When I was hungry you fed me
The Covid-19 lockdown is continuing to create immense hardship for millions of Indians, thrusting them into destitution. We recently had an email from Pastor Samuel, whom we have known for many years:
Dear Uncle,
Loving greetings to you from my church and from my family,
We have Twenty families and some widows and aged people in our church. All of my believers are from the village poor background farmers who live with their daily income. But, the present Pandemic has very badly affected them and they face unemployment and hunger along with other crises. Also, the natural calamities struck them up completely. Our Church is around 15 km far from Kattakkada, a place called Keezharoor. It is a village area and people of different religious background reside there but most of them belong the Hinduism.
We are praying God for some resources to provide them some food materials during this Pandemic and little amount for managing their primary needs. They will be very happy of it.
We are so thankful to you for understanding and caring us in this Pathetic situation. You are in our hearts and we love you so much.
May God bless you. You are most welcome to our church during the next visit.
Thanking you very much.
Pastor.S.P.Samuel, Kerala
We were able to send out Rs. 16,000 [about £180], enough to provide a food parcel for each person in the church.
This has now been distributed.
Samuel writes:
Dear Uncle Edmund and all the members of the HHI ministries,
Greetings to you all in the sweet name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ,
How are you doing? I hope you all are healthy and doing well.
Thank you very much for your loving kindness and prayers to our church and to our ministries,
First of all, I thank God for his faithfulness upon us. God is great. He loves us, He cares for his children, He never forsakes us, He comes to us in our difficulties, He is the prayer answering God. Amen.
Dear Uncle, Thank you very much for your loving kindness to us. God Had given us a vision of a rural place for some years back and we started to serve God faithfully there despite of difficulties and strong oppositions from the fanatics. It is the border of Kerala and Tamilnadu. we used to travel twenty miles to reach this place and it is a mountain side. But God blessed our ministry by providing some souls, all of them from the rural village background. The education was very law there. But at that time, I shared the need of conducting a tuition to Tom uncle and to Brother Philip and The Banyan Tree Mission arranged special tuition for the poor children in our village and that was a blessing to the children in our place. We thank God for it.
We were really struggling in many areas for the last few months. Our church is very poor church. All of my believers are from the poor(farmers)background. But, they are faithful Christians and I thank God for them. However, the Corona Virus affected us very badly. It has struck down us completely. We have faced so many issues like hunger, Unemployment and Physical illness etc. It is still continuing. Seeing the pathetic situation of my people, I was inspired to share this to Uncle Edmund. I humbly asked him to provide some food for my believers in this pathetic situation. Uncle was so kind to us, provided food for us. Amen. We thank God for him.
So, Brother Philip did all the arrangements and he brought the food packages for our believers. We prayerfully started our food distribution today (Tuesday) Morning. God provided us a favourable climate and we visited all the houses, providing the food bags to them. Also, we conveyed your love to them. They all said big thanks for your generosity. They all are grateful to you and praying for you.
Thank you, Thank you, Thank you dear uncle for caring our church in this most difficult situation ever in our ministry. We are so thankful to you. We love you so much. We welcome you to our church during your next visiting to India.
We are praying for you every day. We are praying for the ministry of HHI. we are praying for all the financial needs of HHI, and for the Team members. Thank you all very much. Also, we would humbly request you to provide food packets again if God opens a chance for you. We will be always obliged to you and thankful to you. May God bless you all. Love you so much. Amen
Remain Blessed,
Pastor S.P.Samuel