Wheelbarrow Ministry

Today the team prepared bags of corn meal, salt, oil and cabbage in preparation to hand these gifts of love to the many people in need in Misisi Compound. All of us worked together with the leaders of the church, and it was so joyous because we all knew we were going to bless lives today!

As we worked, somehow word spread that help had arrived and it could be found in the House of God. In what seemed like moments, mothers, fathers, teenagers and children ran and lined up at the door. They hoped and prayed there would be something left they could bring home to help their families.
Read along, as a few members of the team share their hearts about helping the wheelbarrow ministry.
-Rev. Melvin L. Sanchez

Bishop Gallaher reports:
All I can do is cry, when I think that our great God put us on the giving end to be a source of life to our sisters and brothers in Lusaka, Zambia. I hugged and encouraged everyone that came in looking for help. I was thinking, when you see a people that are struggling to survive, it causes you to reevaluate your life and you begin to realize how many things you easily take for granted and how blessed you really are. The Zambian people were so grateful for everything that was given to them. Everyone wanted prayer because they knew that the gifts could only last so long…but their help and hope comes from Jesus Christ. I am just so blessed and honored to have been a part of a Mission that is changing lives!

Nicole Satagaj reports:
I don't even know how to put today into words.  The whole experience was just overwhelming.  It is one thing to hear about the need at home.  Your heart is moved with compassion, but a completely different burden overtakes you when you are the one handing out the bag of food to someone who has nothing.  Desperate souls clamor at the door as they line up to receive blessings. You watch their faces as they count out how many bags are left to see if they will receive one.  You can't even leave the church because of the people pressing in and you struggle as you realize that one bag is only one meal for 2-3 people; maybe it will feed a family, if it stretched into a watery porridge.  Your heart fills with increasing dread as you watch the pile grow smaller and smaller and you know it will run out soon.  You weep as the food is gone and yet a group of children still press their beautiful faces into the entrance way hoping to be blessed. You feel the weight that this ministry in Zambia faces every single day. Your heart breaks under the pressure and cries out, ‘I have to do more.  Lord, I have to do more.’

The church is a light.  Amidst such great need, you are handing out hope, one bag at a time.  Today, God has answered someone's prayer.  Today, word gets out in the streets that there is help. Where?  In the church.  As each person comes, they are ministered to. Their hearts are hungry.  Every single person wants you to pray with them, so you pour out your heart and you ask God to watch over the young child who comes in for food, happy to surprise their family, who comes home, knowing that they will eat today.  You pray for God's presence to touch a man's life who is deaf and dumb, but yet you know God understands him.  You ask for God to provide for an elderly lady who has no sight, yet others lead her into the church to receive her blessings.  You minister to a drunk man, telling him that there is a hope and a purpose for his life.

All the while, you pray earnestly for God to send more laborers into the harvest, for the need is great.  You ask God to lay the burden greater on people's hearts to give, so that the work can go forth. Finally, you believe God that His love and provision will go with these people because He is a great big God, who can do more in these people's lives than just what they received today.