Into all the world

It was in 1963 when Mother Basilea was spending some weeks of prayer on Mt.Sinai. She saw The Ten Commandments in a new light – not as a list of prohibitions but as guidelines from God’s loving will and as signposts to a life of peace and joy.

A fire now burned in her heart to proclaim them, not just in our own neighbourhood but all over the world, casting them as lifelines to every nation and continent and breaking every barrier of language and confession. We began to pray for the nations as God laid them on our hearts. And so sisters were ready to go when some years later requests for a Kanaan centre began to arrive from other countries. Some of us even went to a land we had been praying for.

… make wonderful opportunities for building bridges. Through the Holocaust we Germans carry an enormous burden of guilt towards the Jews, so our first ministry abroad was to Israel and to God’s Chosen people where sisters have served without charge since 1957, mostly among Holocaust survivors who suffered so much during the Nazi years. Other Kanaan centres followed, often in the face of considerable obstacles, in Europe, USA and Canada, South America, South East Asia, Africa and Australia.

Every Kanaan centre – some have only two sisters – has gone its own way of faith as newcomers in a strange land where they were often unknown. Early beginnings were often tough but experiencing God’s provision for every need was an unforgettable school for the sisters who were mostly very young. Their testimonies would fill the pages of new books of “Realities”.

Young women in other countries also felt called to enter our community. Some of them later returned to serve in their homelands while elsewhere friends of our community took it on themselves to distribute our literature.

A theologian in Finland and former missionary to Japan visited her beloved mission country where she had spent 22 years. She writes: