The Shed That Fed a Million Children

by Magnus MacFarlane-Barrow

  That evening gave me a very little taste of what life must be like for a famous person. For those few hours it was mainly fun, but only because I knew that I could go back to normal the next morning. It made me think stardom must be an extremely dangerous thing to live with every day. Even after a few short hours it began to make me feel a bit disorientated – like I suddenly wasn’t very sure who I was because everyone around me was behaving as if I was someone else. Apart, that is, from Julie and our good friends from Florida, Iowa and New York, who had joined us there. Maybe that is the only way that famous people can stay sane and happy – if they have good loving family and friends around them reminding them who they really are. Actually, perhaps that is partly true for all of us, famous or not. Anyway, it felt so very good the next morning to be back in my jeans, strolling through the streets with Julie, up to the ‘Cathedral of the Angels’. I had suggested we go and see Hollywood, but Julie felt we had had enough ‘star dust’ for one weekend. So instead we sat together in silence in the church, thanking God for our rather unusual weekend break and trying to process it a little before heading home to tell our kids all about it.

  A few weeks later, not long before Christmas, Gerry called me out of the blue. He had promised in LA that he would take his mum over to see us some time when he was back home in Scotland, but I hadn’t taken him seriously.

  ‘I am just on my way over now – we’ll be there in a couple of hours,’ he told me and hung up. Never had I seen the girls in our office so excited! And sure enough, before long, he was posing for photographs with them and all who met him. He has been a friend ever since, helping raise awareness of our work in lots of ways.

  A few months after the CNN event I was emailed by a lady in Canada who had watched the show. She said she was very interested in the fact that I had mentioned Mary, the mother of Jesus, in my acceptance speech and this had led her to investigate our work further. Since then she had been handmaking rosary bracelets and selling them to raise funds for our work. Each sale provided one child with meals for a year. She also explained that she was recently retired as a teacher near Toronto and wondered if we were interested in setting up Mary’s Meals Canada as a fund-raising organization there. She was very confident that our work would be well received and supported there. Over time Bridgid and her husband, Mike, became good friends. The first time I travelled to meet them I was struck by Bridgid’s unusual gift of deep peace and joy. She had invited a large group of her friends, and other Canadians who had been supporting Mary’s Meals, to a barbecue so that they could meet me. It was a sunny afternoon and her back garden was filled with laughter. By the end of the meeting it was clear to me that Bridgid, who was clearly loved and respected by those who knew her, was the perfect leader for our work in Canada. I was struck by her determination to turn the talk into meaningful action. Later, when the others had dispersed and the house was quiet, Bridgid explained to me that she had terminal cancer.

  ‘I don’t know how long I have, but right now I feel great,’ she said, smiling brightly. ‘I want to do this for Mary’s Meals – in the time God gives me – and I know Mike wants me to do this too. He’s taken early retirement just to be with me and to help me.’

  Later that year we held a meeting in Scotland for the fund-raising groups around the world. Bridgid and Mike came over for their first visit to Dalmally. As always we started the meeting with a short prayer and introductions. Bridgid stood up and told us a remarkable story. She explained she had decided to travel to Scotland via London so she could visit a long-lost aunt there. She phoned the aunt just before boarding in Toronto to tell her the arrival time and mentioned that she was only going to be in London briefly as she was on her way to a Mary’s Meals meeting in Scotland. After hanging up, her aunt looked up the Mary’s Meals website. Her window cleaner was there and she called over to him.

  ‘Have you ever heard of Mary’s Meals? They look amazing!’

  ‘Heard of them?’ replied the startled young man. ‘Heard of them? I would not be here if it was not for Mary’s Meals. I am from Malawi. I would not have gone to school if they had not been providing the meals there. And so I would never have ended up at university here in London. That is why I am here.’

  Our gatherings of the dispersed Mary’s Meals family often seemed to be marked by remarkable stories and connections which confirmed a sense of belonging and calling to this work. Sometimes we had held such gatherings in Medjugorje. As the work grew and the number of Mary’s Meals groups proliferated, we wanted to make sure that, regardless of our various backgrounds and different faiths, we all shared the same vision, mission and values. The end results of our work were not all that mattered to us; the way we did this work was just as important, and for this reason we wanted to come together in the village where the work had been born many years previously and learn from each other. The little store where Fergus and I had first unloaded gifts from our Land Rover in 1992 still stood at the corner of the street, not too far from the hall in which we had gathered for one such meeting in 2009. And what a colourful and diverse family we had become in the years since.

  In addition to a big team of staff, volunteers and supporters from Scotland, we had representatives from Malawi, Liberia, Croatia, England, Wales, Ireland, the Philippines, Uganda, Italy and Germany. Among those who gave talks about their involvement with Mary’s Meals were businessmen, missionary priests, a visionary, a reformed gangster and an archduchess. We encouraged all to tell their personal stories, not just to talk about the current work. It was very rich and deeply moving.

