March 3, 2006

 

Kenya children Photo by Tim Ross

“I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in …” Matthew 25: 35.

Half a world away, children cry with hunger, family members starve and livestock die daily. These children cry out because this year, Kenya’s dry season is much drier than normal, and there is not enough food to feed the multitudes living in Kenya.

In January, UN World Food Program estimated that 2.5 million people in Kenya were affected by the drought.

To provide food for the hungry in Kenya, Hopwood Christian Church has started a project called “Bread for Kenya.” Minister Tim Ross has encouraged members and visitors to “proclaim a holy fast,” abstaining from certain foods, meals or spending habits during this Lenten season and share the fruit of this fast with the hungry.

“We're distributing Savings Registers and asking people to keep track of money they don't spend on themselves and then we're asking people to give those funds,” Ross said. “Every penny will go to provide food aid and funds for restocking the goats, cows and camels of these pastoralist people.”

The money will then go to Christian Missionary Fellowship, or CMF, to provide emergency drought funds for hungry Maasai and Turkana people in Kenya.

Money will be collected at Hopwood during services on Sundays and at Adoration services on Tuesday nights, Ross said.

Ross got the idea for this project from the Georgia Tech Campus Christian Fellowship. The students in this fellowship are raising money specifically for the Maasai people, Ross said.

Ross and his family served in Kenya from 1987 to 1995 as missionaries among the Maasai. In 1993 and 1994, Kenya experienced a drought similar to this year’s.

“It was really hard to watch people's animals die off,” Ross said, “and even harder to watch the suffering of the people around us.”

Ross remembers that CMF was one of the leading agencies in managing the food provided by UN organizations for young children and families.

“Drought and famine always attack the weakest members of society hardest,” Ross said. “I can remember visiting friends who told me, ‘I don't know what I'm going to feed my kids today.”

Milligan students and faculty wishing to participate in the “holy fast” can pick up Savings Registers from the manila folder located on the bulletin board in Sutton Lobby or at Hopwood.

“Contrast our lives of ease and choice with the plight of our Kenyan brothers and sisters and then ask yourself, can I choose to live a bit more simply so that others may simply live?"

For more information, contact Ross at (423) 926-1194 or visit Hopwood’s Web site, www.hopwoodcc.org.


“Whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me,” Matthew 25:40.