Dear Friends and Family of our Ministry.
I feel as though I am sending a letter to my kids to tell them that their favorite Aunt is very ill. Actually I am writing to you to tell you that The Least of These Ministries is very ill. Let me explain.
God called us to feed starving people, and that is what we have been doing for thirteen years. God never said it would be easy, and sometimes it is down right hard to do. We started the Ministry feeding 360 people in one village (Batey). Every few years we added another Batey to our feeding list. We give enough food, rice and beans, to each person for two meals each week. Presently we are giving this food to nearly 9,000 people, in eight Bateys, each week. That works out to over 300,000 meals given out per year. And that is a lot of food.
What is the pay back for all this food? We have no scientific evidence but only the word of the village leaders that we have lowered the infant death rate from 36% to about 12%. This is primarily because the young mothers now have enough nourishment to produce milk so that the babies do not starve to death within a week of birth. Besides that, the people are healthier so that more of them can get work and earn some money to buy food for the rest of the week. The Church leaders in the Bateys tell us that more people are coming to Church and giving thanks to Jesus for the food they get. Just last year a work team from our Ministry doubled the size of the Church in Batey #9. Why all this information? I wanted you to know that we are making headway in our quest of saving lives for Jesus.
Our problem is the cost of keeping 9,000 people alive and work-healthy. To buy the rice and beans that it takes to feed this many people each week is nearly $14,000.00 each month. That comes out to just $.52 cents per meal, a pretty good bargain. That covers all our cost, the food, the trucks, and the people to deliver it. We even have some Dominican friends who believe so strongly in what we are doing that they help on the trucks for free.
Where do we get $14,000.00 each month? It comes from you. From people who love the Lord and love to help their fellow man. Up until about two years ago your generosity made it fairly easy for us to supply the money to buy the food and deliver it. Now the entire world is in the midst of an economy slump and we have seen our donations drop dramatically. We have used all our reserve cash and now squeeze by on a monthly basis and sometimes must cut out some feeding because the money just is not there. The hungry Batey people do not understand world economics, they just see that we do not show up, and they go hungry.
We started to build a warehouse that will, eventually, help us to lower our cost, but completion of that facility is several years down the road. We need to feed the Hungry now. They cannot wait several years for their next meal. We know that some of you have shifted your usual food donations to the warehouse building. Though we appreciate that effort , right now it just does not work. Bluntly, we need money to buy food, and we need it now. Our food servers hear request for more rice, more beans, and more eggs, every day. But instead of more we must ask our servers to cut back. We don’t fill the rice and bean cups so full, and we buy smaller eggs. But hungry people just do not understand.
We need $35,000.00 to complete the warehouse. But we need that $35,000.00 much, much more to feed the hungry. Right now $100.00 more per day in donations for food is what we need to break even. I know you can do it. That’s only about $1.10 per day, per person on our regular monthly giving list. And if each person on our mailing list would give monthly it would be even less. I am to the point of begging you to PLEASE increase your donations to us. I do not want the job of selecting who we will feed this month and who will go hungry until next month. If you can’t come up with the extra $33.00 per month, I know that you know someone who is not now helping us who can afford it. Ask them to look us up on the web at www.leastofthesemin.org to get a good picture of who we are and what we do, or drop by our office to talk to us. Remember we have no paid staff. We in this country are all volunteers. So, nearly all of your donation does go directly in the Dominican Republic to feed someone. We make trips to the Dominican Republic several times each year. Anyone who would like to check us out more is always welcome to come along, ride our truck into the bateys where they can look into the eyes of hungry people while they hand out a little rice and beans.
In the end it comes down to YOU, our extended family, you praying for us and reaching out to others that can help. By lending your help we can get through this very tough time.
Thank you all and may God richly bless you.
Steve Hull
Executive Director
