The Need for Warmth & Cold

As a child, I was always puzzled that you can not balance salty food by adding sugar and vice versa. Similarly, the Bread of Life Children’s Home has both a need for warmth and a need for cold. It would be wonderful to balance the two like in a math exercise and not have a need at the end. But the reality is our demand for warmth in the cold weather and cold in the hot weather do not always balance.

It is almost May, and in the mountains of Romania, where the BOLCH is located, winter is still not over. We had snow almost every week of March with low or negative temperatures that kept the furnace going full speed. We thought we had plenty of wood stored, but the extended winter has caused us to use about 35% more wood than last year. With the older boys and the youth transition teens, we went to the BOLCH farm looking for any big leftover wood pieces to cut and use for the furnace. We pray that the little we have left will be sufficient until the summer comes.

Our large home needs a significant amount of wood to cover the 6 months of winter weather and low temperatures. We present you with this need now because we must prepare in spring and summer to have dried wood as autumn settles in. With the current prices, we anticipate our cost to be at $910 per truckload this year. Last winter, we used over 13 truckloads, so to be prepared, we need about 17 truckloads for the coming winter. Maybe you, together with your family or church, can bless the children by helping purchase one of the 17 truckloads needed.

The need for cold actually comes from a blessing. Recently our friends at the Bucharest Food Bank blessed us with over 4,000 lbs. of frozen meat. They do not have this much regularly, but they receive huge quantities a few times a
year. When they do, they are willing to give us all we can use, but we have been limited to what we could receive due to our lack of storage capacity.

We have a few freezers, but they are still not enough to hold what we need for the BOL Home, the Youth Transition Program, and Feeding Centers.
One solution that we see is to purchase two walk-in freezers like the ones in the photo. Having one like this in Brosteni at the BOL Home and one in Bucharest at the YTP will surely help us hold plenty of food to be used each day for months. Each of the walk-in freezers costs $3,300. I know that is a significant expense, but it will help us save on future food costs. With almost 100 children eating 3 meals a day, plus the feeding program children and the elderly, our need for food is high. Having the capacity to store donated food is vitally important.

We thank you, friends, for considering the above needs that will make a difference. We pray that God blesses you for all that you do for His kingdom.

Alin Panican