September 14, 2009
During the months since our incorporation, Hilarious Givers has been truly blessed. Our starting point was a few volunteers with a fervent mission to share the bounty we enjoy in this great country with a few dozen truly needy children in a community just an hour’s drive from our comfortable homes. Evidently God is pleased with our efforts; we now feed thousands of children and their families, providing nutritious food donated by generous folks with giving hearts. Our outreach extends from a shelter for battered women and orphanage at the extreme southern end of Baja California Norte to a ministry serving abandoned children in the state of Sonora, to the northwestern corner of Mexico where we feed kids whose parents are in prison.
Hilarious Givers started as a group in a small church in Chula Vista, California who answered a calling to support an orphanage and day-care center near our homes. The orphanage is planted in the midst of a community of farm workers who have migrated from southern Mexico; most are from the state of Oaxaca. Those who are able to find work in the fields earn a few dollars a week – and then only when work is available. Children are often left to fend for themselves while the parents toil daily in the fields. The Agua Viva Guarderia takes in those children during the day, providing a safe haven, nutritious meals, and education, all in a Christian setting. A Christian couple administers the day-care center, and has taken in orphans referred to them by the Mexican authorities. The couple strives to keep families united; too often children are placed in orphanages, or simply abandoned, when the parents are faced with the cruel reality that they lack the means to provide for their children.
We were introduced to a packer in the central valley of California who had food which was destined for landfills. The food was perfectly nutritious and wholesome, but was in cans that were mislabeled or dented, or because of a packing machine malfunction were under-filled. This food could not be placed in the stream of commerce in the U.S., so the packer would have had to pay to have it buried as waste. A trucking company donated warehouse space just minutes from the international border, and provided a semi tractor-trailer to transport twenty tons of canned goods from the packer’s warehouse. Clearly, our mission - to spread the good news, the Gospel of Jesus, through sharing our abundance with the least among us - was to extend far beyond a single day care and orphanage. We prayed for our path to be crossed with others in need – not just physical need for nourishment – not simply need for education in fundamentals like nutrition and sanitation – but those who had not yet accepted the grace of God through his son, Jesus Christ.
Soon, other orphanages, feeding programs for needy children, churches with community outreach programs and elderly care homes were identified, and the bounty from our generous benefactor in the central valley found its way to hungry tummies in the northern part of Baja California. The Good News of the gospel of Jesus Christ was being spread not through proselytizing, but rather by demonstrating, through our works, the grace of God. We formed relationships with other Christian groups in California with similar missions, who in turn introduced us to groups in need in Mexico.
The generous donations received from our packer in central California continued to arrive by the semi-truck full. Even so, the needs of the children we were supporting, and therefore the opportunities to share our abundance, multiplied beyond our resources. Our prayers for additional resources upon which to draw were answered in the form of an opportunity to lead a two-day retreat for leaders of three international hunger relief organizations into Mexico. They saw, first-hand, the tremendous need among the poor, the inspired and sacrificial service being performed in the name of Jesus, and the opportunity to minister to the poor in Mexico, and to involve Christians in the U.S. in the ministry of giving. They witnessed the organization that had been formed in just a few weeks and months that allowed us to identify need, organize volunteers and account for the bounty and manage the distribution of gifts received.
Within hours of returning to their offices in the U.S. decisions had been made to include the Hilarious Givers mission in the list of beneficiaries of the international hunger relief organizations. We received notice that a semi truck full of food was on the road from the Midwest, and that more would be forthcoming. We are now receiving food from such aid agencies as Convoy of Hope, Children’s Hunger Fund, Feed My Starving Children and GAIN International.
We now sponsor regularly-scheduled convoys of food and sanitation supplies to more than 30 orphanages and feeding programs for needy kids. In addition, we supply food to two deserving homes for the elderly, and neighborhood outreaches throughout Baja California Norte. The nutritional needs of thousands of precious children are being met through the generosity of our corporate benefactors, the selfless giving of time and talent by hundreds of volunteers, and the unrelenting grace of a giving God.
What’s next? We pray daily for answers to that question. We hear that for every abandoned child being cared for in an orphanage in urban Tijuana, seven desperately poor children live on the streets and alleys, or pick through garbage in dumps for their sustenance. Hundreds of villages and campos are within a few hours’ drive of San Diego – each of which has dozens or hundreds of needy children who live, go to bed hungry, and never hear the Good News of the Bible. Meanwhile, ton upon ton of nutritious food continues to be buried in landfills in the U.S. And countless comfortable Christians continue to live their lives without experiencing the joy that could be theirs through selfless giving.
