An empty chair… a distraught mother… but why?

The small voice was forever silenced when malnutrition took his young life.

Maria Gomez’s four remaining children can only look at their mother in bewilderment. They don’t understand why their brother Jarlin, age 5 months, is no longer there. They can only cry for the food Maria cannot provide.

Maria is now paralyzed with fear for her other young children. The Gomez family lives in remote Nicaragua, where malnutrition is more common than jobs. When she gazes at her youngest child, Maria is afraid her little girl will be the next to die.

All Maria can do is whisper prayers to God, thanking Him for the family’s meager blessings.

“I pray. I give thanks to God for all He gives me that day and ask Him to give me strength for the next day,” she says softly.

Before starving to death, Jarlin suffered horribly. Maria took him to the hospital, but doctors could not help him. So she brought her son back home to die. “When I saw he was really sick, I called the doctor, but it was too late. Jarlin was already dead,” Maria recalled in a soft voice, her distress apparent.

From Nicaragua to Guatemala to Jamaica, rice is lifesaving bread in the countries helped by Food For The Poor. When you give a bag of rice to just one hungry family like Maria’s, you can help save precious lives.

It takes so little to nourish the bodies and ease the hearts of the suffering poor. Your gift can provide desperately needed rice for the hungry. Please don’t let another chair go empty again. Please, send a gift for food today.