Jesus said, "Feed My sheep.": "There will always be poor people in the land. Therefore I command you to be openhanded toward your brother and toward the poor and needy in your land." Deuteronomy 15:11

I just finished reading "The Hole In Our Gospel" by Richard Stearns, President of World Vision U.S.
(Thank you, Sandy, for sharing it with us). What a powerful testimony of a man who surrendered to the call of God on his life.
While living in this town of Port-de-Paix, Haiti for the past 3 months, Ron and I have seen a small part of the 3 billion people in the world who are desperately poor, a small part of the 1 billion who are hungry, and my soul cringes to think how many of the millions we've seen who have been trafficked into human slavery. Ten million children in the world die needlessly each year, wars and conflicts are wreaking havoc, pandemic diseases are spreading, one of which is cholera. We have personally seen the effects of this. Our neighbor was taken to the hospital today with cholera. She left two small children and an older daughter behind to go to a hospital which is probably over-crowded with cholera patients. The hospital itself is not like any we could imagine. I pray for the Lord to have mercy on her and heal her so that she will be able to come home to her family. Come home to what? She and her family live in a guard shack with no door. Their kitchen sits in the front of the shack, the dishes sit on the ground where they cook, when they have food to cook. Right now they have no food. The smaller children eat here and at the girl's home. Their yard is a cesspool of green slimy water. Their pig lives outside the house. There is no husband that we know of. They carry water from the main road and wash their clothes in front of our garage and lay the clothes on the ground to dry or on the rock wall along the road. This is the life this lady will come back to if the Lord allows. Though she lives in these conditions, she is always smiling and waving at us and she sings quite often.
Ron and I have been blessed to be a part of the ministry of In the Father's Hand. The children here have their own personal story to tell. Some have parents or a parent, some don't. Some have brothers and sisters, some have even lost cousins recently to cholera. Can you imagine having to give your child away because you couldn’t feed that child? Some of the children here were abused so badly that they were one big bruise when they were brought here. All have been saved from a life of starvation, abuse and hopelessness.
You may be thinking that we have the same situations in America. Yes, we do. The difference is that in America there are government agencies to help the poor and abused. Here, the government is a lot of the problem. The government is so corrupt that they don’t want the people to live in better conditions. They want to keep them “under their feet.” They want the wealth for themselves and so the poor continue to live in extreme poverty here.
There are many needs within the ministry. Some of the most urgent needs are money for food and water and shoes and socks. It takes a lot of rice and beans to feed 100 children. It also takes a lot of water to provide baths and drink. Would you please pray with us for these needs to be met. If you feel that you would like to help in some way any help would be greatly appreciated. I would be glad to give information on how to help.
I mentioned at the beginning of this blog about the book I just finished reading. In it is a story, a parable, that made me think about what a difference one person can make in this world of impoverished people.
It's about one man and a million starfish.
"One early morning, after a fierce storm had hit the coast, I strolled to the beach for my morning walk. Horrified, I saw that tens of thousands of starfish had been washed up on the beach by the winds and waves. I was saddened by the realization that all of them would die, stranded on the shore, away from the life-giving water. Despairing that there was nothing I could do, I sat down on the sand and put my head in my hands.
But then I heard a sound, and I lifted my eyes. There, in the distance, I saw a man bending down and then standing up, bending down and standing up. Curious, I rose and walked toward him. I saw that he was picking up the starfish, one at a time, and throwing them back into the sea.
"What are you doing?" I yelled.
"Saving the starfish," he replied.
"But don't you see, man, that there are tens of thousands of them?" I asked, incredulous. "Nothing you can do will make a difference."
He did not answer me but instead bent down, picked up another starfish, and cast it back into the water. Then he smiled, looked me in the eye, and said, "It made a difference to that one!"

You may not be able to give much, and you may think that you can’t make a difference, but it doesn’t take much to make a difference.