Tag: WOW

It’s that time of year again. WOW is multiplying your dollars!

We’ve been offered a 6 to 1 match for vitamin supplements by a major partner of ours. Since 2001, Health Partners International has worked with us in the provision of medications to our desperately needy patients. They have often given us special matching dollar value offers that have provided huge amounts of product. This current offer means that one dollar translates to six dollars of vitamins.

As many of you know, WOW has ministered in sub-Saharan Africa for over 26 years to “the least of these” – as Jesus put it – those on the margins of life whose lives are at risk because of disease and poverty. For the past 7 of those years we’ve also been engaged in India. Whether in the villages of Africa or the urban settings of India’s crowded cities, the needs of orphans and widows, the abandoned and destitute, the sick and the dying, are the same. WOW, with its partners, meets those needs and the gratitude is always palpable.

My wife Kathy and I were able to visit southern India, for the first time in a long time, in March this year, which coincided with the 30th Anniversary celebration of our partner ministry there. We walked and we drove and we sat and we listened, all in the intense heat of the subcontinent- 40°C/100+F. But oh, how inspiring! This little ministry with BIG vision is reaching into places “even angels fear to tread”.

Leaving the city we drove a few hours south to meet a community of the least of these who truly are the least. They are called “snake catchers”! “Whaat??” you say. “Snake catchers?” Yes. These are a sub-group of the population referred to as “the dark people” whose status is even below the “untouchables” caste. They are considered sub-human. Their sole role in society is to catch and remove venomous snakes that have entered Indian homes. They themselves have no fixed address. They live in tents pitched in empty fields. They are literally “outcasts”. Women and children gathered in an outdoor portico and listened to me share God’s love for them. We ate together and distributed sunbrellas. From their meagre resources we were both presented with (& honoured) with gold-coloured stoles. So humbling!

WOW has begun to support one hundred or so of these marginalized people who, like us, have been created in the image of God. We’re providing food, medication, and spiritual support through our local church-based champion volunteers.

From its very inception in 1999, WOW has been committed to answering heaven’s call to minister to the poorest of the poor who predictably are the most vulnerable to disease and premature death. When ministering to the dying, the first and most important thing is prayer. Hundreds of times a week WOW’s church based volunteers are praying with afflicted orphans and widows in their humble homes and then bending to the relentless task of physical care. We call this Home Based Care (HBC). And what are their afflictions? Most of our patients are HIV+ which makes them vulnerable to opportunistic infections and diseases like dysentery, bed sores, oral thrush, dehydration, tuberculosis, blood cancer, and even in some rare cases leprosy (!). Then there’s the added dimension of depression. Hopelessness may be the biggest challenge of all.

But praise the Lord, there is hope! We’ve seen radical transformation in the lives of these afflicted ones again and again in our quarter century of ministry. Through prayer, twice weekly visits, medications and proper nutrition, we’ve seen countless orphans and widows rise from their sick beds to full health and strength.
The transformative impact of “the hands and feet of Jesus” is powerfully evident.

A large component in that transformation is medication and nutritional support. WOW has been and continues to be a major funder and provider of medication including vitamin supplements.

Right now one dollar translates to six dollars of vitamins. In other words your donation is multiplied six times.

That kind of multiple is unheard of in the financial markets but in God’s economy it makes perfect sense. After all He “so [loves] the world” that He has given us “his only begotten Son” that we might live everlastingly. Ultimately what you and we at WOW are doing is an expression of God’s love for “the least of these”. We are both servants and co-labourers with Christ.

Let’s multiply the blessing. This time by six!

With gratitude for your stewardship,

Jim Cantelon

The Bible is very strong on the subject of God’s love for us. It stresses again and again that his love is unfailing.

Sometimes the word “hesed” meaning “unfailing love” in the Hebrew is also translated as “lovingkindness”. For instance, in Psalm 25 King David prays, “Remember, O Lord, your tender mercies and loving kindnesses”. He then links God’s love to truth and covenant. In other words, God is faithful. Indeed, He never fails. We can trust and count on him even “through the valley of the shadow of death” (Ps. 23). So the bar is very high when we say we want to be “his hands and feet” to sick and dying orphans and widows. We need to be unfailing in love, too.

In our 26th year of ministry WOW is very aware of the relevance of unfailing love in the face of unfailing suffering.

When we began this ministry, the HIV & AIDS pandemic was at its height ravaging the lives of thousands of young mothers and their children with certain death in sub-Saharan Africa. We saw the church of Jesus Christ as the only answer to this relentless killer. So I resigned from Broadway Church in Vancouver and Kathy and I incorporated WOW in order to challenge the churches of sub-Saharan Africa to become “a father to the fatherless and a defender of widows”. We started from scratch but now many years later YOU are a player on a mighty team bringing light and love to a very dark place. Your love is unfailing.

The relentless nature of human need can be daunting. It seems the more we do, the more we need to do. The scores of orphans and widows we first began to reach in the year 2000, number today in the thousands. But the Lord was faithful when we had little to give and He is faithful in 2026 when we have much greater responsibilities. As the old hymn says, “He giveth more grace as the burden grows greater, He addeth more strength when the labors increase…”

So today our Home Based Care ministry (HBC) with partner “Somebody Cares Malawi” (SCM) is feeding 3000 orphans and 2000 elderly widows through their village feeding programs as well as visiting and providing comprehensive care for hundreds of the sick and dying with teams of local church based volunteers. We have a state of the art Gender Based Violence (GBV) mitigation program as well as community transformation efforts championed by pastors and Christian chiefs. SCM has become a national treasure as WOW has been and continues faithfully to be its key supporter.

In Zambia WOW partners with CHRESO (“chrezo” meaning “need” in Greek) based in the capital, Lusaka, and ICO (Impact Community Outreach) located in the mining town of Kabwe. With CHRESO we provide the funding of medications for 5000 rural orphans and widows via mobile medical clinics. And with ICO we are engaged in HBC with several impoverished communities surrounding Kabwe. Both of these Zambian partners are local church based, their pastors proven men and women of God who are unfailing in their love for “the least of these”.

In South Africa we are vitally engaged with our partner ministry called Cross Connect (CC). WOW has funded the purchase and renovation of two houses that are now “homes of rescue” for abused and abandoned children. From this centre CC is also caring for the needs of orphans and widows in surrounding “irregular settlements” (read “slums”) with a population of 3000-plus. Their impact has attracted the social services and police of the greater Johannesburg region who often call on CC to be first responders to reports
of children in distress.

WOW also is involved in a vital ministry in India, but due to governmental and cultural opposition I can say nothing in a public forum lest our partners there be shut down.

And as you may know we have been quietly helping a ministry to orphan and widow refugees from the Russia–Ukraine war.

In all this, we are committed to unfailing love in the name of Jesus. I am counting on you (and myself) to be faithful.

Blessings

Jim Cantelon