Area man serves poorest of poor
BY CARRIE MADREN
UMCONNECTION CORRESPONDENT
“What are you going to do about it?”
That wasn’t the pilot speaking through Steve Hull’s airplane earphones — it was God.
On a flight back from a 1997 mission trip in Dominican Republic, Hull recounted, he was watching the in-flight movie when God, through the movie soundtrack, spoke those words, then laid out in detail how Hull was to feed the hungry multitudes he just visited.
On the mission trip, Hull a member of Westminster UMC, had accompanied a local pastor to visit a nearby batey, work camp villages where families of migrant plantation workers, many of them Haitians, live in mud huts with no reliable clean water source, outhouses or money for food.
In the bateys, working men only earn enough to buy food for one. These are among the poorest of the poor in a country ravaged by political greed, indifference and the remnants of racism and near-slave labor.
“It’s hard to put into words how absolute starvation and poverty is — you have to see it, smell it, touch it to understand,” Hull says.
When he and wife Ann walked through the batey for the first time, they saw open sewers because there were no outhouses, and children carrying water in jugs all day. They heard about dirt floors that turn to mud when it rains and infants dying because their mothers could not produce enough milk.
On the last day of the mission trip, volunteers were handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the kids that came around at lunchtime. A teenage girl about 15 years old stood at the back of the group of kids with a newborn wrapped in her arm.
“She’s looking dead at me,” recalled Hull. Through an interpreter, he learned that the girl wanted to trade her baby for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“What does it take to get to that point? That really brought to light just what poverty is,” remembered Hull, now more than a dozen years later, his voice getting softer and eyes again moist with tears from the shocking desperation.
And so on the flight home to Maryland, Hull discovered he had to do something about it. God’s plan, he discerned, was to feed one cup of rice and a half cup of beans to the people in the bateys surrounding Barahona, Dominican Republic. The ministry includes building outhouses, about 30 a year now, and buying mango trees to plant.
At the start, Hull said he had bouts of doubt about money, but trusted that God would lead him. He and his wife, Ann, began calling people and writing letters.
Whenever he turned on the radio, it seemed he would hear the verse from Matthew 25 “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
God even mentioned on the airplane that Hull would be helped in the Dominican Republic by someone named Franklin.
“People asked ‘who’s Franklin?’ and I had no idea,” Hull recalled. However, when he went to the island nation to meet with the Barahona pastor to set up logistics, he found there was a 20-year-old man the church hired occasionally for odd jobs and who had been in a terrible motorcycle accident that cost him his right arm and right eye — named Franklin.
Feed My Sheep
They started in two bateys, each with 300 to 400 people, giving out one cup of rice and a half cup of beans to every person.
More than 12 years later, The Least of These Ministries now feeds about 7,300 people living in eight impoverished bateys in the Caribbean nation. Not only do individuals get a meal’s work of rice and beans, once a month they get one egg.
The ministry has built outhouses, a church, and is currently constructing a building for a newly dug well.
And for two years, each food truck visit has also brought an evangelist, Hull sad, who gives a Bible lesson as people wait for food.
Since they have few overhead costs, about 94 cents of every dollar goes directly towards food and construction costs in the bateys, Hull said.
A network of volunteers manages fundraising, and Hull speaks at civic, church and community group meetings, spreading the word about the
ministry and the need.
Village leaders tell Hull that in bateys where the ministry distributes food, the infant death rate has fallen from 36 percent to about 12 percent.
In the Hulls’ ministry office, located in an
industrial park near the tiny Westminster airport, the Hulls have a bulletin board with photos of people they’ve come to know in the bateys.
Hull points to one small boy who had once asked Hull if he wanted to see the boy’s new baby sibling; When Hull arrived at the house, he found that the mother had just minutes before given birth, with no medical help or assistance in sight. Another shows the blue food delivery truck, which took two years of fundraising to buy.
The bulletin board represents snapshots of a decade-long ministry. It also represents snapshots of a ministry that’s fed and changed the quality of life for the thousands who are the least of these.
