Beans & Things

One week ago today, I made a call to a friend and accepted the offer of 94,000 pounds of beans for 12 cents a pound plus shipping. The deal is, the folks want their money in advance and at the time, I only had about 30% of the total needed. I felt pretty good that we could get the funding for about 1/2 of the total of $20,000 needed but, I was not too sure where the other $10,000 would come from. I just knew that this little country is having a bean crisis and as of this week, the price of beans has risen to over $1.30 a pound.
Flash forward to this week and the money is taken care of. My food partners Trey Morgan and Bobby Moore - ( www.treymorgan.net and www.givebread.org ) were instrumental in making this second container a reality. The really cool thing about this food is that it will go to feed families. The first container will go to children's feeding programs that currently feed more than 2000 kids every day and to children's homes that have rescued 100's of kids. The second container will go to Campemento where it will be broken into 5 pound bags (about 9400 of them) and distributed to every house in the area.
One week ago yesterday, I found out that one of my friends from the dump had been hurt and was in the hospital. I had just written about Ana a couple of weeks ago - and part of what I wrote was her problem with huffing. Well, the day after I wrote about Ana, she almost died and was in the hospital recovering. Ana had two issues - and either of them could have killed her. She was pregnant - didn't even know it until somebody hit her in the stomach - killing the fetus and later making her septic. The second issue was because of her huffing. Seems that Ana was huffing paint thinner and somebody encouraged her to take a drink - and she did. The thinner burned her throat but, even worse, when the thinner went into her system, the poisons caused her to go blind. She also has some issues with numbness in her hands and other places. Since the 7th of October when all of this happened, Ana has regained some sight in her right eye and very very little in her left eye. She was released from the hospital on Friday and I went to take her to her home. Today we went to a specialist that could measure the way her brain picks up what her eyes are capible of seeing and they told me that the news is not good. I haven't told Ana that as of yet. I took her for breakfast and to buy a couple of pairs of jeans before taking her home. She just told me - Marco, I just want to see! I told her that I want her to be able to see.
Please pray for Ana. She really needs some hope.
Blessings,
Marc