In most of our updates, we speak on behalf of those in need. In this mailing, we would like to share a touching writing from a pastor in Cuba in which he describes the desperate poverty he encounters in his own home and in his church. Minimal edits have been made for clarity and to condense the writing.
I pastor a small rural church in eastern Cuba where dust and drought are part of everyday life. Many times my wife and I have served with empty hearts . . . but with our hands always raised to heaven.
Our house, if you can call it that, is built from scraps of wood we have collected over the years. The boards are rotten from time. The sun, rain, and even snakes get in through some of them. When there is a power outage, which is almost every day, everything is silent and dark. On hot nights, we sleep sweating on thin, old mattresses, huddled together to ward off the fear.
Every month, when the church stipend arrives, we use it sparingly. It lasts for 8 to 10 days. The rest of the month we depend on God’s mercy and the generosity of a brother who shows up with a pound of rice or a few sweet potatoes.
We cook on a makeshift stove in the courtyard. I have seen my wife boil water with some herbs from the bush to make the girls think there is soup. Sometimes, she and I will pretend that we have already eaten so that the girls don’t see there isn’t enough food. We put them to bed on an empty stomach and cry quietly afterwards so they don’t hear us.
But the hardest part is not the hunger. The hardest part is when someone at church says to you, “Pastor, pray for me, I have nothing to eat,” and you have nothing at home either. Even so, we pray, we preach, we serve. Because we know that God is still faithful, even if we don’t understand everything.
One morning, we received the news that one of our brothers had taken his own life. I sat on the floor with his family, speechless, just hugging them. The next day I preached at his wake with a broken heart, without having eaten or slept, but with a message that came directly from God. That night I understood that being a pastor is not just teaching, but carrying the pain of others when you can’t even carry your own.
Living by faith in Cuba means facing each day with empty pockets but an awakened spirit. It means giving from a place of scarcity. It means sustaining a ministry where everything is lacking except God. It means continuing to believe even when reality screams the opposite. Because here, in the midst of so much need, we have seen God work in ways that cannot be contained in books or statistics.
Every morning, when I open my eyes and don’t know what we will feed our children, I remember that the God who called me has not ceased to be Father. And that, only that, is enough for me to keep going.
“We are troubled on every side, yet not in distress; we are perplexed, but not in despair, persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always carrying about in the body the dying of Jesus, that the life of Jesus also may be manifested in our body” (2 Corinthians 4:8-10).
Would you like to join the effort to help provide food for the hungry in Afghanistan, Belarus, Cuba, Ethiopia, Haiti, South Sudan, Ukraine, Venezuela, Yemen, and other places? Your support not only provides food, but also spiritual nourishment in the form of encouragement to believers and seeds of the Gospel for unbelievers. Our World Hunger Fund budget for 2025 is $4,027,000. If you wish to help , your support will be a great blessing.
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