Hunger Offering

By Abby Hopkins

On the desert side of the Andes Mountains sits a city with more than 100,000 residents who have migrated in search of better jobs and living conditions or an escape from domestic terrorism. Still, Collique, Peru, offers harsh living conditions, including low annual rainfall and mountainous terrain.

Operación San Andrés, a Hunger Offering-supported ministry, serves this community by caring for its children. It provides nutritious meals and educational enrichment consistently to children enrolled in its programs.

On Nov. 27, the Hunger Offering is partnering with Operación San Andrés and the Texas Baptist Mission Foundation for #GivingTuesday 2018. On that day, every donation given to the Hunger Offering will go directly toward OSA.

The goal is to raise $10,000, and we want you involved! One percent of donations will be used to feed children that might otherwise experience malnourishment.

By Abby Hopkins

Hurricane Harvey destroyed Jessie’s floor. Jessie is diabetic, in a walker, and without a family. One day, she heard a knock on her door, but had to drag herself across the floor to answer.

Mission Centers of Houston was there to repair her flooring, but found her with scratched, bloody legs and sent her to the emergency room. MCH executive director Jeff Chadwick said Jessie could have died, but the hospital amputated her leg, sending her home to find new carpet and freedom.

“When you do that for someone who thinks they’re the lowest, that makes all the difference,” Chadwick said.

Since Harvey, Union Baptist Association’s MCH has served families in northeast Houston through the NE Houston Disaster Recovery Network. This summer, MCH continued to receive and deploy teams to assist in the essential long-term recovery ministry.

Chadwick said MCH ramped up its food distribution, taking a box truck of food to those in need. The flooding affected more than 40,000 homes in northeast Houston alone.

“I’ve learned how God can provide in the most creative ways,” Chadwick said. “I’m getting to the point where I just know it’s coming.”

When Elizabeth Mejía Laguna first came to the Buckner Family Hope Center, a Texas Baptist Hunger Offering recipient, she was shy and kept to herself. She often stayed in her home and did not interact with her neighbors.

By Abby Hopkins

Millions of people lack access to safe water in one country of sub-Saharan Africa. Within rural areas, many women and children walk more than three hours to collect water.

A married American couple recognized this need after several short-term trips to this African nation with their church and felt the Lord calling them to action.

“The need for water was the number one need constantly expressed by the people there,” said the husband, whom we need to keep anonymous.

They moved permanently to a rural part of the country to begin a ministry there. About half a million people reside in this area, with 90 percent not having access to clean water, he said.

The ministry conducts water projects in different communities, coordinating everything through local and national governments. So far, 15 water projects have been administered. The projects include water wells, WASH (water, sanitation, and hygiene) trainings and maintenance trainings for committee members of each community.

Education is a valued process of growth and development in pivotal years of one’s life, yet it is not always accessible. As a new school year begins, many are unable to afford the costs of learning.

By Abby Hopkins

“Mom, we have a turkey for Thanksgiving!”

A young boy exclaimed this and looked at his mother in awe as he discovered his family would receive a turkey from ABC Primera Baptist Church Food Pantry.

Erika Guerrero, Primera’s missions chairperson, was able to hand the turkey to this family on her first day volunteering. Since then, she has joined the work and watched as God has provided turkeys every Thanksgiving, serving as a reminder of the purpose of the food pantry.

ABC Primera is a ministry that seeks to alleviate hunger by feeding the elderly, single parents, homeless, and ill in Bastrop and models a dependence on God for every need. The ministry is supported through the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering.

“We always have enough to pay; it always works out,” said Primera Pastor of Harold Welch. “We see that’s the hand of God.”

By Jaclyn R. Bonner

In a country where severe food insecurity increased by 30 percent last year, affecting 7.7 million people, imagine reducing chronic malnutrition among the most vulnerable -- pregnant women, children under 5 years old, and the elderly -- and creating food security for rural communities in one of the world’s least developed countries.*

These solutions do not come easily. Problems are complex in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It is the second largest country in Africa and ranked seventh on the 2017 Fragile States Index.* Despite the nation’s instability and broken structures, the local church and leaders in the region have a vision for their people.

Deep in the heart of fertile Eastern DRC, 430 churches from three provinces are coming together to bolster a sustainable farming endeavor -- permaculture. Permaculture is an agricultural practice designed to break the cycle of poverty by diversifying crops, increasing control over production, and generating more income.

By Jaclyn Bonner

The traditional American narrative boasts that anyone can make it if he or she works hard. But the social systems and economic stratum one is born into can often exclude a person from having an opportunity to attain the “American dream.”

West Dallas denizens face a challenging situation. Generational poverty is commonplace in the 11 square miles of Zip code 75212. “More than one of every three families lives below the federal poverty level,” reports Brother Bill’s Helping Hand, a Texas Baptist Hunger Offering ministry that has worked in the community for 75 years.

Unemployment in West Dallas is at 10.5 percent, double the Texas unemployment rate, and 45 percent of West Dallas households earn less than $25,000 annually. More than half of West Dallas adults did not complete high school. The average pre-K child has a vocabulary of 1,500 to 2,000 words, compared to the 5,000 to 7,000-word vocabulary of children living in more affluent Dallas neighborhoods.

Moreover, a health crisis, job loss, and/or family tragedy can drastically change a household’s economic status, creating food insecurity and leading directly to poverty.

In 2015, Elaine Rodriguez* took a medical leave of absence from her work. Dealing with health complications and less income, Elaine and her husband, Jacob*, members of Bill Harrod Memorial Baptist Church, had difficulty putting food on the table.

By Jaclyn Bonner

My late grandmother, Edna Wood Bonner, grew up during the Great Depression. She sought to emulate the strength and selflessness she saw modeled by her own mother, Maggie Wood, who became a single parent of seven shortly after my grandmother and her twin brother were born.

It does not require statistics from the 1930s to understand the difficulties Maggie faced. She labored under the hot sun daily as a cotton picker, but this did not provide an income adequate to raise two sets of twins and three other daughters alone.

Like many mothers who desire the best for their children, Maggie made the difficult decision to place her children in institutionalized care. In 1932, at the age of eight, Edna and her twin brother were sent to the local orphanage, joining their siblings and other children whose parents were deceased or unable to care for their primary needs.

While the current economic situation of our nation does not rival that of the Great Depression, hunger is still hurting families today.

Feeding Texas reports that a study released by the United States Department of Agriculture found that 1.4 million Texas households were food insecure from 2014-2016. One in seven families in our state, 14.3 percent of households, are unable to put food on the table every night.

Hunger in Texas is higher than the national average*, but it is only a microcosm of the pervasiveness and severity of global hunger. The World Food Programme announced that 815 million people, one in nine, go to bed hungry every night. One in three people in the world are malnourished.

By Abby Hopkins

In 2017, 123 young women considering abortion came to a ministry in Decatur. After receiving loving assistance from Wise Choices Pregnancy Care Center, 103 of these “abortion-minded” women chose life, and the Texas Baptist Hunger Offering is playing a role in serving these new families.

“These girls are absolutely heroes. Choosing to love the child, even when it’s hard – it’s what motherhood is all about,” said Connie Wyatt, CEO of Wise Choices.

Wise Choices is a Texas Baptist Hunger Offering ministry that seeks to empower families throughout a woman’s pregnancy and for the first year of the baby’s life by giving hope.

“We meet them where they are. When they make the choice for life, they’re not in it alone,” Wyatt said.