Re: Monday answer
I appreciated Lee�s answer. He gets today�s Gold Star.
Wood related itm is a book. Specifically, the item is the Gideon Bible.
In 1898, John H. Nicholson and Samuel E. Hill happened to be on the road and looking for a place to stay in Boscobel, Wisconsin. They hit the only hotel in town�then called the Central House, but today called the Boscobel Hotel. It was full of riotous lumbermen at a convention. Hill and Nicholson were not happy. It was loud and people were drunk, swearing, gambling, and were sprawled all over the bar and lobby, and the place needed, shall I say, tidying.
Mr. Nicholson and Mr. Hill were the odd guys out, and the with the convention the hotel was near capacity with only one double (1898 double) room available. The confident men, strangers until that time, agreed to share the room. Just before lights out, Mr. Nicholson asked Mr. Hill if he could be excused as he wanted to read the Bible and say prayers. Mr. Hill then asked him to read aloud as he was also a Christian man.
Time passed for several months. On May 31, 1899, each independently doing his rounds, met again at Beaver Dam, Wisconsin, and during that time determined to �band Christian commercial travelers together for mutual recognition, personal evangelism, and united service for the Lord.� They decided to call a meeting in Janesville, Wisconsin on July 1, 1899, in the Y.M.C.A.
Only three men were present at that meeting: John H. Nicholson, Samuel E. Hill, and Will J. Knights. They organized with Hill as president, Knights as vice president, and Nicholson as secretary and treasurer. Much thought was given to what the name of the association should be. Mr. Knights arose from his knees and said, "We shall be called Gideons." He read the sixth and seventh chapters of Judges and showed the reason for adopting that name. Gideon was a man who led men, who was willing to do exactly what God wanted him to do, regardless of his own judgment as to the plans or results.
Additional meetings were held in Chicago in 1907 and St. Louis in 1908.
It may be interesting to note that the practice of the churches contributing to the support of the Gideon Scripture program originated not with the Gideon Society but with a independent pastor. Two months after the 1908 Louisville Convention, a state convention convened in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Then Gideon National Secretary Frank Garlick and Mr. A. B. T. Moore attended a meeting of the Ministerial Union, and after the program they asked if �Brother� Garlick could address the ministers on the work of the Gideon Association. He spoke of the needed Bible distribution, and at the close of his 10-minute address, Mr. Moore's own pastor, Dr. E. R. Burkhalter, First Presbyterian Church, arose and moved, "...that Gideon Bibles be placed in all local hotels (at first only at the reception desk and taken out as is a library book today) and that the Union be responsible for the funds." The motion was unanimously carried and a committee appointed to apportion the cost to the churches, according to their strength.
Since then the idea expanded and each hotel room gets a Bible. Now in 180 countries in 80 languages and 1.3 billion copies. All begun by two strictly Christian male strangers �sleeping� together.