“This Is For Helping People”
Dear Friends in Christ:
We greet you in the Name of our Lord and Savior, Messiah Jesus of Nazareth! Alma and I are praying for you and your continued protection and blessing! Praise the Lord! “The Christian who is pure and without fault, from God the Father’s point of view, is the one who takes care of orphans and widows, and who remains true to the Lord—not soiled and dirtied by his contacts with the world.” (James 1:27, The Living Bible) We thank you so much for taking time out from your busy schedule to read the news letter because it demonstrates what we do each month to serve God and to take care of others. We appreciate so much your participation in the ministry in prayers and how God directs you.
As the above Scripture says, if we want to be considered pure and without fault before our Lord and Savior Jesus the Messiah, we must take care of widows and orphans and stay away from sin. During the early 1980’s, my pastor told me to write on the front page of my Bible, right under where it says “Holy Bible”, “This is for helping people, so that we never forget”.
From the beginning of the ministry in 1981, we have tried to maintain a good outreach to the poor. When I lived in Peru, every couple of days small emaciated children would come to the door and beg for food. Of course I would fix them each a big plate of food. The problem with starving children was caused by the government’s flirting with socialism. Then the terrorists thought that the government wasn’t far enough left, so they began blow ing things up with the end in mind of a Cambodian Khmer Rouge type of communism. They wanted to kill 2,000,000 Peruvians. That is the atmosphere we came to in Peru. We started having so many visits for food, through the Agua Viva Church, we found out where the children were living and began to take food out to them in their neighborhood. We would take new plastic 50 gallon barrels and fill them with oatmeal, sugar, powdered milk, and water, and feed the children. Most were emaciated and had nothing but a pair of short pants in the 50 degree temperatures.
On the first Christmas, the church donated small, inexpensive wrapped toys, and we took them to the children. These children had never received a gift in their lives and we found out that some of them never opened them because they were just too precious to them to open. In their minds, once the present was opened, it would be over with. Taking care of poor children is an interesting ministry.
Before we left Peru, there was a dinner at the church and they recognized the ministry to the children. One of the first children who we helped came up on the platform. He had put on weight, he was dressed like a normal healthy child, was enrolled in classes, and planned to attend the university. He looked straight at me and thanked everyone for what they did to save his life. It was an emotional time for me.
Sometimes, if we live in the midst of affluent USA or Canada and we are not exposed to the poor, we loose sight of James 1:27. I agree with the thought of people in the United States that poverty of the type seen in the Third World is impossible to find among us here. The United States and countries like it are a miracle in comparison to what we find in the past. Poverty in that sense simply is non-existent. If we travel outside of the USA, as we do, that type of poverty is readily visible.
About 15 years ago, we traveled to Mexico to hand out Christmas presents to poor children. We pulled up in the barrios and blew the horn and started shouting “Merry Christmas!” Sure enough, the street became alive with shouting voices and parents would come running with their kids and we would stand on the back of the truck, tell the Christmas story and how Jesus came to Earth to save us and give us Salvation, and pray to receive Jesus with the families, and then give presents to the kids.
On the same trip, we visited 3 local orphanages and two of them were very up to date and the kids were dressed well and seemed to be warm and well fed. The last orphanage that we visited was in Jimenez, Coahuila and it was different. It was about 35 degrees outside and when we pulled up, and elderly man came out the door and he had a baby in his arms, and another child riding on his foot, and several children came running outside dressed like the poor children in Peru, had runny noses and didn’t seem too healthy. The buildings were dilapidated with holes in the roofs.
We handed out Christmas presents and while doing so, the Holy Spirit told one of the group that we should take this orphanage on as a regular place of support and we could try to get the place up to par. When I told the elderly man that we wanted to help him, he shouted and said in Spanish, “We have been praying that God would send angels to help us, and here you are.” I checked my pocket, and found my last $25 and gave it to him and told him that we were going to do more beginning that day. (I used a credit card to get back to West Texas).
Since then, we have remodeled buildings, set up gardens, put a roof on their church, put in restrooms, cleaned out and burned truckloads of garbage, paid for their needs and upkeep, food and clothes for the children, medical bills, and school tuition. We visit them regularly, stand with them through thick and thin and have never refused a request for help. A couple of times I didn’t have it, but through the grace of God, we were able to raise it. The place is different. It is more up to date, there are more kids and the vision goes on. I would like to request that, according to James 1:27, each person keep this worthy ministry in prayer! Thank you!
Thank you for remembering that PayPal, CashApp, and Zelle are available, not to mention the return envelope, and we also have text to give. We greatly appreciate you and God does too! He promises to bless the cheerful giver! Thank you for all you do for us! We are winning!
