MANNA

Pandemic update. Vietnam Outreaches response to COVID. 

Since the onset of the pandemic in early 2020 we expanded our Project Manna program to help struggling families with food and supplies and encouraging those faced with an uncertain future.

Thoa’s testimony is but one of many our team encounters. She is an eighteen year old and living with her seriously ill mother. Her father passed away many years ago and life was far from easy despite her mother’s best efforts to provide.

Three years ago Thoa left school early in order to get a job, for by them her mother’s decline meant she could no longer be the household breadwinner. When COVID hit life took a very tough turn because Thoa’s employer had to close and they were without income.

Despite the hardship they held to their faith and prayed that God would open doors to provide Thoa with work. Casual jobs appeared from different places but then in recent weeks as COVID exploded the lockdown was dramatically intensified.

There were no more casual jobs and Thoa’s hardship deepened just like countless others who are struggling. Yet Thoa and her mother chose to hold to their faith in our God and He has come through as our team has been able to reach out and help them with their physical and spiritual needs along with another 2,490 families struggling with the COVID shutdowns.

Vietnam Outreach launched Project Manna in the early 1990’s after a vicious typhoon swept through Central Vietnam. Hundreds of thousands were left homeless, people were starving. Through a miracle of provision Vietnam Outreach was able to provide a month’s food to 17,000 people. Since then several other major relief campaigns have been mounted, providing food for millions of meals. Vietnam knows only too well the bitter sting of floods and typhoons that swing in each year from the South China Sea.

The parable of the Good Samaritan in Luke chapter 10 reminds us to “love our neighbour as we love ourselves.” That simply means to do for others what we would want someone to do for us if we were in their situation. James 2:16 shares “Suppose a brother or sister is without clothes or daily food. If one of you says to him, “Go, I wish you well; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about his physical needs, what good is it? In the same way faith by itself, if not accompanied by action is dead.” Project Manna translates faith into action by feeding those who are hungry, clothing those who are naked in accordance with our Isaiah 61 calling.