By Melanie Bizoe: wife, mom, grandma. Morning Show Co-Host/Promotions Director at 96.9/92.1 Pulse FM South Bend, IN
When you get off the plane in Port-au-Prince you are greeted by people eager to work, wanting to provide for their families. You see a Hope like I don’t see here in the States that often. In the midst of a poverty stricken community, you see “Merci Jesus” painted big and proud on a local tap-tap (taxi). Another tap-tap boldly displays Daniel 3:17, “If we are thrown into the blazing furnace, the God we serve is able to deliver us from it, and he will deliver us from Your Majesty’s hand”.
This is in a land where everywhere you look, you see mounds of trash. Men, women and children dig through that trash in hopes of finding food or something of value that they may be able to sell to provide for their loved ones. This is an area of our world that on average makes less than $2 a day and yet… they have Hope.
Food For The Poor, I believe, builds on that Hope. They walk side by side with the people and give Hope through not only food, housing, medical care and school support, but through a personal touch, hand shake, hug… a listening ear.
Everywhere you go, people have a story to tell — their story, a story that will give God glory. Food For The Poor listens to those stories and acts upon them:
- There are moms and dads living in the largest slum in the Western Hemisphere that can breathe a little easier because their children are attending a school where they have an opportunity to learn and dream.
- Others have access to a medical facility where they can learn how to take care of themselves and their beautiful children.
- Thousands line up at a feeding center and are greeted with smiling faces eager to give them food to go home and share with their families.
- Children who would have been walking the streets now have safe shelter at an orphanage.
One of the hardest things to do is walk away from a little baby boy that you cradled for an hour while singing Jesus Loves You and letting him know he is special, a gift, a conqueror, a sweet baby that can make a huge difference in the world. The comfort was in knowing Food For The Poor was there and he would be loved.
A family no longer has to live in a corrugated metal 10×10 “house” with dirt floors and a tarp for a roof. They have a five-room house with a porch and a locking door.
Lives are being transformed, Hope is renewed, and people are dreaming again thanks to generous donors partnering with Food For The Poor. People can see “God in Action”. Where there was once emptiness, despair and fear for the future there is now a sparkle in their eyes and joy in their song. In this place of poverty, a hope and a love for and in Jesus rises to the top like I never could have imagined.
