer will notice that all of these bibles come from the same place -- The Gideons. An evangelical organization founded over 100 years ago by two traveling salesmen, Gideons International now distributes more than 59 million bibles every year. That's about one million every week, or 112 per minute. That's a lot of Word. According to its web site, Gideons International is the "oldest Christian business and professional men's association in the United States of America." The two founders, John Nicholson and Samuel Hill, met while sharing a room in the over-crowded Central Hotel in Boscobel, Wisconsin. They named their association after the biblical
figure who submitted himself to the will of God, regardless of his own judgments. Initially conceived as a Christian organization of "traveling men," in 1908 the group dedicated itself to providing a bible for every hotel room in America, a step towards fulfilling their mission of "distributing the Bible in the human traffic lanes and streams of everyday life." As the numerous copies of the book found in hotels and motels across the country can attest, they've pretty much completed their goal. Besides placing the Bible in hotels, the Gideons also provide the "Good Book" to nursing homes, domestic violence shelters, schools, prisons, as well as the military, law enforcement personnel, firefighters, and EMTs.
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