NEW YORK — In the first five months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in Lower Manhattan, New Yorkers couldn't get enough of the tracts and Bibles Pastor Mike Veach of First Bible Church of Staten Island and his team distributed as they sought to relieve the city from the trauma of the tragedy.
In one devastating day, 2,977 victims of the terrorist attacks lost their lives, and people wanted answers, Veach recalled in an interview with The Christian Post on Friday. “In the beginning, the city was obviously hurting. They [the people] were devastated, and there was a hunger for some answers. And we were bringing hundreds of thousands of pieces of literature and cases of Bibles with us every day into the city.
And it was so difficult to pass them out because we couldn't pass them out fast enough,” Veach, who has been ministering at his church since 1990, told CP. The demand for Veach’s Christian ministry was so great that, every day for two years after the terrorist attacks, he joined with other churches from across the country to provide spiritual support at ground zero.
“We were here, and we opened our church; we invited other churches around the country to come and help us minister,” he explained. Veach said he provided volunteers with 50 beds and housed them to help keep up with the demand, and the women of his church prepared meals to support them. “Many of these people that came from other churches had never done this before.
They've never actually been on the street publicly handing out literature, having conversations with people like this, so we enjoy encouraging people to do that,” Veach said. After those first five months, however, the demand for tracts and Bibles began to wane, and two