Social Ministries

As I am here longer and longer one of the things that I see or notice more often, something that is heavy on my heart, is the infinite opportunities for social ministry. Usually financial help for poor families, whether it be buying them food products so they can have a descent meal, giving them money for medications, or just buying gifts for children on Christmas...these situations just seem to be commonplace here.

The level of poverty is much lower here and sometimes I just don't know how they survive at all. We try to help as often as we can and wherever we can. One family, as you maybe know from an earlier post, has 7 children soon to be 8 and the smallest has cerebral palsy. Some of you have helped them and baby Liza with some of her medication and we thank you very much. She has had some small improvements and has gained some weight, which was needed, and is sitting up on her own now, which is amazing because she is almost 2 for those of you who didn't read about her earlier. You can see her in this photo...the small one that is crying. (The other photo is their house which we are trying to help with some repairs including the roof and new windows.) ___________________________________________________ For Christmas we brought some gifts to a couple of our neighbors who are very poor also. It all started when I saw two of the children playing outside. They were wearing gloves for adults and trying to play with these huge gloves on their hands. Then when I asked about Christmas if it was nice, if they had a lot of tasty food to eat, they just said, "not really" and walked away. Was heartbreaking to think that so close there are children who barely had anything at all for Christmas. Makes me thankful for what I have and how blessed I am to be an American. It was a wonderful opportunity to be able to help in this way and a huge blessing to me. We weren't sure how we would help them. They needed gloves, winter clothes food, and we just didn't have so much money for all these things. As we were praying about it and discussing how we could help them we found in a box on our balcony a box full of everything we could think of: clothes, scarves, gloves, dolls, toys, crayons, coloring books. It was an amazing answer to prayer.

So we gathered all the stuff into about 6 nice-sized boxes for each of the children and we went and gave them their gifts. It was great to see them finally with smiles on their faces. We are finding many people in this area in similar situations. Families with disabled children (down syndrome, cerebral palsy, one blind child) and just families where a mother or father has died or is an alcoholic, or maybe just so many kids that it is hard financially because of that. They are often living with as many as 8 people in small 2 room apartments. Please pray for these ministries. I think that we are called as Christians to help in this way and also it is a great way to share the love of Christ and to open many opportunities to talk about Him. If you feel led to help in this area in any way or would like more information about it please contact me, or contact someone at Calvary.