Sometimes poverty can be so crushing that families literally watch their children starve to death before their eyes—powerless to do anything about it. The youngest are the most vulnerable.

Fire spread quickly from one shanty house to another in a slum community named Alaska in the Philippine city of Cebu. That's because poor city residents tend to be squatters who pack into small areas of public land and build makeshift homes from whatever scraps of wood, plastic, cardboard and corrugated metal sheets they can find.

The disabled, the displaced and the demon possessed—just the kind of people Jesus hung out with—are showing up for a street ministry to the homeless in Kunming, China. And the Food Ministry is there providing nutritious, hot food so that the people will listen to the gospel being preached. In addition to food and the message about Jesus, the team sings praise songs, distributes clothes, and prays personally for those who come.

In January, each of Heaven's Family's 21 Focused Ministry Directors gave a short, 10-minute presentation about their accomplishments in 2015 and their upcoming goals for 2016. We're excited about what the Lord has done, and what He has in store for the remainder of this year!

"Will you take him in?" the social worker asked. "His mother is in jail and his stepfather [in reality his mom's live-in boyfriend] won't take him," she continued. Nicole, our Heaven's Family missionary to Mexico agreed, as she usually does…God will provide are the words she lives by. The social worker had received a tip earlier about a little boy living on the streets, and knew that Nicole had a soft heart, and hopefully a bed.

An average 300 babies are abandoned every day in Kenya. Peter and Selpher Matua, of the Baby Life Rescue Center in the city of Mombasa, have been called by the Lord to care for these unclaimed precious babies. The center provides these formerly unwanted children with love, Christian nurture and healthy food while adoptive parents are sought.

During my visit this month to Cindi's Hope Academy in Naivasha, Kenya, I was very blessed to meet some of the children who are benefiting from bulk foods provided by your gifts to the Food Ministry. Let me introduce you to 5-year-old James and his sisters, Jacinta, age 7, and Veronica, 10. Their faces looked happy and contented when we met, but they were not always able to smile so easily.

This week I'll be boarding a plane to visit ministry partners in four East Africa nations: DR Congo, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya. Thanks to your generous gifts to the Food Ministry we are together changing lives by providing sustainable forms of food—the kind that lays eggs!—and bulk foods and milk to provide the physical nutrition needed so they have the strength to be ministered to spiritually as well.