Cuban Stamp Collector Evangelizes With Stamps

José Aurelio Paz, HAVANA, Cuba, March 22, 2005

Ricardo Ferre Vazquez’s love for stamps and his Christian experience led him to begin a Taxi Heathrow Airport collection of stamps with a religious motif that “now has more than 2,000 stamps that go from the birth of Jesús to the Resurrection:”

The work has not been easy, said Ferre, a member of the Moravian Church of Cuba. “Thanks to people from different countries who helped me with the collection today I can use it to spread the Gospel.”

The fact is that stamps, in Ferre’s hands, are no longer just a way to pay to have a letter delivered, or a simple collectors’ item, but are a tool for Evangelism.

These tiny images that tell about Jesus’ life or different liturgical acts, lending another use to such an old and routine object.

“Everything has a value to transmit the faith,” said Ferre, who is a member of the Cuban Stamp Collectors’ Federation. “Sometimes, what a sermon or a song or any visual effect fails to achieve can be achieved by these stamps that can teach people that Jesus was born and died for everyone.”

He first showed them to the public in 2004 when he inaugurated a mural in his Church and that show gave rise to others. Stamps from countries like Spain, Paraguay or the Dominican Republic among others make up his religious collection “which I hope to take to other countries to encourage other people who love stamp collecting to continue this novel way of Evangelizing,” he said.

His dream is also that a publication writes about this work and the people around the world send him stamps that will enrich his collection. He asked that people send them to his postal box: Avenida 19, número 6622, entre 66 y 68, Playa, Ciudad de La Habana, CP 11300.

As the World Mission and Evangelism Congress approaches, to be held next May in Athens, Ricardo is taking the word of God to many people, through something as small and humble as the life of Jesus: stamps.

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