During these challenging times, One Life has begun to partner with local pastors in a new way – working together to serve meals in various communities! We have been serving 2 – 3 meals each week with up to 200 people per meal receiving something delicious to eat. God is using these events to demonstrate his love and care to hundreds of people, and the church is being encouraged and creative in how they can do more to serve their neighbours. The body of Christ in action!

Today we served with Pastor Bonifacio in a bit of a different way – his heart was for the people living in the cuartearias. Cuartearias are essentially row housing buildings, almost like a motel with a bunch of rooms in a row. Often these buildings are neglected and in extremely poor condition. Usually, they are built to host temporary migrant workers. So these people come and live in a room for a few months, don’t care for it, and then they are gone. They aren’t fixed up between the time old tenants leave and new ones arrive, so the buildings continue to deteriorate. There are often large families in one small room, with one shared bathroom for the whole complex.

We didn’t realize just how many cuartearias there are in the area – in the community around Pastor Bonifacio’s church we visited 8 cuartearias and there were more! But in just those 8 cuartearias we gave out over 150 plates of food.

Pastor Bonifacio’s wife and some ladies from the church made tamales, a typical Mexican food that is really easy to pack up so that made the serving process much simpler.

There were so many children at the cuartearias and it is always such a joy to see their excitement as they receive the food, knowing that for them it would be such a pleasant surprise. Many of the kids’ normal day is that they stay home and fend for themselves, while their parents work long hours in the fields. But so many sweet faces lit up receiving a delicious meal today.

Serving food to people in the cuartearias was particularly impacting because we saw so much joy coming from children who lived in the worst conditions. It was exciting to do something a little bit different and see that there was truly a great need in every place we stopped.   We’re so grateful for those who are helping to make this initiative possible!

If you’d like to support efforts like this one, you can donate here to partner with us, for God’s glory.