Dear Friends.
Thank you, Lord, for your blessings on me is the chorus of a song I like to sing and listen to around Thanksgiving. It goes like this: I’ve a roof up above me, I’ve a good place to sleep. There’s food on my table and shoes on my feet. You gave me your love Lord and a fine family. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings on me! We are truly blessed and have all these things to be thankful for.
But that’s not the case with many of those we serve in Haiti. Many roofs are made of thatch and leak when it rains. That means they don’t have a good, comfortable place to sleep. Often, they don’t have food on their tables and some struggle to afford shoes for their feet. Many have not experienced the love of Jesus and don’t have families who care about them.
Over these past 26 years, Starfish Ministries has had the opportunity to meet many of these needs in the Tricotte area. Through your partnership we have been able replace over a hundred houses made with mud walls, dirt floors and thatched roofs with block walls, concrete floors and metal roofs. Through your help we have been able to provide literally millions of meals for schoolchildren and poor families. And when we were able to ship containers to Haiti, we had shoe drives and were able to provide hundreds of pairs of shoes for the most needy.
And through these humanitarian outreaches, we have been able to introduce thousands to the love of Jesus and helped them along to experience the loving family of the local church body. Thank you, Lord, for your blessings toward us and toward those we have had the opportunity to minister to.
We are also grateful for FMSC (Feed My Starving Children) for their partnership in providing food for so many. Just yesterday I had a message from our Haitian director, Daniel, letting me know that FMSC had notified him that they had three containers full of MannaRice already in Port-au-Prince and ready to be transported to Tricotte. Although FMSC donates the rice, Starfish Ministries, with the help of Food for the Poor, has to pay for shipping and customs clearing and then the transporting from Port-au-Prince to Tricotte. That comes to approximately $8500 per container, which is significant but has a value of over $50,000 and provides nearly 125,000 meals. With three available at the same time, that is quite a financial need. But God – He always provides as He promised! In our Thanksgiving/Christmas Giving Suggestions we have included Feed a Child as one of the options. And many of you have designated your gift toward this need and those who don’t designate, we are directing those gifts toward this as well. So, I could confidently tell Daniel to go ahead with the three containers IF he and Lucner were comfortable with the safety during transporting.
Cadette is a remote village where we have distributed food several times during this year. Our evangelist, Pastor Herode, spoke with the leadership of Cadette and received the following report:
People in Cadette area are so grateful for the Manna Pack Rice meal they have received. We thank God and All members in Starfish Ministries so much for providing this good and easy food to cook; whether we have cooking oil or not, there is no problem to make a fast hot meal to eat. Thanks to this food, a lot of people’s lives have been saved and changed. You see, not only the people in the Cadette church receive food, but Starfish Ministries reach even the lost with the food as well. The lost said only Christian can do a such good action. Cadette people ask Starfish to continue with this good activity, then smiling can continue to come on Cadette people’s faces.
God is using your partnership with us to make this possible. Thank you so much for your financial support and for your prayers. Please continue to pray for Daniel and his team and especially right now for the safe transport of the three containers.
Have a very Blessed Christmas,
Bernie, Sheryl & Philip Bovenkamp
Comments are closed