Delivering food, shelter, and hope to the poorest of the poor
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After more than two years of waiting and praying, Ana Briceño’s dreams came true. Her family was one of 50 to receive a sturdy home through a housing project we support in Nicaragua. “This is such a blessing from God,” Ana said. “Before our family was suffering because we were constantly moving from place to place. We did not have a place to live.”
Last year, we met a Zambian woman named Christine who had gone from riches to rags because of AIDS. Once the owner of three houses, she sold all her properties in desperation and used the money to pay a medicine man to cure her. In the end, she was left with no money, no friends or family to support her, and a worsening illness.
It can be humiliating to be treated as a charity case—the object of someone else’s pity and justification for their pride. Not being able to feed your family can be enough of a blow to your self esteem; but having food (or a house, or other basic need) provided in the wrong spirit can be almost as crushing.
For many people, St. Patrick’s Day is a time to wear green, eat corned beef and cabbage, and have a night out with friends. But behind all the merrymaking is a story of a 4th century missionary whose life exemplified the kind of self-sacrificial love we strive to emulate here at Cross.
As we move into the New Year, media outlets have been a buzz with forecasts about the U.S. housing market in 2010. One Wall Street Journal article proclaimed that the future was “uncertain” with things unlikely to recover much this year.
Sunday, Nov. 29, marked the advent of Advent – a traditional Catholic observance that often gets upstaged by Thanksgiving on one end and Christmas on the other, especially now that the Christmas season seems to begin on Black Friday or even earlier!