When Christian families in Punjab lost their homes and everything inside them, they left with only the clothes they were wearing. We did not wait for an appeal to be organised. Our team was on the ground from the first day with clean drinking water and cooked meals, and we stayed for weeks — then came back with the things that make a house a home again.
The first days are about the basics and nothing else. Our team cooked on site in the street — great pots of rice and curry, fresh roti made in batches — and served breakfast, lunch and dinner to families who had left their homes with nothing but the clothes they were wearing. Crates of clean drinking water went out alongside it, because the water supply could not be trusted either.
We stayed for weeks, not days. That mattered more than the food did. Families in a situation like this expect to be forgotten within the week, and what actually changes things is somebody still being there long after the attention has moved on.
Then came the rebuilding of ordinary life. A house that has been emptied has nothing left inside it. So we ran a home-appliance distribution for these families and handed over refrigerators, washing machines, air coolers, fans, cots and bedding — the unglamorous things a family cannot function without and cannot possibly replace in the same year they lost everything.
And above all of it, hope. Every distribution came with prayer, and the message underneath all of it was the one they most needed to hear: you have not been abandoned, and you are not alone here.
Cooking on site, three meals a day, for anyone who came. Drinking water by the crate when nothing else could be relied on.
Weeks, not days. Being there once the attention has moved on is the part a family actually remembers.
Refrigerators, washing machines, air coolers, fans, cots and bedding — replacing what was lost, so a household can function again.
Prayer with every family. More than anything else, what they needed to hear was that they had not been forgotten and were not carrying this on their own.
Once the immediate crisis passes, a family goes back to a house with not one working thing inside it. No fridge. No fan. No washing machine. No bed. In a Punjab summer, no cooler.
These are not luxuries and they are not replaceable — not by a household that lost everything it owned in the same year. So we ran a distribution specifically for them: refrigerators, washing machines, air coolers, fans, cots and bedding, handed over by name to the families who had lost everything.
It is the least dramatic thing on this page, and it is the one that lets a household start working again.
Every picture on this page was taken by our own team, with the families' permission, on the day the help arrived.
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“Religion that God accepts is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress.”James 1:27
“He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners.”Luke 4:18
“Give, and it will be given to you — pressed down, shaken together, running over.”Luke 6:38
“We lost our home and everything in it, and for days it felt as though nobody was coming. Then Harvest Hands arrived with food and blankets, and they stayed for weeks. They rebuilt more than a house — they reminded us that we are not on our own.”RukhsanaFaisalabad district
“If one part suffers, every part suffers with it; if one part is honoured, every part rejoices with it.”
1 Corinthians 12:26
Gifts to the emergency fund sit ready, so that when a family loses everything we are cooking for them that same evening instead of waiting for donations to arrive.
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