Dear friend,
It’s been quite the year, hasn’t it?
We have been busy down here on the border, welcoming over 200 volunteers from the U.S., providing homes for 30 families, serving daily meals to children in our community, delivering 150 grocery packages each month to families who really need them, and more.
The programs of the ministry are running smoothly, and we have an excellent staff that is seeing to the needs of the community each and every day. But we have noticed a scary trend in the last several months. I’m sure you all have too. And our brothers and sisters in Mexico certainly have.
The economy.
Prices were gradually rising, and now, they’ve skyrocketed. You’re probably spending more on your family’s groceries. You might be getting some sticker shock when you fill up your car’s tank. Maybe your back-to- school shopping put a strain on your budget, or maybe Christmas is going to look different for you and your family this year.
Let me share something with you – when the U.S. suffers an economic crisis, Mexico experiences that same crisis tenfold.
In other words, when the U.S. gets a cold, Mexico gets pneumonia. And right now, Mexico has pneumonia.
Imagine you are a single mom with three kids, and you bring in about $60 a week. Each week, you stretch that $60 to cover all the needs of your family – uniforms and school supplies for your three kids, rent in your small one-bedroom house, electricity so your kids can do their homework at night, and food for everyone to eat.
Now imagine you go to the store to buy that food for your family, and the cost of every single item you normally buy has doubled in price. All of
the grocery staples – tortillas, beans, rice,
eggs, limes, tomatoes, onions, meat – is
twice the cost of what it was six months ago.
Do you grit your teeth and pay that extra cost for the food? Well, you can’t. You only have $60 for the whole week.
So, what do you do?
This is the reality for many, many families in Mexico right now. They don’t have the money to account for the extreme increase in the cost of goods. So, what are they doing? They’re just eating less. They are just going without.
Think of it like this – just one kilogram of tortillas currently costs $2. If you are the single mom in our story, you would have to spend 15% of your income just for your family to have tortillas with their dinner every weeknight. That’s the same as someone in the U.S. who brings in $500 a week spending $75 every week just on a few loaves of bread.
That’s why now, more than ever, families in Reynosa, Miguel
Alemán, and Monterrey need a ministry like Faith Ministry. They need a helping hand. They need programs like ours that can make a difference in their lives during some of the
worst times.
More than that, they need hope. They need God in their lives. They need to know that He loves them and that He is looking out for them.
At Faith Ministry, that’s what we try to do every single day. We seek to meet families’ physical needs – through housing, access to food, educational scholarships, medication, special assistance, and more – but in everything we do, we hope to point people to God. To show them that the things of this world are only temporary, but what lasts forever is the love of God. To show them that our hope isn’t found in anything here on Earth; it’s found in the Lord. He is our strength.
We ask that as we wrap up 2022, you would consider including Faith Ministry in your end-of-year giving. We know that times are tough, and that’s why every dollar makes a difference.
Help us to keep all of our programs strong so that we can keep on helping the families in Mexico that are experiencing “pneumonia:”
- Make a one-time donation | Donate online at faithministry.org/give or mail a check payable to Faith Ministry to PO Box 756, McAllen, TX 78505. To be considered for 2022 giving, all check donations must be postmarked by December 31, and all online donations must be sent by 11pm EST / 10pm CST on December 31.
- Sign up for monthly giving | Visit faithministry.org/give-monthly.
- Give the gift of hope this Christmas | Shop for your loved ones through our Alternative Giving at faithministry.org/alternative-giving.
Your support, your prayers, your friendship, and your love does not go unnoticed. We appreciate you from the bottom of our hearts.
From all of us at Faith Ministry, we hope you have a wonderful and joy-filled holiday season. Thank you for helping us make a difference.
