Saturday, April 11^th will be the “Day of the Bible” in Marshalltown, Iowa.

On that day a group of churches will place a Bible at each one of the 12,000 homes in the city.

The pastor of First Baptist Church in Marshalltown said that the move is being done in response to a series of violent crimes in the city.  He first suggested the idea in a pastor’s meeting and the idea quickly blossomed into the city-wide event.

“What made the other churches want to join so quickly is that our prayer time had recently focused on what appeared to be a dark cloud of gloom hovering over our community,” Pastor Gerald Robison wrote in a press release.

“There had been a murder, an attempted murder, arson and a shooting death in our area,” he wrote. “With all the bad news around us, the pastors had been praying over the town and we saw this project as a way of delivering hope.”

The event is being called “Hope 4 You – Hope 4 Iowa.”  The project was to cost $18,000 and Robison said that they were able to raise that exact amount for the Bibles.

Hundreds of Christians from churches all over the city will be meeting to hand out the Bibles over a three-hour period.

“We agree on the important things—-and the most important is that we all agree Jesus is the source of real hope. And we want to share that with others who may need it the most,” Robison said of the diverse churches taking part in the effort. “And so, the local congregations, all willing, eager, faithful and ready to share, have worked hard to make ‘Hope 4 You—Hope 4 Iowa’ a reality.”