Riders from the Mosaïek Church cycling community recently undertook and completed an ambitious project entitled the Arola 2015 Cycle Tour, which ran from 19 to 22 February.
The aim of this project was to ride a distance of 483km in three days from Johannesburg to Bloemfontein in order to raise awareness and to distribute Bibles during the run of the tour. The project was in collaboration with The Bible Society of South Africa in Bloemfontein .
More than R42 000 was collected prior to the start of the tour, which brought the project past its goal of collecting 1 001 Bibles to distribute during the tour.
Last year, the Arola tour and the Mosaïek cycling community managed to distribute 270 Bibles which form part of 4 000 Bibles distributed by all cyclists (94 riders) that took part from various cities.
Team member and community facilitator Chirsto Prins was very proud of his team and boasted about the completion of the tour.
“We are very proud of everyone who participated in the tour. We aimed to promote camaraderie among our members, which in turn developed a competitive spirit, enhancing their fitness and cycling skills. These skills were encouraged to be applied to and to be handed down to various communities we encountered. We serve, utilising it as the acts of God’s ‘hands and feet’. We accepted responsibility for our own safety and health and we promoted a ‘no drugs’ ride policy,” he said.
Fellow team member Johann Knoetze was very thankful toward all of the people involved in the organisation. “Without any of these amazing people, the logistics of the tour would have been impossible to manage. There was a lot of administration that went into the planning of all this,” he said.
Arola 2015 was sponsored and assisted by numerous organisations and individuals such as the Mosaïek Church, The Bible Society of South Africa Emvit, Cajees Cycles, Big Sky Coaches, Bains Lodge, Lavender Hills Guest Farm , Jacques Watson, the paramedic expertise of the Van der Berg family, Advanced Rescue Services, The Johanneburg Fire Department, The Gauteng Traffic Department, JMPD, the Failrand police station and MTN South Africa.
“The aim of sponsorships were to help spread the word of Christianity. These sponsors made it possible for more riders to participate, thus creating exposure for our sponsors in the cycling community,” said Prins.
The amount raised and Bibles distributed is yet to be confirmed.
