I'm glad you posted this if only to bring attention to the 'hymnal surpluses' that a number of starting-up churches could definitely keep in mind! I've been involved in overseas church foundings and refurbishments, and one of the major logistical challenges we found when getting our feet wet was simply obtaining enough hymnals. They have to be the right size and with the right theme for each denomination, and they tend to get a lot of use rather quickly (thankfully so!) so it helps to have several on hand, to for example replace torn pages when needed.
BTW if anyone knows of such sources for multi language hymnals please let us know! These days we've shifted our operation to the Europe-based missions and we are in dire need of hymnals in French, especially French, for Belgium and France proper, but also Dutch, German, Finnish and Swedish. And also Albanian, Turkish, Kurdish and Arabic. We've had great success ministering to Algerians and Kurds in the French cities who want to join the church, and needless to say it's been quite a task finding hymnals in these languages! So far we've been using home-made hymnals for practical purposes- thankfully some of our Turkish converts have been doing this for us, and I must say sometimes the home-made version is an inspiration in itself!
