A simple plastic bag filled with food. It’s something I take home from the grocery store each week without really thinking about it. While I’m by no means rich and don’t buy extravagant grocery items, I’ve never had to worry about whether I have enough money to buy the food I need.
For the deathly ill single mother and her two children pictured here, however, having enough food was never a guarantee—until our ministry partner Reencontro stepped in.
In Mozambique where Reencontro ministers to orphans and single mothers, food insecurity wreaks havoc both mentally and physically on thousands of families. Children are malnourished; mothers never know if they’ll have enough resources to buy food; entire families go to sleep at night with empty stomachs.
For these members of God’s kingdom, the plastic bag filled with food that they receive from Reencontro each month is anything but simple. It’s a life-line. And it’s all possible because caring Catholics like you helped us provide it.
I like to think of these bags of food as humble gifts from one Catholic in America to a fellow believer in Mozambique. I imagine Cross Catholic and Reencontro as the hands transferring that gift from America across the world to Africa and into the family’s reed hut. It’s not gift-wrapped, but it’s wrapped in love.
It’s quite a picture, one that illustrates how a plastic bag of food can become so much more than what it seems. When you think of it that way, it becomes an offering of love made in the name of Jesus. And that, we know, is one of the most beautiful offerings of all.
-Stephanie J.