  John Pridmore spoke to us as the Chairman of Mary’s Meals Ireland. He was once a well-known gangster in London, who had experienced a profound religious conversion after nearly killing someone in a pub. He had spent a year with us in Dalmally in the youth community at the House of Prayer and thereafter devoted his life to speaking to young people about God’s love. Along the way he had written several books, including the bestseller From Gangland to Promised Land, and had become an internationally renowned public speaker. He and the community he founded in Ireland had decided to take Mary’s Meals on as a special project. Despite the fact they survived themselves on divine providence, mainly in the form of collections taken for them in parishes where they gave talks, they decided to ask that these collections be instead given entirely to Mary’s Meals – trusting that God would look after them in other ways. He did indeed, but meanwhile amazing support and awareness of Mary’s Meals was raised all over Ireland through the words and example given by John and his friends.

  Another profoundly moving and important talk was given by Željka Markić about Mary’s Meals Croatia. Željka was another old and dear friend, the daughter of Dr Marijo Živković, the amazing man who we worked with in the early years of delivering aid to refugees in Croatia. Along with her friends in Zagreb at that time, Željka used to tell us that one day, when things were better in Croatia, they too would work to help people in need in far-off lands. We had lost touch after the war but then, after a few years, she visited us in Scotland with her family. Željka was now a successful businesswoman and, along with her husband Tihomir, a doctor, and their four sons, she wanted to know all about our work and to understand how it had evolved into Mary’s Meals. They drank in the story.

  ‘Now it is time to keep that promise,’ Željka said. ‘Things are better now in Croatia and there are many people who could support this work for hungry children. We should set up Mary’s Meals Croatia so that they can.’

  And that is exactly what she then did, together with some close friends in Zagreb. In time, thousands of Croatians became supporters of Mary’s Meals. And when I listened to the talk she gave us at our little gathering in Medjugorje, I realized that Željka had a unique perspective on our work.

  ‘I remember when Julie and Magnus came to Croatia with their little truck. We used to help organize the distribution of the baby clothes and nappies that they would bring. Many of my friends – and me too – benefited fro
m this ourselves. And today we are the ones running Mary’s Meals in Croatia, so that others in need might be helped.

  ‘It is really important for us to know how to both give and receive when we do this work. It is important we treat those who receive our aid with as much respect as those who give to us.’

  At some sessions during the week-long gathering, pilgrims who happened to be in Medjugorje would come in and join us. One of these was a lady called Ellen Miller from Iowa, who had a chat with Julie over a coffee between meetings. She explained that she and a friend were organizing a conference called ‘Christ Our Life’ in their city of Des Moines. They were determined to fill a basketball stadium with thousands of people and were looking for speakers.

  ‘Do you think your husband might come over next year? We’ll look after him, we promise!’ said Ellen, having identified very quickly that the best way of persuading me to agree to do something was to get Julie to ask me.

  And so it was that in September 2010, I found myself being met at Des Moines Airport by Ellen’s smiling son, Mike, who had been assigned to look after me for the weekend. The following morning I arrived at the stadium along with 4,000 other people who had gathered for the conference. I was struck by the numbers of young people there and the prayerful atmosphere. In the afternoon I had the chance to tell them the Mary’s Meals story and afterwards hundreds of people came to our stall to tell us they wanted to help. I left soon afterwards, very impressed by the Miller family and the good people I had met there, but without an understanding of what we had just ignited in Iowa. In the months and years following that conference, the most incredible Mary’s Meals grassroots movement spread across Iowa and beyond. Numerous schools and parishes began supporting. Thousands there joined our mission by becoming donors, volunteer speakers or people who prayed for our work. Lots of spontaneous fund-raising campaigns began. Ellen and her friends designed T-shirts and schoolkids sold many thousands of them, with each sale feeding a child for a year. There were other surprising fruits from that first brief visit too. I had enjoyed chatting with Mike, Ellen’s friendly, cheerful son, as he drove me around that weekend. He told me he was just finishing university where he was studying finance, and planned to join the supermarket chain that his father had worked for. He seemed excited about the prospect. He also asked a lot of good questions about Mary’s Meals. A few weeks after my visit he called me, said he had been praying and thinking since we met, and asked if Mary’s Meals might need any help from someone with a finance background. I was amazed by his offer. I talked about our need for someone like him to work with our teams in Haiti or Liberia. He said he would love to volunteer in either of those places. Initially we planned for Haiti, but then because of staffing changes in Liberia we asked if he might go there instead. He said yes immediately, and soon found himself based in Tubmanburg and an important part of our team there. In time he became a paid member of staff and has been working for Mary’s Meals ever since.

  More and more I began to notice that it was often young people who were leading the most amazing fund-raising efforts. Another sitting among the audience in Iowa, unbeknown to me, was a twelve-year-old called Allison Ockenfels, from a small farming community in the north of the state. She learnt it was possible to fund-raise to provide one specific school in Malawi with Mary’s Meals, through our ‘Sponsor a School’ campaign. Unfazed by the target of $12,000 required for one school, she set about fund-raising in her village. By the time I heard of Allison, she had already reached her target and was working on the next school! She asked if I would visit her family when I was next in Iowa, a request I was happy to say yes to.

