Russia Is Responding
SUPERBOOK soon became the most
watched program in the USSR. By the time
the last episode was set to air, we had
developed a yearning to discover how
much the Russian children had absorbed
of what they had been watching. So we
put together three simple questions and
aired them after the last episode. No
one was prepared for the scenario that
was about to follow.
The phone rang at our IRR/TV
counseling center in the center of
Moscow. "Hello," said a man
with an agitated voice. "This is
the central post office. Would you
please come over quickly. We need to
talk to you."
A couple of our staff arrived to see
the confusion in the post office. It was
an incredible sight. A mountain of mail
spread all over the floor of the
building. They were deluged with
letters.
"You asked us for a post office
box," started the supervisor.
"You don't need a post office box.
YOU NEED A POST OFFICE! Now take all of
this mail to your office, sort it and
return the letters that don't belong to
you."
The mail flow broke all records in
the Soviet postal system. Thirty
thousand letters came in on the first
day after the program, and within four
weeks over a million had arrived.
Parents and children alike wrote in.
The central theme in every letter seemed
to be, "Tell me more about
God." For the next six months, our
staff, along with volunteers, responded
to each of the over one million letters,
sending each child and their family
"The Story of Jesus," a
booklet specially prepared for Russian
kids.
God was truly a God of miracles. If
He was to take Jailbird Joseph and make
him Prime Minister of Egypt, then He had
done just the same thing again by taking
a special video cassette and putting it
on national television to a whole
communist nation.
No previous program on Soviet
television had ever triggered such a
response from its viewers.
The impact of this simple cartoon series
was truly awesome. An American
television crew visiting an elementary
school in Leningrad wanted to know how
Christianity was faring after decades of
atheism.
"Do any of you know who Jesus
is?" a crewman asked the children.
He was greeted with a unanimous, "Da"
(Yes) from all of them.
The teacher who had watched this was
surprised at their response. "How
do you know about Jesus?" she
spluttered. "This is illegal."
The reporter then asked her to try
and discover where the children got
their knowledge. "From Superbook!"
all shouted.
Then the teacher asked what they all
knew about Jesus. One little boy stood
to his feet and said, "We've
learned how Jesus came, who He was, why
He died, and why we have eternal
life."
The TV anchor was overwhelmed at the
impact that Superbook had made on the
lives of these Soviet children.
In less than a year, a whole
generation had been reached with the
Gospel.
Return to the About
IRR/TV page.
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