What is our responsibility to help brethren who live in impoverished areas of the world? To what degree should we help our own members who are without some of the basic needs for shelter and basic health that we take for granted in our developed world? Can we make a difference in another society far away that has a per capita income perhaps 50 times less than we have in ours?

In my many travels around the world with the Church I had always wondered if we were fulfilling some of our basic Christian responsibilities that the apostle John asks about in 1 John 3:17: "But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart from him, how does the love of God abide in him?"

In Luke 16 we read about Lazarus, a beggar with sores, lying at the gate of the rich man who ignored his plight. I could not help thinking about the various "Lazaruses" that I have seen.

I realized that having an income 50 times more than a brother in the faith struggling with the basics of food, shelter and clothing does not make me a better a person nor does it make the one who is poor of less value to God. And, the Scriptures do point out that we cannot ignore their plight. Where children of our members in Zambia die regularly, should we not be finding ways to change that? Are their children of less value than ours?

The mission of the Church of God is to preach the gospel of Jesus Christ and the Kingdom of God in all the world, make disciples in all nations and care for those disciples. When preaching and caring for the poor, it's not only spiritual care that is meant. Physical care eventually becomes an issue.

In the early New Testament Church the apostle Paul made it a church project in the more prosperous Greek areas to send aid to Christians suffering from drought and famine in Judea. He collected life-sustaining humanitarian aid from the more affluent areas and sent it by cargo ship to Jerusalem. Paul speaks of this in the first part of 1 Corinthians 16. Continuing in 2 Corinthians chapters 8 and 9 Paul again encourages the faltering rich Corinthians to respond as the poorer Macedonians had responded to the difficulties of the saints in Judea. His appeal is strong and direct.

Learning to Make a Difference

I had never given much serious thought to the Church's role in dealing with poverty until I met British surgeon and elder, Maurice Frohn, at the Feast of Tabernacles in the United Kingdom in 1995. We happened to sit together at a ministerial dinner and started talking about the ongoing suffering of children in Chernobyl 10 years after the world's worst nuclear accident. By the next April the two of us were off to Chernobyl to investigate what was going on.

Maurice Frohn, one of England's top thyroid cancer surgeons, was astounded at what he saw. Not only was it discouraging to see the overwhelming medical inadequacies, the solutions seemed to be beyond anything we could do to make a difference.

When I returned to the United States, I prayed that I would not give up or rationalize away my Christian duty. I prayed that God would help me do something about these needs. Doors quickly opened. I discovered funded shipping programs to needy areas of the world. I found sources of medicine as low as 5 percent of cost. I started talking to ordinary people who helped people overseas in extraordinary ways and found out how they did it. Within months we collected 10 tons of food and medicine. We shipped a high value of aid for pennies on the dollar.

And then we did it again. And again.

I then thought, What about the brethren in the Church? What can and what should we do for them?

Desperate Needs in Malawi

For the Feast of Tabernacles in 1996, my wife, Beverly, and I traveled to Zimbabwe. There we met UCG members Gladstone and Alice Chonde who came by bus from Malawi. Over the course of our days together, we learned about the work of the Chondes who operated a private clinic they call "Malakia" (after the book of Malachi) in the capital city of Lilongwe.

They described the inhumane conditions they work under. They opened a private clinic so that they could be free to keep the Sabbath. But they had no medicine, few supplies and hardly any equipment—not even simple items like a stethoscope or a means of checking blood pressure.

The Chondes are truly heroic in their work. They are the first providers of health care for a community of 10,000 people in Lilongwe. Many of the people coming to the clinic had already gone to witch doctors.

The clinic was housed in a most unsuitable old movie theater next to a casket maker. (When I visited the clinic last July, I found it worse than they had described it.)

Malawi is the third poorest country in the world, with an average life expectancy of 36 years, an extremely high infant mortality rate and astronomical birth and death rates. Simple medicines would save the lives of many, mostly children, of those who came to them.

We found it impossible to leave the Feast telling them to be "warmed and filled" and "have a nice day" and do nothing. But, what could we do?

