All across the world, humans suffer from chronic hunger. According to a report by the United Nations food agencies, 690 million people worldwide go to bed on an empty stomach nearly every night. These numbers have been on the rise since 2014, and are expected to continue increasing. In a statistic given by the USDA, more than 38 million people in the United States were deemed “food insecure” in 2020, which simply means they lacked the amount of food necessary to live a consistent, healthy lifestyle. Food is a basic necessity of life, and every human being deserves to be well-fed.
In 2006, a non-profit organization called Blessings of Hope was founded by a formerly Amish family with a heart to fight world hunger through the reception and distribution of unused food. Co-founder and executive director Aaron Fisher discovered that hunger around the globe is not the result of a lack of food, but of the mismanagement of the food available to us. Through his research, he found that 40% of all food produced in America ends up in landfills, and if just half of this wasted food were salvaged and distributed, it could end world hunger. Out of this weighty realization, Blessings of Hope was born.
At its start, this initiative was housed in a 3-car garage, where Aaron Fisher and his partners, the three Lapp brothers, filled 7 boxes of food weekly to take to a local pastor, but it has since expanded into one of the largest food distribution centers in America. Currently, Blessings of Hope receives food from over 200 suppliers; the food is then organized and packaged in their warehouses, and distributed to more than 700 ministry partners nationwide. In 2020, the organization gave a total of 67 million pounds of food to those in need, which is equivalent to 150,000 meals per day.
Blessings of Hope CEO, David Lapp, conveyed the heart of the ministry when he said, “We believe that it is our responsibility to be good stewards of the food that God has entrusted to us and to utilize the available resources to serve the less fortunate in our communities and around the world…our mission is to empower churches, food banks, and any organization that is serving the community to serve them with food, and empower them to share the gospel when they are sharing food.”
Over the past few years, Blessings of Hope has expanded their ministry to include crisis and disaster relief. In February of 2021, the state of Texas experienced record breaking snowfall and freezing temperatures which caused citywide power outages in Dallas/Fort Worth and the surrounding areas. In response to this crisis, Blessings of Hope sent 12 semi-trucks full of food all the way from Pennsylvania to Texas. Some of these truckloads were received at Gateway Church’s North Richland Hills campus, and the food was then distributed to hundreds of people across the metroplex, bringing hope in the midst of hardship.
In March of 2022, when war broke out in Ukraine, Aaron Fisher and the Lapp brothers began organizing shipments of food to ministry partners in Europe, with the goal of sending at least 18 containers, which is equivalent to 360,000 meals. Included in a recent shipment were 100,000 copies of the Gospel of John in the Ukrainian language. Jake Lapp, in reference to the work in Ukraine, said this: “It’s important for Christians to be involved, because the Christians are the ones who are seated with Christ in the heavenly realm, getting instructions, bringing those instructions to earth, and manifesting the change.”
To learn more about Blessings of Hope and the incredible work they are doing in the United States and globally, please visit blessingsofhope.com. We are so grateful for this ministry’s passion to see every person in the world experience the love of Jesus through physical provision and spiritual encounters!
