The Feeding of the 500

Joining God at Work in Amazonas!

On April 22 a group of 14 North Americans, ten from Wisconsin churches, three from Oklahoma, and one from Florida met in Miami bound for Manaus Brazil. There we were joined by Derek George, Director of Operations for Amazon Vision Ministries, a Brazilian nurse, a Venezuelan doctor and our translators. We proceeded to the riverboat Marco Polo which would be our home for the next eight days. Here is our story.

"These people are hungry." This matter-of-fact statement was delivered by Debbie Janssen one of the nurses on our trip. She had worked with people all morning from the village of Surara She related how in the process of telling the people to take medication with food, she received a blank stare and on prodding a bit found that the people did not have food to eat. Most of the people of the community were subsisting on farinha which has little nutritional value and fish which are not as easily caught in the high water times.

Another story was related that a child who should have been long past the time of nursing had diarrhea because all the sustenance available was his mother's milk. Statements were made that children were crying for milk.

Later that afternoon as we visited from house to house, my team (David Schutzen, Leah Madson, Juliana our translator and me) encountered a couple who cared for a modest building that served as the local Assembly of God church. She told me the church had four members. Since the people have little or no furniture in their homes, we went to the church building where they at least had some plastic chairs. During our conversation I asked her how we could pray for the community. She mentioned that we could pray for the families and the many needs and challenges. Then I told her that one of our medical people had mentioned that hunger as a problem. She confirmed that the people were living off of farinha and fish and lacked the staple of rice and beans central in every meal except breakfast in Brazil.

By this time Derek George had joined us. I asked the lady if we could pray that God would provide for the needs. As I prayed for the community she began to shutter with deep sobs.

When we parted I looked at her tear-stained face and assured her that God would provide. Derek and I looked at each other as we left the building and agreed that God was about to do something special here and allow us to be a part of it.

We went back to the boat and spoke with Pastor Eli, who runs the boat ministry for Amazon Vision Ministries. Eli is a Brazilian and former New Tribes Missionary, a very wise and godly man. We talked about what it would take to feed the community. He got the vice-president of the community to give a list of name of the families. At dinner that evening, I told the team that I had some money the people of Valley had given toward the mission trip and asked if they wanted to contribute to the effort. In all we came up with a little over $800 or R$1,600.

We made a list of some basic supplies. The next morning, Pastor Eli, Derek, and I made the 23-mile trip to Beruri in johnboats. There we purchased rice, beans, sugar, salt, powdered milk, crackers, eggs, cooking oil and coffee. We made up about 85 bags containing these items.

We got the word out that we would distribute the food just after lunch on Sunday. When we finished eating our lunch there was a line formed even thought it had started to rain. The team formed two lines, one passing the bags and the other handling the eggs which were put in last on the top.

I stood on the "porch" of a floating house and passed the bags from the boat to the president of the community who passed them along to the waiting people as a local school teacher checked off the names. When we were finished we had several bags left which we distributed by johnboat to houses a short distance away from the main village. We attended Igreja Batista Estrela da Manha (Morning Star Baptist Church) in Beruri that evening and gave the remaining eight bags to Pastor Nathan for distribution to the needy of his city.

Words cannot express the incredible sense of fulfillment we experienced as we gave out the food in Surara. The moment was summed up by the same nurse who had originally described the need. Her statement was, "This was the first time I heard laughter since we arrived." The joy of the Lord was there. There was a holiness about that moment as we knew we were right in the middle of what God was doing. We have affectionately called the event "the feeding of the 500".