We cannot save the entire world now, but we can help this community through our members, the Chondes.

Doors Open, Members Pitch in

Doors opened after we returned to the United States. Bill Jahns, pastor of five congregations in the mountain states, helped by sending regular medical shipments to Malawi using the inexpensive sources that we used for Chernobyl. This became the only source of medicine for the Chondes' clinic.

Then we found a U.S. Department of Defense program for shipping containers to Malawi in which delivery was not only free but also guaranteed. The Chondes gave us a list of needed life-sustaining items that included blankets, iodized salt, rice and dried milk.

Dyanne Dick, wife of Council of Elders member Robert Dick, came to our aid by collecting blankets in the Northwest. Through other charities we were able to collect medical supplies such as rubber gloves, scrubs, IV tubing and syringes. Through responsive people such as Tom Kerestes, a UCG member in St. Paul, Minnesota, office furniture was collected and sent on the container. In all about 15 tons of aid that cost us very little was gathered and shipped in November 1998 and was received intact by the Chondes the next April 1999.

We then began talking about providing a better facility for their work. A birthing center was desperately needed. My questions were, how much do we need to get involved in this? How could we possibly ever provide a facility like this? We had never done anything like this before.

Yet, looking at how we had been able to provide other life-sustaining items, and seeing that it indeed could be done with some resourcefulness, I thought it might be worth making the effort. I found that there are many sources of aid available through networking, research and simply letting God direct you to sources of aid. I did not want to burden the Church or do anything to take resources away from preaching the gospel.

The Chondes submitted a beautiful set of plans for a new clinic and bought the land for about $400. On faith and with the help of friends, we made a commitment to build the new structure. When South African pastor Andre van Belkum and I visited Malawi last winter, we held a ground breaking with the Chondes on July 5. The clinic is about complete for a total cost of $26,000. To furnish, equip and supply the clinic we have shipped another 20-ton container from Minneapolis, Minnesota that is due to arrive in Malawi at about the same time the building is finished.

Launching LifeNets

In 1999 I founded a nonprofit called LifeNets. I got the best people I could find in the medical profession, business and the fund-raising field to help out. I found go-getters who were not daunted by obstacles and who got things done. Suzan Johns and Guy and Jennifer Swenson took the lead, working through challenges. Our mission was to develop programs offering practical assistance to promote the well-being and self-sufficiency of needy people throughout the world. The vast majority of the beneficiaries would be our own brethren.

LifeNets became eligible for funded government programs, matching funds, grants, direct medical purchases and now is being offered high-value medical and dental equipment by donors who would like a tax deduction. We saw that once people found they could trust you, they would trust you again and again. Volunteers from around the world joined hands to provide meaningful, practical aid to qualified needy people.

In the past two years we have helped with the following needs: clothing, medicine, scholarships, eyeglasses, wheelchairs, cattle restoration, youth camps, dental care and hygiene, vaccination program, clinics and computers.

Caring for Central America

I began looking at other areas of need within the poorer areas of the United Church of God and wanted to determine what could be done. In several discussions with Leon Walker, director of our Spanish-speaking churches, I was able to learn about some vital needs of our brethren and to devise a plan to do something about those needs. Our Spanish-speaking areas have the largest number of people living in poverty.

It's not always apparent what's needed because some people do not disclose their real needs right away. Some had been promised aid in the past, but it had never materialized. Others received things they did not need. It takes discussion, listening and planning fair distribution programs to provide the kind of aid that really makes a positive difference.

A top priority in discussions with Mr. Walker and Saul Langarica, pastor of the congregations in Guatemala, was installing concrete floors in the homes of 15 brethren who lived on dirt in unsanitary conditions. To date we are completing the first seven floors and have funded the remaining eight.

