In September, the pastors were given some money to help support their families while they attended Bible school, but with the deflating kwacha and the inflating food prices this proved to be inadequate. So this week I purchased another truck load of food (maize and beans) and put a plan together to deliver a 50 kg bag of maize and a 15 kg bag of beans to each pastor’s family. This was no easy task as the pastors come from a wide geographical area. I traveled to the most southern regions on Friday to see first hand what the conditions were like for these families.

The journey took me over a couple hundred kilometers of wash board roads to villages located all down the Shire River as well as up into the mountains in the southern region of Malawi. I saw first hand that the reports we were given were accurate. People were hungry.

I arrived at one of the pastor’s homes as children were in the middle of peeling the lily bulbs that they had just collected from the marsh. There was no alternative – that was the extent of their food.

Harvesting lily bulbs from the nearby marsh is dangerous work. Many men, woman and children are killed by crocodiles every year in their desperate attempts to take from the marsh something that will subdue their hunger pains while providing little nutritional value for their bodies.

I wish you all could have witnessed the great joy and relief when the people found out about their delivery of food. It was such a blessing to meet hundreds of people who would not be going to bed that night again with a hungry stomach.

As we traveled delivering food to the hungry, I was reminded of the vision the Lord gave me back in June. In the vision, Jesus had called me to go out and call in the orphans and place them in the care of loving pastors. With this call came the responsibility to feed. So, I put food in the truck and began delivering food to the many homes. I was upset in the vision when the truck was empty and cried out to God to help for there were still so many more homes to deliver food to. In the vision Jesus told me to look in the back of the truck after I had prayed, and there was Jesus producing more and more food, more than enough to feed all the children.

Once again I am reminded to depend on Jesus for everything. I do not have the solution for the many problems all around. I am weak and easily get rundown. But, Jesus is the source of all strength, wisdom, hope, love and life. So, I keep looking to the face of Jesus who I trust will continue to supply all our need.

Blessings,
Mo

When Jesus spoke those words to Peter, after the resurrection, what was he talking about? Shepherding the young church by feeding them the Word. Surely! Here, we count it a privilege to feed these pastors the Word every day, and find that we are also called on to physically feed the hungry. Week seven at the Bible school has finished up well but there are great challenges back in the homes of the villages our students come from. The backdrop to training pastors at the school where they get three meals a day is one of hunger.
Earlier this week reports came to the school from various sources about a food crisis in many of the villages scattered throughout the southern part of Malawi where our pastors are from. Through letters and messengers we heard the same report: “We are completely out of food and starving. Please help us.” Having run out of food, these large families (which often include a wife, children, several senior citizens, and orphans) were beginning to starve. With no food in their homes they had resorted to eating lily-bulbs, roots and grass.
	November is the beginning of another hard period for the people in rural Malawi. There is hope that the rains will soon come to water the freshly planted fields but last year’s harvest of maize is running low and therefore prices are going up. When maize is plentiful a 50 kg bag of maize sells for about 340 Malawi kwacha. Two weeks ago I purchased a truck load for 600 kwacha per bag. This week the maize cost 850 kwacha a bag and it is expected to rise to 1,500 kwacha ($20, almost one months wages) per bag before relief comes with the new harvest in March and April. Soaring prices make it impossible for the rural poor to purchase maize during this time and so they patiently wait and fill their stomach’s with whatever they can find from nature around them. Even in the larger village of Bangula we have seen an increase in the number of hungry people who come for food handouts at the Iris Ministries office this month. The government recently has helped by handing out free maize seeds for families to plant, but that will not relieve those who are hungry now.
Food being delivered to the starving families of Bible School Pastors Some of our Pastors’ family members, in Chazuka village. Children and the lilly pads they’ve peeled to eat. Children, who had been preparing to eat the lilly bulbs, rejoyce at the arrival of maize and beans!