Seven-year-old Andy jokes with his mother Margarita about eating raw eggs. He’s happy because the luxury of so many eggs is a recent development for many families in Chuma.
And with so many recipes learned from our nutritional training, Margarita ensures Andy is eating eggs that are cooked well and delicious.
By providing families with 10 chickens each and chicken coops to protect them, Samaritan’s Purse has given families a practical way to promote nutrition and grow their incomes.
The chickens each produce an egg a day, which allows Margarita and her husband Antonio to stock the convenience store they opened near their home and to provide eggs for use in lunches at a nearby school.
Antonio also has learned from Samaritan’s Purse teams how to grow produce in a garden we helped the family plant on the slope between their home and store.
“Now we have something to add to our diet besides rice,” Antonio said. “We have fruit, vegetables, eggs, chicken. We’ve become healthier and happier. Samaritan’s Purse has taught us how to manage what we make and work as a family.”
As they’ve seen God provide for them through good nutrition and economic opportunity, families also have come to cherish the Bibles provided for them by Samaritan’s Purse. “The Word they’ve shared with us and the love and respect they’ve shown us—they’ve been an example for us,” Antonio said.
The family already were churchgoers—at a church that Samaritan’s Purse built in Chuma in 2015—but only a few people in the church had Bibles.
“Now everyone in church has their own Bible and can look up Scripture on their own,” Antonio said.
He jokes that the family used to get up late each morning until the sound of Samaritan’s Purse representatives’ motorcycles in the community became their wake-up call.
“When we hear the Samaritan’s Purse motorcycles roaring by, we know it’s time to get up and work,” Antonio said with a laugh. “Seriously, the money we’ve been able to make by selling the eggs has been an encouragement to us to get up and work even harder.”
More than a billion people worldwide are suffering from chronic malnutrition. Through your gifts, Samaritan’s Purse is providing lasting solutions through hands-on farming training, home garden projects, and practical education about nutrition, as well as desperately-needed food staples for hungry families in emergency situations.