  The Ockenfels lived on a dusty farm track in rolling fields of corn, far from any town. I stayed with them for a night, learning that Allison and her two brothers were home-schooled. Her dad sold enormous, used combine harvesters – a whole row of them were parked near their house. I enjoyed their home-made food and the simple loving family life they had worked hard to create. In the evening they took me to their little wooden parish church a few miles away. It was packed. Every person there – and they had come from many miles around – knew about Mary’s Meals and had been supporting Allison’s fund-raising efforts. This farming community, these growers of food, had taken the Mary’s Meals message into their hearts in a very special way.

  The next evening I had to give a talk in downtown Chicago, at the home of some people I knew there. Despite the fact this would be a five-hour drive, my new friends, the Ockenfels, insisted on driving me all the way there. I learnt on the drive that Allison and her brothers had never even visited the ‘Windy City’ before and it felt good to be on this adventure with them. My hosts in Chicago had been among the very first to fund-raise for Mary’s Meals in the USA and had been faithfully fund-raising for a specific school in Malawi for three years. They lived in a very fashionable apartment among the famous dazzling skyscrapers of Chicago. My audience could not have been more different from the previous evening. Instead of speaking to God-fearing farmers, I explained the work of Mary’s Meals to a group of masseurs, vegan chefs, beauticians and politicians. Instead of a collection basket, money was raised through the auctioning of donated art, special books, massages and meals in restaurants. All these people showed great kindness, and they too ensured that one more school would be able to receive Mary’s Meals.

  It seemed like people in every situation imaginable were finding ways to support us. A man called David in a prison in Kansas wrote to Patty in our New Jersey office with a donation of $5:

  Dear Patty,

  I hope and pray the good Lord blesses you and the Mary’s Meals programme. For me to give the little I have has changed me immensely. Now, when I have money sent to my account I make it a priority to send five dollars to Mary’s Meals. Funny though that when I was in the outside world I never once thought about donating to the needy. Again thank you for allowing the impact on other people’s lives. Truly it is me who has been impacted by Mary’s Meals. God does work in mysterious ways.

  And David did continue to give regular donations and even started to make collections from other prisoners that he would pass on.

  Back in my shed, we took calls every day with more invitations. It became increasingly hard to know which to accept. By now we had developed an amazing network of volunteer speakers who were always ready to go and speak on our behalf but sometimes, especially for overseas invitations, the expectation was that I would come myself. I was intrigued one day to receive an invitation to visit Abu Dhabi. We had been receiving very sizeable donations from a parish there, and because I wanted to thank whoever was responsible I decided to go.

  I made my way to a shopping centre in Dubai where I had agreed to meet my host. I was early, and was talking on the phone in a coffee shop. It didn’t cross my mind that the lady sitting at the table opposite me was the person I had arranged to meet until I noticed that one of the two small girls with her was wearing a T-shirt with Mary’s Meals written on it. At that same moment the lady heard my Scottish accent and extended her hand with a smile.

  ‘I’m Catherine. I thought I’d recognize you from the CNN thing,’ she said, ‘but it was in black and white.’ While I tried to figure that one out, the very sweet excited girls gave me a whistle-stop tour of the rest of the Ibn Battuta shopping mall, during which I learnt a lot about the explorer of that name and they bought me a lovely frozen yogurt, before we drove across the desert to their home in Abu Dhabi. On the way they reminded me that Mary’s Meals had been brought to the United Arab Emirates by Sister Ligouri, an Indian nun who had made a retreat at Craig Lodge House of Prayer, while living in England several years earlier. Having learnt about Mary’s Meals while staying with us she introduced it to St Joseph’s parish in Abu Dhabi when she had moved to work there.

  ‘We should just make it in time for the evening Mass and you’ll have a chance to thank the people,’ said Catherine as we entered Abu Dhabi.

  It was midweek and I imagined an evening Mass at
tended by a few faithful elderly daily Mass goers. I wondered if, perhaps, among the little group, might be a wealthy benefactor responsible for the large sums we had been receiving. When we drew up at the church there was an enormous crowd in the courtyard. I presumed at first this was nothing to do with us, or the evening Mass, until Catherine explained that this was in fact the congregation. Over 1,500 people had turned up, far too many to fit inside the church, so Mass was outside tonight and while the opening hymn was sung fervently, the call to prayer from a local mosque echoed beautifully from somewhere nearby. Those singing in the courtyard around me were nearly all immigrants from India, the Philippines and Africa.

  At the end of Mass I was able to thank the congregation, who applauded warmly when I told them that Mary’s Meals was now feeding more than 500,000 children every day. Afterwards I spent time with some of the people and learnt that the sizeable donations from Abu Dhabi did in fact represent thousands of little gifts from these hard-working, low-paid people who had left their homelands to find jobs. I also discovered that most of the fund-raising had actually been organized by the children of the parish, who led various initiatives such as collecting coins in bottles during Lent. Nyapthala, the girl with the big heart who bought me the frozen yogurt ahead of our hot desert drive, was most prominent among them, they told me.