Cornerstone offering well received!

In response to the famine in Burundi, Cornerstone church took an offering just a few weeks ago to feed some of the starving people in the Kayanza province. I have begun to edit a video I am putting together for their church so they can "taste and see" those people who recieved grace from Christ and the church of Cornerstone. Here are the facts:

Cornerstone raised over 30k to give away to the people of Burundi.
This provided 23kilos of beans per family, and over two thousand families trecked to the food distribution point... which tends to be as far as the big dump truck can make it into the country. This time it happened to be a school a few miles south of the city of Kayanza.

One of the ways World Relief works is from Church to church (this time from Cornerstone to eleven local churches in Kayanza), so we networked with the 11 local church pastors in Kayanza to determine who gets the beans. We also feed one "commune" or group of hills at a time in order to bring the communities up together so that there is little-to-no jealousy or inequity as to who recieves food and who doesn't (much different for sponser a child/individual model). It is one of our goals to feed as many of these faminished people as possible and we continue to distribute food as money is committed (Mars Hill and a few other churches will also provide for future distributions). This particular "commune" consisted of 11 hills which are home to these two thousand families... so the 11 pastors who made the lists of who recieves beans, tend to list responsible people who are generous, mature, people, who will plant and work hard. That way, the whole commune will hopefully support each other as they endure the hardship together. Food distributions can get ugly, riots, starving people, opinions flying about whose not being treated fairly, poisonings etc... but this distribution had no violence. I did see one lady get hit with a stick by a soldier while she picked up beans that fell to the ground... this was because she was in the path of men carrying 220lbs bags of beans to put in a pile, and she could have tripped them up and people would get hurt, and if people get hurt... there are no decent doctors in the country of Burundi, so suffering ensues, and more violence may result. All this to say that the cornerstone food distribution went extremely well. No riots, no injuries, and the people were very grateful. It was very humbling, and you never get over this sort of experience, and when you're at one of these events, what you see most glaring is your own materialist wealth. We are incredibly blessed, we just are. I met the governor of the region as well as the administrator, and I gave a short little schpeel to the governor and administrator and all the people (this is a must, you have to give a word if you are white...plus they assumed I was from cornerstone). So I pretended I was Dave Degraaf (without the french skills), and I told them of Cornerstone church in Oregon, the people and Pastor Barry, and fortunately I researched cornerstones website so I was very familiar with all the goings on as well as the philosophy (they love hearing about the churches in America who help them). So thank you Cornerstone, your gift was very well recieved. Below are some pics of the food distribution that you provided for. (click on the pictures to enlarge, and a video will be available soon)


Below is a pile of beans that will get distributed to the families that reside on one of the hills














Pastor Pierre hands out gospel tracks and bible info in Kirundi











A few of the people who trecked to the distribution (some walked for several days)