We would like to thank all the people who have donated their refundable beverage containers to help feed hungry children in Haiti.
As some may know I have been receiving your containers for about three years now with $7,480.43 raised to date. Ninety cents of each dollar raised reaches the children in Haiti, the other 10 cents is administration fee for Emergency Relief and Development Overseas. It costs about 25 cents to feed a child a meal in Haiti.
There is a pickup of containers in the Beach Point to Murray River area the fourth Monday of each month. Refundable beverage containers can also be dropped off at 55 Jackson Lane, Beach Point, phone 962-3287 to arrange pickup in other areas.
Some have asked if this money is doing any good for the hungry children of Haiti. Come with me in your mind’s eye to the streets of Haiti. We see a family of seven children, parents dead in the earthquake, oldest, a girl 14 years trying to keep her six younger brothers and sisters alive, living in a shed made from scrap material from the dump, a shed we wouldn’t keep a pig in. No income, no food, only what they can find in the garbage which might amount to two or three meals a week. The hunger goes on and on. Finally she decides to sell her body to an old man with AIDS so she can buy food for herself and family. But before she does, a missionary from Canada gives them food and continues to feed them. Do you know who sent them the food? You did. Scenes such as this are daily life in Haiti.
Jesus taught that we should feed the hungry, saying that in feeding these little ones we are feeding Him. Even a cup of water given in His name receives a reward. You are doing something of eternal value. You might score the winning goal in the Stanley Cup final or win a gold medal in the Olympics but to God the meal you gave to a hungry child is more important.
Michel Charbonneau is the missionary in Haiti that your donations are going to. When he would be visiting families and they would be asking for food and sometimes he would have no food to give them, he would teach them to pray and ask God to send them food. Now, if you don’t remember anything else in this letter, remember this: when you are putting your bottles and cans in a bag for Haiti you are answering the prayers of a hungry child.
As I bring this letter to a close may I leave you the greatest gift ever given to mankind, John 3:16, For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not die but have eternal life. In John 11:25 and 26 Jesus said I am the resurrection and the life: he that believes in me though he were dead, yet shall he live: and whosoever lives and believes in me shall never die.
Many thanks and God bless you,

Guy MacKenzie
Beach Point