India (MNN) — Yesterday, Southern Baptist churches around the globe focused on hunger and malnutrition for World Hunger Sunday.
For the rest of the year, the Southern Baptist International Mission Board solves the problem with a number of projects.
The FAITH (Food Always In The Home) Garden project has taken off in a village in India. The area is known for terrorist activity, as well as malnutrition. Hunger and terrorism go hand-in-hand in the village: boys who wish to fill their stomachs join the ranks of the terrorist group to ensure they're fed.
Recently, though, a missionary came to the village and led a FAITH Gardens seminar, teaching the villagers how to grow food to feed themselves and then how to sell the excess. The program is created to work as a solution to hunger, but also a money-maker so parents can afford to send their children to school where their chances of joining a terrorist cell are significantly decreased.
In just a few months' time, the FAITH Gardens missionary has seen a world of improvement–not only in the nutrition of the people, but in their spiritual health.
Mothers are less anemic now that they know to eat dark green, leafy vegetables. Children are no longer scarred with the sores of malnutrition now that mothers know how to nourish them.
And the village has begun to pray. "Since we started doing that every day, there is much peace in our village," noted one villager.
This village may never have heard the Gospel message otherwise. The terrorist group only let the missionary in because she had useful information about health and hunger. As the community begins to understand who Christ is, though, they are quickly transforming.
Pray for this community. Pray that the Lord would provide for their physical needs and that the villagers would recognize that He is the one who provides. Pray that terrorism would die down and that the terrorists in the area would turn to the Lord as they see what He's done in their village.
You can be a part of this kind of Kingdom work. Learn more here.
