Food for Thought
Sunday, March 24, 2024
Happy Palm Sunday!
As He entered Jerusalem, He was praised as the King. It was wonderful and glorious! Five days later, He was crucified as a criminal. I appreciate the reminder that it doesn't take long for popular opinion to change. That's some "Food for Thought."
Food-Food-Food! It’s something many of us take for granted. Just the phrase “suffering from hunger” conveys so much more than I’d ever understood. There’s actual “suffering” associated with hunger. I may say, “Oh, I’m so hungry,” when it’s almost lunchtime, but I don’t associate that with suffering. However, I’ve noticed that people who grew up hungry associate hunger with suffering and respond quickly when a population is hungry. I may know about hunger, but I don't know hunger.
Sometimes listening to someone else's experience can help us to have a different perspective. Seeing things through someone else's experience inevitably stirs compassion within us, and compassion asks for action.
Many of you responded immediately to our request for food this past week. Oh, how blessed Lex and I are to be a part of such a caring community!!! Because of your quick response, Lex was able to stock up on rice (while it could be found)! Thank you! We realize that not everyone is able to respond on such short notice, but all of us can pray. Please, your prayers matter!
Lex had a wonderful time with our friends in Grand-Goâve this past week. He loves to spend time with the students, and feeding them is one of his greatest joys.
Of course, Lex had to have a project to work on while he was in the country. He replaced the wooden fence, which was not holding up so well.
I sure do miss this place! AND the Mango Fransik that grow there. We haven't been able to find this particular variety of mango in the DR and they are the absolute best! (In my opinion, that is.)
As more and more people flee the capital, we are finding more and more people in need of medical care in our area. As always, we are so grateful to be partnering with Bless Back Worldwide in this important area of service.
What's with the Burger King crown, you ask?
Happy Birthday Dr. Evens!!!
So far this month, we have seen an unprecedented 13 students find new sponsors. Wow!!! Thank you to all our new child sponsors. You have no idea how much hope you have inspired!
Pictured here are Melissa and Stanley. They are siblings. Many of you may know their older brothers, Kendy, and Asson. I often refer to Melissa as "Baby Melissa" because she was literally born (delivered) at our front gate while Bless Back was down with a medical team. They ran out to the gate to help with the delivery. Please let me know if you are interested in sponsoring one or both of them. support@mohintl.org
We just completed our second week of baby feedings in the Dominican Republic with START NOW Early Childhood Intervention. The La Grúa and Baraguana communities have welcomed this initiative with open arms. The babies are eating well, and the adults are impressed with the attention to detail in preparing the food. (In other words the food is delicious!)
Broken Promises...
When an authority (mayor, police, pastor, missionary…) arrives in a poor community and begins “collecting data,” people sometimes have a "trauma response." The authority tells the community that they are there to help and that gathering their information will cause aid to arrive. It happens after natural disasters. It happens when someone new arrives on the scene. People line up to get on a list. They do whatever is asked of them. And then they wait for something that never arrives. After this happens a few times, people stop hoping and even grow bitter.
For this reason, we do our very best not to make promises, but rather to bless the people without them expecting it. START NOW began with vitamins and data collection together. No promises were made that there would be more to come. The people in La Grúa, who now have experience with us, brought all their babies to sign up and start getting vitamins. They were skeptical in Baraguana, where they didn’t know us very well yet. We knew there were quite a few moms who didn’t register their babies.
As we prepared food for the first feeding, we talked with our staff about this and the expectation that unregistered children would start showing up once the food arrived. We discussed how to handle it in an orderly manner. Once the registered children were fed, the leftovers were shared among the other children present.
Friday, there were so many additional children, that there were not enough leftovers to go around. We feed a lot of people every day at MOHI. We always make plenty. We prefer to have extra to give away than face the opposite. This week we faced the opposite and never want to again.
On Monday, we will make more food and ask the skeptical moms to register their babies. This will be an ongoing financial burden that we need your help with. For just $30 a month, you can sponsor a baby in Baraguana.
If sponsoring a baby doesn't work for you right now, please consider mentioning the need to a friend, co-worker, or family member—someone you know who loves babies and would enjoy the opportunity to support a baby in Baraguana.
Thanks for joining me again today. May this week be a special one for you, and may the LORD give us all eyes to see and ears to hear what the Spirit of God is speaking to us.
