June 21st, 2020. As per posted on Wells of Hope Facebook Page by Ted and Miriam van der Zalm. “Yesterday’s experience can be described as an emotional and spiritual roller coaster. Emotional because I knew that what I was witnessing could only have been made possible by you, our Wells of Hope family. Knowing most, if not all of you personally, brought tears to my eyes wishing that you could be here to see the children eagerly gobble up the food that your contributions has allowed us to provide. The smiles on the faces of the mothers, knowing that they and their children will eat for the next month, on the faces of the elderly on the brink of starvation, who have no one providing for them, can now fill their stomachs. The volunteers, cooks and servers from every community, who are stone poor themselves, were lifted to a new high. Never had they imagined that they would be able to participate in providing for the most needing among them.
I cannot help but reflect upon a Biblical passage of when Jesus fed the thousands. The Apostles knew that the people were hungry, but the problem seemed too large for them to resolve. Their human response was to send the people away. “Out of sight, out of mind” was their solution. If the issue is not in your face, we can convince ourselves that it does not really exist, therefore we would not need to feel any responsibility. Jesus operates from a different heart-set. He instructed that the people sit down and demonstrated to the world how the seemingly impossible becomes possible through the power of Love.
You, our Wells of Hope supporters have allowed me to experience this Biblical passage come alive to the fullest extent. A seemingly impossible, huge challenge was made possible yesterday through the power of Love. We were able to provide a nutritious meal to over three hundred and fifty families in our first attempt with little to no glitches.
In a short, five days time span, the infrastructure was in place to successfully carry out this challenge. Sorry, but it was not as easy as to just tell the people to sit down. With your help, we built a kitchen facility to an existing roof structure, installed a water supply (I know someone), acquired the food, stoves, cooking utensils, set up a rotating volunteer schedule, identified the needing families that we would help and were able to set up an orderly system that allowed all those selected to be fed, all the while attempting to maintain 1.5 meters of social distancing.
Our opening goal is to operate this kitchen for the next month. There are many more families and elderly who need our help so we will grow this nutrition program step by step. This will allow us to adjust the infrastructure to serve the growing numbers in a controlled, non chaotic manner and guarantee the success of the program.
To say “Thank you” falls truly short of the gratitude we have for all of you who have allowed us to make this possible! Your continued support has and will continue to bring hope to all those struggling before us. We will not send the people home, but will tell them to “sit” and experience the power of Love in action.
