Food For The Poor: Meeting Both Physical and Spiritual Needs
COCONUT CREEK, Fla. (Dec. 20, 2016) One of the greatest gifts Food For The Poor donors can give destitute families is a safe and secure house, with access to clean water and a flush toilet. But every family receives another gift that is just as meaningful: their very own Holy Bible.
Now, the Bible will come in the form of a rechargeable, portable audio player so that everyone, even those who cannot read or write, can enjoy the Bible in their spoken language.
Food For The Poor will send 7,000 audio Bibles, including a Creole version to Haiti, an English version to Jamaica and a Spanish version to Honduras and Nicaragua. They will be presented as a gift to family members in every new home built by the charity’s generous donors.
In the near future, the audio Bibles also will be given to nonviolent offenders who are released from prisons twice a year, thanks to the generosity of donors.
The audio Bibles, which easily fit in the palm of your hand, can be charged from a solar-powered source using an accompanying USB cable or an electrical outlet with a charger. Each home built by the charity is equipped with a solar-powered light kit.
“This will be a good way to listen to the Word of God and to bring the family together to listen to it,” said Robin Mahfood, President/CEO of Food For The Poor. “This is a very beautiful thing.”
In addition to satisfying the physical needs of the destitute, Food For The Poor also helps fulfill their spiritual needs. More than 40,000 traditional English-language Bibles and 26,000 Spanish-language Bibles have been donated to Food For The Poor since 2015. Food For The Poor also has purchased 3,000 Creole Bibles. The charity’s mission is to link the church of the First World with the church of the Third World in a manner that helps both the materially poor and the poor in spirit.
The Bibles are meaningful to many, who despite enduring suffering every day with a fierce resolve to survive, still maintain a steadfast faith in God.
“The poor teach us how to pray. They teach us how to have faith,” said Mahfood. “The poor have the greatest faith in their Father. They want to hear the Word of God.”
Earlier this year on a mission trip to Haiti, Fr. Tony Palazzolo, a Food For The Poor speaker from Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla., presented each of the 32 families who received homes in La Fosse with a Bible in Creole.
“It was a significantly emotional and spiritual experience for me. At each home, I would ask after presenting them with the Bible, ‘Who is the boss of this home?’ Twenty-eight out of the 32 families answered, ‘Jesus.’ I cannot recall this experience without tears of joy in my eyes and my heart,” Palazzolo said.
Food For The Poor, one of the largest international relief and development organizations in the nation, does much more than feed millions of the hungry poor primarily in 17 countries of the Caribbean and Latin America. This interdenominational Christian ministry provides emergency relief assistance, clean water, medicines, educational materials, homes, support for orphans and the aged, skills training and micro-enterprise development assistance, with more than 95 percent of all donations going directly to programs that help the poor. For more information, please visit www.FoodForThePoor.org.
Michael Turnbell
Public Relations
954-427-2222 x 6054
[email protected]