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An Evangelist in Latin America“It took me seven years to get hold of the book. One of my goals is to make it easy for others to get it.” Is it really any wonder that Agustin Arellano’s computer burnt out? Not metaphorically at least. Since the 1970s, Agustin has burned with a spiritual fire ignited by The Urantia Book. He has been toiling ceaselessly for decades to make the Spanish language book and its teachings more widely available in Latin America. Having been involved in the earliest translation of the revelation into Spanish, he was deep into the task of translating several secondary works a couple of years ago when his computer succumbed to a surge in the electrical charge. His humble request to the Second Miler Grant Program was for a small amount to help him replace his machine and enable him to complete his pending work. It was a long list. He was just finishing off a revision of the translation of A Children’s Guide to the Urantia Book by Mary Livingston, as well as editing its audiobook. Other pending jobs included translating four secondary works into Spanish, such as Spiritual Psychology by Meredith Sprunger and The Inhabited Worlds by Chris Halvorson, translating two of Mary Livingston’s books into French, and editing the Spanish language audiobook of William S. Sadler’s A Simplification of the Foreword. And that's not all. Agustin was doing three weekly shows on Urantia TV and Radio Urantia – both of which were set up due in part to his visionary leadership – as well as Urantia Book-focused programs on other channels such as CasaMek Radio. He was also helping coordinate content production for Urantia TV from 24 nations in Latin America and five in Africa. No wonder he was desperate for his computer back. And no wonder Paula Thompson, in an interview on the Fellowship’s YouTube channel, described him as the “quintessential servant” and “an evangelist since the 1970s.” How Agustin Found The Urantia BookThe 70s – that’s how far Agustin’s relationship with the Fifth Epochal Revelation goes back. Back then, The Urantia Book wasn’t easy to get hold of. He had been told about the book, was fascinated by it, but could not find a copy to purchase. A few years later he was working as a tour guide in Mexico and in one of the churches he visited was a large candle with seven smaller candles around it. So, he made up the story that this was a representation of the seven superuniverses. One day, a member of his tour group (Barbara Ann Plain from Minnesota) asked him where he got the story and he told her it was from a paper he had learnt about from The Urantia Book. Her reply: “I have the book for you.” She gave him the book and he never saw her again. “We made a big party and started a study group,” Augustin recalls. The book was in English so he and his friends got down to the work of translating it into Spanish on an old typewriter. It took them three years to complete doing three, three-hour sessions a week. “Not a very good translation,” he says. But it was the start of something that just grew and grew. Growth of a RevelationIn a few more years there were enough readers to form the first Mexican Urantia Book community. A new translation was produced in 1993 and by the time the early 2000s came around it had become a bestseller in that country. The association he founded at the time, Grupo Orvonton, has now swelled to more than 5,000 members. In the course of his work for the revelation, Agustin has visited every country in South America except two. He has put the book into the hands of monks and priests and been rejected by others in the Catholic Church. He has managed to place the book in every single library in Mexico. He has helped produce hundreds of shows on Urantia TV and Radio Urantia. And some of his translations have been a great hit. Like the translation of The Story of Everything by Michelle Klimesh. “People really like it as a digest. They like to approach the book without the fear of not understanding because it is so complicated.” “Don’t restrain, go wild”He is an advocate of imaginative ways to grab non-readers’ attention. In fact, he credits references to The Urantia Book’s content in a series of novels by J.J. Benitez, Caballo de Troya (The Trojan Horse), for the vast majority of new readers in Latin America since 1984. Besides starting a new radio station, one of the projects he has been involved in since 1985 is Spiritual Vitamins, the dissemination of bite-sized quotes from the book in Spanish. The quotes strike deep, he says, even eliciting strong reactions from people who may originally not have approved of the book. He encourages readers to do “more mainstream stuff” to spread the book and its teachings, such as regular science fiction. “Otherwise we are just writing for other readers. We need to engage those who are not readers. There are so many things that we can exploit. Don’t restrain, go wild.” He never thought that in his lifetime he would see results from his planting of seeds going back more than 40 years, but he cites the existence of many more study groups and volunteers as fruit from that labor. “It took me seven years to get hold of the book. One of my goals is to make it easy for others to get it.” Agustin plans to retire in a couple of years’ time but one thing is sure: he still burns with the desire to spread the revelation far and wide. The Urantia Book Fellowship would like to thank supporters of the Second Miler Grant Program for making possible Agustin’s project and all the others the program has funded since 2020. | Learn more about the Second Miler Grant Program: Click here for details and application form. Read about some of the grant recipients' great projects:
Check out some of the other Urantia Book programs run by The Urantia Book Fellowhip.
Click here to make a donation to the Second Miler Grant Program or to The Urantia Book Fellowship. |
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