UMCONNECTION CORRESPONDENT
“What are you going to do about it?”
That wasn’t the pilot speaking through Steve Hull’s airplane earphones — it was God.
On a flight back from a 1997 mission trip in Dominican Republic, Hull recounted, he was watching the in-flight movie when God, through the movie soundtrack, spoke those words, then laid out in detail how Hull was to feed the hungry multitudes he just visited.
On the mission trip, Hull a member of Westminster UMC, had accompanied a local pastor to visit a nearby batey, work camp villages where families of migrant plantation workers, many of them Haitians, live in mud huts with no reliable clean water source, outhouses or money for food.
In the bateys, working men only earn enough to buy food for one. These are among the poorest of the poor in a country ravaged by political greed, indifference and the remnants of racism and near-slave labor.
“It’s hard to put into words how absolute starvation and poverty is — you have to see it, smell it, touch it to understand,” Hull says. When he and wife Ann walked through the batey for the first time, they saw open sewers because there were no outhouses, and children carrying water in jugs all day. They heard about dirt floors that turn to mud when it rains and infants dying because their mothers could not produce enough milk.
On the last day of the mission trip, volunteers were handing out peanut butter and jelly sandwiches to the kids that came around at lunchtime. A teenage girl about 15 years old stood at the back of the group of kids with a newborn wrapped in her arm.
“She’s looking dead at me,” recalled Hull. Through an interpreter, he learned that the girl wanted to trade her baby for a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
“What does it take to get to that point? That really brought to light just what poverty is,” remembered Hull, now more than a dozen years later, his voice getting softer and eyes again moist with tears from the shocking desperation.
And so on the flight home to Maryland, Hull discovered he had to do something about it. God’s plan, he discerned, was to feed one cup of rice and a half cup of beans to the people in the bateys surrounding Barahona, Dominican Republic. The ministry includes building outhouses, about 30 a year now, and buying mango trees to plant.
At the start, Hull said he had bouts of doubt about money, but trusted that God would lead him. He and his wife, Ann, began calling people and writing letters.
Whenever he turned on the radio, it seemed he would hear the verse from Matthew 25 “…whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers of mine, you did for me.”
God even mentioned on the airplane that Hull would be helped in the Dominican Republic by someone named Franklin.
“People asked ‘who’s Franklin?’ and I had no idea,” Hull recalled. However, when he went to the island nation to meet with the Barahona pastor to set up logistics, he found there was a 20-year-old man the church hired occasionally for odd jobs and who had been in a terrible motorcycle accident that cost him his right arm and right eye — named Franklin.
Feed My Sheep
They started in two bateys, each with 300 to 400 people, giving out one cup of rice and a half cup of beans to every person.
More than 12 years later, The Least of These Ministries now feeds about 7,300 people living in eight impoverished bateys in the Caribbean nation. Not only do individuals get a meal’s work of rice and beans, once a month they get one egg.
The ministry has built outhouses, a church, and is currently constructing a building for a newly dug well.
And for two years, each food truck visit has also brought an evangelist, Hull sad, who gives a Bible lesson as people wait for food.
Since they have few overhead costs, about 94 cents of every dollar goes directly towards food and construction costs in the bateys, Hull said.
A network of volunteers manages fundraising, and Hull speaks at civic, church and community group meetings, spreading the word about the ministry and the need.
Village leaders tell Hull that in bateys where the ministry distributes food, the infant death rate has fallen from 36 percent to about 12 percent.
In the Hulls’ ministry office, located in an
industrial park near the tiny Westminster airport, the Hulls have a bulletin board with photos of people they’ve come to know in the bateys.
Hull points to one small boy who had once asked Hull if he wanted to see the boy’s new baby sibling; When Hull arrived at the house, he found that the mother had just minutes before given birth, with no medical help or assistance in sight. Another shows the blue food delivery truck, which took two years of fundraising to buy.
The bulletin board represents snapshots of a decade-long ministry. It also represents snapshots of a ministry that’s fed and changed the quality of life for the thousands who are the least of these.
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