Bolivia Trip - Food for the Hungry

When I first made plans and announced to friends that Liz and I were going on a trip with Food for the Hungry to Bolivia, I received some odd questions about the intent of our trip. It was very apparent early (and still even now) that most people think that the name “Food for the Hungry” is simply some sort of secular relief organization (not that those organizations are necessarily bad). Though Food for the Hungry does work toward poverty alleviation, it does MUCH more than that.

Food for the Hungry’s (www.fh.org) mission is “To walk with churches, leaders and families in overcoming all forms of human poverty by living in healthy relationship with God and His creation.” In large part, the idealogy and methodology of Food for the Hungry can be found in the book When Helping Hurts by Steve Corbett and Brian Fikkert (mentioned also in the last post and I SUPER highly recommend this book!). These authors do an excellent job explaining how poverty involves the breakdown of 4 areas of relationships including with self, others, creation and God. Further, they discuss how all of us -- because of broken relationships -- are in some form of poverty. The premise, then, is that in order to properly alleviate poverty, relationships must be restored or reconciled. And this is where the gospel or good news of Jesus Christ comes in. Jesus is THE Reconciler making much of what Food for the Hungry does to be at its core gospel based. And I love that!!! The great beauty of it is that those of us trying to alleviate the poverty realize our own brokeness (poverty) and need for Christ thus allowing us to come and walk (in humility) alongside those in need as we attempt to alleviate poverty.

This is done by establishing a relationship with a specific community such as is the case with Mountain Christian Church. They have a relationship with a community call Horno C'kasa B near Sucre, Bolivia which is where Liz and I will be going. Mountain Christian Church has already made several trips there and will continue to do so for several more years. It is my understanding, though, that this is not a permanent relationship in order to encourage those there to use the means, tools and teaching provided to better themselves and help to restore the broken relationships thereby lifting them out of their poverty. If it were not so, there would be a tendency to create dependence. It follows the old adage "give the man a fish, he eats for day but teach a man to fish, he will eat for the rest of his life."

I could go on and on about Food for the Hungry as I haven't nearly scratched the surface. It has been facinating to learn more about this ministry and I would like again highly recommend reading the book When Helping Hurts if you would like to know more.