Sometimes it takes the honesty of a child to open our eyes to the needs around us and remind us how much we take for granted.
That happened not so long ago for Linda Henry, executive director of Marshall County Christian Services (MCCS). Henry was completing a family intake interview and enjoying the playful 3-year-old who accompanied her parents. Henry thought she had just the thing to make the little girl’s day — a big box of cereal to add to the family’s food box. Henry was overwhelmed when the little girl whispered a question in her mother’s ear: “Can we buy some milk?”
Henry said, “I thought I’d really done great with that box of cereal, but I never thought about them not having milk to go on it or money to buy any.”
Henry called the local grocery store and told them she was sending someone down to get a gallon of milk. The MCCS now offers a milk voucher as part of their “Got Food? Pantry” program, a ministry funded primarily by offerings to Alabama Baptist's World Hunger Offering (Global Hunger Relief at the Southern Baptist Convention level).
Hunger occurs at every level of our society. An estimated 900 million people worldwide go hungry daily. In the United States, 9 million people, including 3 million children, live in homes where meals are frequently skipped. Almost a million Alabamians struggle daily with hunger.
The offerings to World Hunger Offering combat hunger in Alabama and around the world. Twenty-five percent of the offering stays in Alabama and 75 percent goes to Global Hunger Relief.
In Marshall County hunger funds help feed approximately 1,500 people each month. Some of those are participants in Christian Women’s Job Corps (CWJC), a ministry of national Woman’s Missionary Union with sites around the state, including two in Marshall County. The goal of CWJC is to provide a Christian environment for women to learn job and life skills. The 15-week program requires a commitment of three days each week. Since many participants are single moms with children, meeting the program requirements and their family’s needs can be challenging. Hunger funds help fill in the gaps, Henry said.
“Every woman who comes into the program has needs. One is that she needs to get a job, but if she’s in our classes three days a week, it’s really hard. So we try to help with food and other things she’s struggling with during that time,” Henry said.
Marshall County’s CWJC has experienced tremendous success, showing that the cooperative effort is working. In the past year, 67 women have graduated from CWJC. All 67 have professed Christ, either as rededications or salvations. Most have completed their GEDs and continue to give back to the program by volunteering for MCCS.
‘God is great’
Amanda Williams is a CWJC graduate who continues to help as much as she can. When she came to MCCS, she was a single mother of three young children, ages 10, 6 and 3. She didn’t have a car and her prospects of finding a job were slim because she didn’t have a high school diploma.
Williams signed up for CWJC in February 2013 and graduated in May 2013. She finished her GED in May 2014 and is now employed. Without the help of the MCCS, it wouldn’t have been possible, she said.
"They helped me with a lot of things — food, diapers, transportation,” Williams said. “I don’t really have any words to describe what it meant to have all those things put together to help me. The only thing I can say is that God is great.”
Kristy Kennedy, an associate in the office of associational missions and church planting at the Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions, coordinates North American Mission Board hunger funds allocated to Alabama. She said it is important for Alabama Baptists to know that 25 percent of their offerings to Global Hunger Relief stay in the state to assist hunger ministries in Alabama associations and churches. Those funds do more than feed a physical hunger, however.
“Meeting the physical needs of individuals across our state also gives us the opportunity to meet the spiritual needs by developing relationships that allow us to share the love of Christ with those who are hurting and in need,” Kennedy said.
Reports from state food ministries show the impact. From July to September, Alabama Baptist hunger ministries fed more than 50,000 people. More than 14,000 evangelistic encounters were reported, resulting in 201 professions of faith and 23 baptisms. More than 1,200 volunteers serve in the 28 ministries that received funds and they regularly share the gospel with clients.
MCCS’s Henry also makes sure clients know that the volunteers depend on God for everything they give and do.
“We pray daily and invite those who are waiting at the door to join us,” Henry said. “Not one person goes out the door that is not told about the love of Jesus and that God gets the glory for everything we do.”
To donate to the World Hunger Offering, give an offering to your church designated for World Hunger Offering or mail to:
Alabama Baptist State Board of Missions
Attn: Accounting Services
P.O. Box 11870
Montgomery, AL 36111
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