Feeding the 4,500 -- An Encouraging UpdaTe

Is that a typo? Not at all. Jesus fed the 5,000, but we got close with 4,500 (500 families), and ours is not a one-time meal but food for two months. Our Magnificent Lord said we would do greater things than He did, and our Lord allowed us together to do so. With Him, all things are possible!

In late January, I wrote you about the suffering and starvation of a region in central Asia where we have many house churches whose combined total is 500 families. An average of nine per family adds up to 4,500 people, without food, without blankest, and without gas to cook or heat their tiny apartments. Yet, you gave abundantly as if the need was your own, doing for others what you would want someone to do for you and your family. Here is a summary of what we purchased for the 500 families on the brink of starvation in central Asia.

Each family was given:

• Three tanks of propane gas to cook with and heat their little dwellings. Each container should last for two weeks, so the supply will run out by the end of March. The cost of each container was $11.00 ($11 x 3 x 500 = $16,500)
• We distributed to them 3130 blankets and were careful to make sure that each child received one first, then the adults. (The blankets were $4 each. ($4 x 3,130 = $12,524)
• We gave each family a food supplement for two months (February and March), including powdered milk, oil, burgal (similar to rice), eight cans of meat, lentil beans, sugar, eggs, cheese, etc.

For your pleasure and better understanding, I requested that we receive a report from one family so that you can read a testimony of what your giving accomplished. So here is what one of our pastors sent us:
 
One of the five hundred families we helped had neighbors who lived near them. This family consists of five children and their parents. The father works five days weekly far away and returns for two days to spend time with his family. They are a Muslim family and are under the care of a religious man (Imam) who helped him to find work.
 
The desperate wife received no help from the Imam. So, she began to ask her neighbors to help her and her children, to keep them warm and fed, but no one could because everyone was going hungry and cold. But, when she knocked on the door of our Christian family, the wife told her, "bring your children, and come stay with us, and I trust my God will provide for all our needs." So, she brought her children and stayed with them for twelve days. In the house, there were eleven children and three adults.
 
The Christians shared with them what we had given for their family. At every meal, the Muslim woman watched them pray before eating and saw how they read their Bible and prayed before going to sleep. This was one of the Bibles you smuggled into our country for us. On the third day, this Muslim lady asked about the book, why they read it every night, and why they pray differently from the memorized Muslim prayers. Of course, these new Believers shared with her the answer to all her questions, and she became under great desires to have a relationship with God through His Son Jesus Christ. Then, on the eighth day, she came to the knowledge of salvation and accepted the Lord Jesus Christ as her savior. Now they are working to reach her husband for Christ.
There are reasons for our suffering.
 
There has been a "perfect storm" of conditions that prompted this need:
 

• First, many of the hungry families are refugees from Afghanistan. They fled here to escape the Taliban's persecution. Final Frontiers provided funding to relocate 74 families. They are living with up to fifty souls per apartment. Our people have taken them into our homes as well.
• Second, our country has experienced a devastating inflation rate in recent years, and everything costs much more than it did in the past.
• Third, there is a shortage of many essential food items, which adds to the increased prices.
• Then finally, a cold wave came, unlike any we have witnessed for decades. The ice and snow led to the cutting off of all the roads leading to our area, so the family's father could not reach them. As a result, his wife and children had nothing to keep them warm and no food to feed the children. There was not even milk for their one-year-old girl.

Meeting the needs of others, especially your Christian family, as the book of James teaches us, is an ongoing need, especially now with the situation in Ukraine. Although it may seem overwhelming to us, hearing of so many needs in so many places, this is, in reality, a constant. Our Lord will sort it out by leading some to help with one need and others to help the others. Our responsibility is to let you know the needs and let those who suffer know that they are neither forgotten nor abandoned. After all, it could be us in need, waiting for affluent Believers elsewhere to relieve our suffering.

One last word…

What we raised was to carry these families through the remaining winter months of February and March. Now that Spring is here, there is hope that seed can be planted and a harvest comes, alleviating their suffering. Then all they have to be concerned with is losing their lives for the cause of Christ. But, until that is evident, they still need our help. So many of you are giving to other needy causes, but if the Lord should direct you to help these Believers in Afghanistan and their neighboring lands, please do so. ​