We also discussed how to help with providing the means to generate income in a country where the average wage is about $120 a month. We have funded the construction of a commercial bread oven with which three families in the La Tinta area of Guatemala can make a living by baking bread and selling it to their neighbors. Also, we were able to help a widow with four young children set up a kiosk from her home. With an initial outlay of $350 she has been able to purchase the original stock, sell it and replenish it. She has been able to quit her job at the factory and make a living from home so she can be with her children when they return from school. Business has been brisk. She is currently expanding her kiosk.

We also sent sewing machines, tools and other income-generating items to Central America. Many of these things were sitting in people's garages and not being used. For example, elder Jack Elliott's radial arm saw was gathering dust and rust. Off it went to Guatemala, and now it is a viable tool for a Guatemalan carpenter who can support his family better. Belinda McCloud, who learned about these needs while attending ABC in its first year, helped coordinate these collections for a container that left from Houston this February.

Heifer Project

One of the major projects is in Zambia where we are restocking cattle to our brethren who lost all their livestock to disease about three years ago. The cattle had provided a source of draft power for plowing and a source of dairy protein. Our families have been reduced to subsistence farming with wives and children pulling plows. With animal draft power they could greatly increase their cultivation and raise crops for cash.

We are working with Heifer Project International, which includes a program of education designed to change the circumstances that brought on the catastrophe in the first place.

Our education program is just starting and will help our people learn better grazing methods and proper veterinary care of the animals. Within a year we plan to have 24 head of cattle and a bull for our brethren living in two communities about 15 miles apart in the Mumbwa region of Zambia. Elder Kambani Banda has registered LifeNets in Zambia and will oversee this project.

We have looked at other areas of the world where our brethren live in challenging conditions and have tried to find ways to provide things they really need. In the Philippines we have helped with camp equipment the past two years along with other requested items, such as Bibles and medicine.

We cannot save this world, but we can be ready to start rebuilding this earth when God's Kingdom returns. Being prepared by starting to help in needed areas is vital to that process.

If you want to find out more about what LifeNets is doing and how you can make a difference, go to our Web site at www.lifenets.org and read our annual report at www.lifenets.org/report2000

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Avoiding Aid Mistakes and Ensuring Healthy Results

It has been rewarding to find ways of helping our own with the help of enthusiastic volunteers. In the process, we have learned a number of vitally important lessons that have ensured that our aid indeed brings healthy results.

• These lessons help neutralize objections often made about charitable work, such as:
• Aid won't go to intended recipients.
• It will make people more dependent.
• We don't really know who the recipients are.
• We are feeding a handout mentality.

To avoid these problems we have learned the following:

There must be a genuine need before aid is given. This takes careful and thoughtful appraisal. Often those needing help most are not the ones asking. And those asking may not be the priority.

• Provide only the kind of assistance that will result in self-sufficiency and not in dependency. Mistakes can be made by giving cash grants to people that result in them asking for more. This kind of help can actually defeat an aid program. The most successful contributions are those for the greater good of a group, income-producing methods, microloans, helping children or in-kind benefits. There should never be a never-ending promise to keep on helping. We believe in a hand up, not a handout.
• Aid must be distributed in a fair and equitable manner. A group receiving aid can be destabilized by favoritism. People quickly find out who's getting what and from whom. It's vital that there be local coordination by the pastor or a responsible individual to oversee agreed-upon equity.
• Recipients must be accountable for the aid received. Beneficiaries of aid must make plain how the aid has been used and how it has improved their condition. Often small loans are best because the repayment process teaches accountability. A loan should be made for income-producing purposes.
• Those receiving aid must be willing to be educated in how to better themselves-they must do their part. In Zambia, for example, we are initiating an education program for proper care of the animals that are being donated. People must be willing to change methods that caused failure and be willing to adopt methods that will ensure success.
• Aid must be culturally appropriate. We must not bring aid that draws undue attention to the donors or beneficiaries. Again using Zambia as an example, we must help the people plow better with animals and not introduce tractors that are nowhere to be seen in the area.
• Give what is really needed and make sure it's in good condition. It is irritating and wasteful to give people things they cannot use or something that is not in working condition which they have to dispose of. It is far better to treat people with dignity and respect, as we would like to be treated.