{"id":4958,"date":"2015-11-17T09:13:35","date_gmt":"2015-11-17T13:13:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/?p=4958"},"modified":"2015-11-17T09:56:04","modified_gmt":"2015-11-17T13:56:04","slug":"youve-fed-thousands-of-people","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/2015\/11\/17\/youve-fed-thousands-of-people\/","title":{"rendered":"You’ve fed thousands of people"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Relief\"<\/a>
Relief supplies fill the back of an NTM plane. (Photo by Dave Forney)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The plea was urgent, and I\u2019m so glad you helped.<\/p>\n

Papua New Guinea, an island nation north of Australia, is in the midst of a long drought. People are hungry, and NTM missionaries there want to help. They contacted our team, and sent us some specifics.<\/p>\n

Some of the aid could go in by road. Other relief would have to be delivered by airplane, at a cost of $350 per flight hour. And for a few locations, a helicopter would be required, at a cost per hour of $800. A plane-load of rice would cost $520.<\/p>\n

\"rice\"<\/a>My eyes began glazing over as I combed through their message, looking for something people here could relate to. Suddenly, there it was: \u201cRice is costing about $13\/10KG.\u201d<\/p>\n

I had two pieces of the puzzle. $13 was an amount people could see as \u201cdoable,\u201d and everyone knows what rice is. But I needed two more things.<\/p>\n

First, I needed to make the impact of a $13 gift clear. I couldn\u2019t picture how much rice is in 10kg, let alone how many that could feed. So I had to do some math. (Yuck.)<\/p>\n

Ten kilograms is about 22 pounds. Cooked, 22 pounds of rice provides 36,000 calories. I looked up how many calories people need in a day in order to survive: 1,200. So assuming that people could pick up 200 calories from other sources, I calculated that 10kg of rice was enough to feed 36 people for a day.<\/p>\n

But 36 is an odd figure. I needed something people could relate to. Back to math: that\u2019s enough food for a dozen people for three days.<\/p>\n

Almost there.<\/p>\n

I still needed something people could compare that cost to. I looked around the Internet, and found an estimate that the average meal out costs $12.75. Or, since we\u2019re rounding, $13.<\/p>\n

\"loading\"<\/a>The comparison was clear: For the average cost of one meal out, people could feed a dozen hungry people for three days.<\/p>\n

Now, I have to tell you, I hate doing math. But I love giving people opportunities to take part in reaching the world\u2019s neglected people groups \u2013 men and women for whom Christ died so they could have abundant life \u2026 but nobody\u2019s brought them that message yet.<\/p>\n

In this case alone, showing people the impact of a relatively small gift has already raised enough money to feed thousands<\/em> of people.<\/p>\n

The reason I said you<\/em> fed thousands of people, and that I\u2019m glad you<\/em> helped, is that I can\u2019t carry out this ministry without people like you, and your participation in our ministry. We value and appreciate your prayers, gifts and encouragement.<\/p>\n

Read the news article this work resulted in<\/a><\/p>\n

Help the hungry in Papua New Guinea<\/a><\/p>\n

Make a gift to help us continue in this work<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The plea was urgent, and I\u2019m so glad you helped. Papua New Guinea, an island nation north of Australia, is in the midst of a long drought. People are hungry, and NTM missionaries there want to help. They contacted our team, and sent us some specifics. Some of the aid could go in by road. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[448,637,1499,9375],"class_list":{"0":"post-4958","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ministry","7":"tag-ethnos360","8":"tag-new-tribes-mission","9":"tag-opportunities","10":"tag-writing","11":"entry"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4958\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ethnos360.org\/ian-fallis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}