By Rosa Camargo Bravo 

We thank the Lord for our women's congress from October 15-16. More than 170 women learned what it is like to walk with Jesus in our daily lives. About 70 leaders from different cities were trained to share this teaching with the women of their churches. It was a time of fellowship, renewal of strength, and sharing the teachings of Jesus with other women.

This month, 12 new believers were baptized in our church. We thank God because several of them are children of believers who have grown up in the church. We praise the Lord for the churches’ having a new generation of young people worship.

Pray for pastors and leaders serving the Lord on the north coast of Colombia and Venezuela. They need protection against violence in communities. 

Pray, also, for provision to continue supporting the entrepreneurship program for women and the feeding program for children in Los Angeles and Villa Caracas.

THE FEEDING PROGRAM IN CARACAS

When a child suffers from severe malnutrition between 0 and 5 years old, their physical and mental development is affected to the point that they will never be able to recover.

This is the situation of millions of children in Venezuela, where it is estimated that more than 15 percent of children have delays in their growth and development.

In the community of Petare, one slum is in the middle of the capital, Caracas, where the Jesus Christ King of Peace Church of the Association of Evangelical Churches of the Caribbean operates. Families subsist with the little they can get on a day-to-day basis. Most of the inhabitants are workers who lost their jobs due to the economic crisis that the country is going through. Many of them complete their diet with what they collect from the garbage.

The Sunday School teachers noticed that the children were falling asleep during classes. In extreme cases, they even fainted due to hunger. The parents also felt increasingly weakened by hunger. Then, parents began to migrate to other countries, leaving children with grandparents or a family member.

Added to the problem of hunger was the closure of schools due to the lack of resources from the Venezuelan state to pay teachers or cover operating costs. This placed the child population at serious risks, not only nutritionally, but also exposed to having training for their future.

Although the church does not manage many resources, Pastor Ramiro Beleño and the leaders committed to looking for resources to provide meals for the families after Sunday School. Meanwhile, they prayed for more resources to help the children. This is how God put Pastor Hernán Bravo in contact with a foundation in Spain that agreed to finance a soup kitchen for 50 children in the community. Today, the church’s children in Petare have regained their vitality and smile by receiving a nutritious meal every day of the week.

The church is also taking care of their emotional recovery, especially those left behind by their parents.

Likewise, Pastor Hernan Bravo and this foundation supported for 3 years a soup kitchen program for 200 children in Maracaibo. Thanks to this program, these 200 children were saved from falling into severe malnutrition, and today, they are developing normally.

We thank God for his support and blessing. Please pray that this program can continue for a few more years and that we can prevent the children of the church from falling into severe malnutrition.