Learn how you can be apart of helping people who are in need with our A Thrifty Mom Bag of Rice Campaign. In 2016 we started helping a young man named Ikechukwu from Nigeria. Summer of 2019 we were able to visit his family in Aba, Nigeria. While there we saw widespread poverty and lack of basic needs. We would like to invite you to help meet one of those basic needs, by providing Nigerian families with rice. This gift will feed a large family for a few months, or a single person a year. It also reminds them they are loved, and brings most of them to tears… as a full bag of rice is one of the most generous gifts they will ever receive. You can also read about other families we have been able to bless here.
The Following story is about the John family, their bag of rice was donated thanks to Lisa Marlow this is the 106th bag of rice our program has been able to give away thanks to generous donations.
I have been for days stumped as to how to begin this special family’s story. I look at their pictures and cry, everytime. We met this family in a village two hours outside Uyo, Nigeria. They live in what looked like a two bedroom mud hut but even from where I stood i could see that this house was old and falling apart. The Johns have 3 children with another kid on the way. This family could not speak English and a translator had to translate what i said in English to their local dialect and then translate their responses to me. And I was concentrating on talking to the family and did not take much notice of their house at the time.
The front view of their home 
Mr John and his neighbor helping to carry the rice
Now I had my friend take pictures of the family and the house while I spoke with the family, so I did not see the pictures of what there kitchen looked like but the picture you saw is the place where the family cooks there food and they sleep in the next room that is next door. The house even looked worse from the inside and seemed like it could fall at any given moment. While those pictures were being taken I was talking to The Johns and Mr John rides a moterbike that people in this village rely as their major form of transportation. He can carry up to two people at the back and drives them to their destination and picks up more people while coming back. He does not own the bike and has to render a certain agreed upon amount of money to the owner and keeps whatever he can make after he has made the agreed on daily amount. He will do this for a year or two before he can now own the motorbike. He rarely makes above the agreed money and told me that his family has learned to manage what they have.
Their kitchen 
Their kitchen
So without seeing the above picture, I was only going off of the happiness and expression that I could see on the faces of the John family when I told them who we were and what we brought for them. They were really happy and grateful. I could tell that it meant more to them than some of the families we had visited and I know that their prayers, blessing those who donated will be accepted and answered by God. It was a long ride back to Uyo but on our way back we were happy that our act of service has made a difference in this family
The John family
Learn how you can be apart of helping people who are in need with our A Thrifty Mom Bag of Rice Campaign. You can also read about other families we have been able to bless here.
