Marcos Ramirez had always supported his wife and four children with the money he made from working in the coffee fields near their rural village in Guatemala. But when there was no more work to be done, Marcos couldn’t find a new job, and his family began to go hungry, sometimes surviving on nothing more than tortillas with salt. At one point, his infant daughter Elvera weighed only two pounds, a dangerously low weight even for a newborn.

Cross shipments funded by compassionate American Catholics provide malnourished children like Elvera with the food they need to regain their health and grow into thriving toddlers.

Thankfully, Esperanza de Vida — a local Christian outreach supported by Cross International Catholic Outreach — learned about Marcos’ situation and intervened. The first thing they did was take Elvera to an emergency feeding center and nurse her back to health for a month, to save her from what would have been a certain and painful death from starvation. Then they built a new house for Elvera’s family and provided them with free daily meals.

With the help of generous American Catholics, Cross Catholic has shipped more than $7 million in food, medicine, clothes, and other supplies to Esperanza de Vida, to bring relief to desperately poor families and severely malnourished children such as Elvera in the garbage dumps and remote areas of Guatemala.

Shipping humanitarian goods sends a tangible message of God’s love to someone who may never have read the Bible or stepped inside a church. While your support helped feed the bodies of the hungry, their hearts were also edified by the knowledge that a Christian cared enough to step out and do something about their need.

Or as one of our ministry partners in Guatemala put it: “When people visit and see the terrible poverty of the people we help, they ask: ‘Why does this exist?’  My answer is that it’s an opportunity for us to love. God has left the job for us to do — to be his hands on earth, to be the good Samaritan.”

Between serving as a guide and translator for an NBC news crew and personally delivering pillows for all the beds at the main Project Medishare hospital in Haiti (as he put it, “My vehicle looks like a giant cotton ball!”), Cross Catholic Projects Officer Michael Wilson has successfully established a food distribution network in the greater Port-au-Prince area and the badly damaged cities of Leogane and Jacmel.

The food recipients include long-term Cross Catholic partners such as the Bethsaide short-term shelter in Jacmel, as well as internally displaced persons (IDP) camps where many earthquake refugees are now living. These groups will benefit from a $1.3 million shipment of emergency supplies that Cross Catholic arranged to be airlifted to Port-au-Prince in two C737 cargo planes over the weekend. The shipment includes 50,000 lbs. of fortified rice/soy casserole, bagged corn, water, an electrolyte replacement drink, tarps, and diapers, and is now being stored in a partner’s warehouse near the airport, where the goods are already being picked up for distribution.

Michael also reported that one of the orphanages Cross Catholic is supporting has now relocated from Leogane to an open field in Tabarre, where the children are living in tents. On Monday, Michael visited a school in the Port-au-Prince area that was severely damaged by the earthquake and he assured the widow of the deceased headmaster that we will help them recover from their loss. Even as schools have reopened in unaffected areas of Haiti, there is much work to be done before children in Port-au-Prince will be able to return to school again.

Get more of the latest Haiti updates at www.crosscatholic.org/relief.

Every year the U.S. Census Bureau collects data on the nation’s Christmas spending habits. A few of this year’s stats:

16.6 billion
Number of cards, letters, and packages the U.S. Postal Service will deliver between Dec. 1 and Christmas this year.

$4.3 billion
The value of U.S. toy imports from China between January and August 2009 to stock stores for Christmas.

$28.2 billion
Retail sales by the nation’s department stores last December.

With all that gift-giving going on, it’s easy to see why people so often get caught up in the material rush associated with Christmas these days. Of course, we know the true meaning of Christmas is Christ’s birth — God’s perfect gift sent to us to save the world from sin.

In commemoration of that most precious gift we received from God, we can use Christmas as an opportunity to offer gifts to those in need. Something as simple as shipping food or clothing to a family in need using our Christmas catalog, www.GiftsThatGlorify.org, can have a huge impact on a poor family.

The following success stories, both the results of a shipment Cross Catholic sent to Haiti earlier this year, are an example of how a little generosity goes a long way toward helping the poor.

Pierre Franz, 10, had been praying for a bike for days so he could ride instead of walk the long distance to school each day. God answered his prayer through a container shipped by Cross Catholic this year! One of the men loading the shipment in Miami felt compelled to include his son’s new bike, unbeknownst to anyone at our organization. As some of our staff was unloading the shipment, they came across the new bike. At that time the director of Morningstar Ministries, a boys’ orphanage where Pierre lived, was there and explained the boy’s prayers for a bike. The next day he returned with Pierre, who was overjoyed when they wheeled out the bike from the shipment. He excitedly jumped on it and began to ride around.

Lemese Pierre, 7, was lying on the hard floor burning up with fever. She and the 124 other children living at Good Samaritan orphanage had been staying for months in a temporary shelter, a rickety open-air dance hall. Their orphanage had been destroyed during the turbulent 2008 hurricane season, and the staff was struggling to meet the children’s basic needs. They lacked a steady supply of food, clean clothes, medicine, and blankets. Our shipment provided them with canned food, clothes, bed quilts, and over-the-counter medicines such as Tylenol and cough syrup. Lemese was immediately given some of the Tylenol from the shipment and her fever went down. In a few hours, she even felt well enough to pose for this photo.

You can bless children like these by helping ship much-needed supplies to the poor who need them most. Visit our Christmas catalog, www.GiftsThatGlorify.org, to find out more.