“For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat…” Matthew 25: 35We live in a land of plenty. Despite economic events of the past year, most of us still have a place to live, a car to drive, and food to eat. And that’s just the beginning. We’ve got computers and cell phones, back yards and barbecues, closets near capacity, and store after store ready to sell us more.
That changes our perspective.
Surrounded by abundance, housing becomes a matter of status, not shelter. Clothes are deemed unusable because of style, not wear. Water flows freely in long hot showers or summer slip-n-slides. Food becomes entertainment, consumed as a backdrop to social gatherings.
But there are many places in our world where morsels of food and sips of water are a matter of life or death. Every day, hunger claims the lives of 16,000 children. That’s one child every five seconds.
Ministerios de Fe Vida Nueva which means Ministries of Faith and New Life in Azacualpa, Honduras, battles this reality everyday. In addition to the 20+ kids that live in the home, they provide a noon meal, Monday through Friday for 50 additional children from the nearby poverty-stricken city of Azacualpa. For many of these kids this is the only meal they receive in a day. The children’s home runs this feeding program on $400 a month – that’s $8 per child.
You can help bring a glimpse of hope and the tangible gift of food to these children!
What can we do?
The Rice and Beans Project is a chance to get a new perspective on poverty, a chance to experience hunger in a way we don’t normally encounter in our daily lives. This goal is for the experience to be simple, tangible, and bring us into a better understanding of the complex issue of global poverty.
For three days in February, we will trade in our plentiful meals for a diet of rice, beans and water – approximately 700 calories per day – and donate our grocery money to fund the Ministries of Faith and New Life feeding program. We could fund this life-giving project for a full year!
As part of this experience, we will also receive some short devotions to encourage us at each mealtime. Through these devotions and the encouragement of one another, it is also our hope that as a church we can grow deeper in our awareness of the 1.2 billion people in our world who are truly hungry. God cares deeply for His people who are in need! In Deuteronomy 10:18, the word of God says, “He administers justice for the fatherless and the widow, and loves the stranger, giving him food and clothing.”
How it Works
February 14: Challenge Sunday. Sign up to participate by turning in a response card after the service. You can also sign up by emailing sjrittgers@msn.com.
February 21: Trade in your grocery money donation for enough pre-measured rice and beans to feed you and those participating in your family.
February 22-27: Choose three consecutive days for the rice & beans diet.
Our prayer is that this project will not only help pool our resources to tangibly provide for the needs of others, but also create a spiritual hunger in us to continually be aware of the least of these among us.
“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’ He will reply, ‘I tell you the truth, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.” Matthew 35: 44-45
GO DEEPER: click on the following downloads to go deeper in the beans and rice project.
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