Relief Goods

I get off the overnight ferry from Hong Kong to Macao. It’s still early and I want to arrive at the Lutheran school there in time to observe our pre-8:00 a.m. breakfast feeding program. After riding in the pedicab for about 10 minutes I am aware that I am being tailed. It’s neither the first nor the last time this happens to me on my monthly trip to (at the time) the oldest European colony in the Orient.

There could be any number of reasons I’m being followed. On a recent trip I sat in a refugee hut being shown a packet of heroin. The owner was pleading for me to help him get a visa to the USA - or else, regretfully, he would need to support his wife and three small children through drug trafficking.

Or it could be related to the fate of a gentleman who was a regular attendee at our Introduction to Christianity down at our church. He seemed genuinely interested and appeared to be asking deeply spiritual questions. Then one night as he stepped out of our church after class he was shot dead and left lying at the entrance.

Maybe there was even something suspicious about our free breakfast program. I knew that we were not strictly following the rules. All the care sacks had the USA government message clearly printed on them: “Not to be sold, bartered, traded or exchanged.” In spite of all my rationalization I knew that technically we were in violation.

The USA-supplied baking flour was of high quality coming in 50-pound bags. Southern Chinese are not much into eating wheat products; their staple is rice. The homes of our care recipients didn’t have ovens or baking pans. So we’d made a deal.

We would supply the local baker with relief flour. Each morning he’d provide freshly baked products for our school. The hungry school children enjoyed them. I could see them gain weight. The baker did not charge us for his efforts. We were not overly exact in our accounting for how many bags of flour came back to our school in the form of breakfast-sized buns for our now thriving children.

Feeding the hungry, distributing relief goods, offering a cup of cold water even in the name of Jesus is not a piece of cake. Malnourished refugees who’ve never drunk cows’ milk swear it gives them diarrhea. A pig farmer on the edge of the refugee squatter area says his hogs love cows’ milk. Why not convert some of that good USA milk into Chinese pork? Some would be shared with the families who qualified for the milk, which they refused to drink anyway because their system just wouldn’t tolerate it.

Or a food distribution center for the poor is set up in a church owned property. Who wouldn’t assume that people who have some stake in that property might not get some advantage at distribution time? Joining that group (or religion) may bring tangible benefits. Relief goods distribution problems are as old as first century Biblical widows, nineteenth century rice Christians or 21st century Islamic students in Khartoum.

Relief goods to one African country may be a key factor in keeping a despot in power. Hospital supplies to the Sudan fuel the civil war because it keeps alive some of the injured who return to the battlefield.

Yet it’s also clear that to ignore the hungry, the naked or the prisoner is to hear the judgment voice, “I was hungry and you gave me no food” etc.

So I continue to support relief efforts, especially Lutheran World Relief which is considered to be about the best in the world. And if some of those clothes or a bit of flour or a shot of tetanus is distributed contrary to strict protocol I’m not going to worry about possible complicity with conspirators.