Using Vegetables for Ministry

  Yaguy children

 Vegetables have become an important part of the development of the outreach program here in Oaxaca. Normally, we do a trip to one of the markets in Oaxaca City every Tuesday night to pick up donations of vegetables and fruits from the vendors there. We use these donations to prepare food for the home. The vegetable market has become a ministry in itself because the people going for donations have established relationships with the vendors and there have been several opportunities to share the gospel with the people in the market. We are hoping to create a video in Spanish about the home that we could give the vendors to help explain what we are doing and why we are doing it.

Any extra vegetables that we are not using get dropped off in Yaguy.  Yaguy is a nearby neighborhood which is extremely poor. The people living there are basically squatters. Most of them are women whose husbands are in prison and are squatting on government land. Because the land belongs to the government they are living there illegally and no one is able to get water or electricity.

Recently we began going to the market a second time each week on Friday nights to ask for donations. This past week God multiplied these donations and we received double the amount of vegetables we normally receive. One of our desires in outreach is to begin to partner with other organizations which are already doing work in the area and have established relationships. In reaching for this goal, we are putting our gifts to work and are developing exciting partnerships. An example of this is that we are sending more than 150 kilograms (330 pounds) of these donated vegetables by means of an organization called Alas de Socorro (Wings of Help).  These vegetables are being used at an evangelistic cafeteria in the south mountains that is helping the local church and are actually serving more than 3,500 plates of food a month. What we send to them is sufficient for a week.

  mountain town