About Beth Allen

I'm a self-professed sustainable development geek who would have a very hard time picking a favorite country. That means, I love every tribe and nation and take great joy in seeing how God is working in the world. I've been with FH for nearly two decades, and started out by serving with them in the Bolivian Andes. I can't live without Jesus and coffee, but the coffee is mostly decaf so the power is from Jesus.
Author Archive | Beth Allen
Colorful Guatemalan money with ledger

Freedom

By on September 25, 2012 in World Poverty

It happened again today — FREEDOM! Believe it or not, an Excel spreadsheet made my day.  Each Saturday morning I enter the figures from the receipts I’ve gathered in my wallet all week, into a sheet that keeps my household budget. My spread sheet divides my spending into about twelve categories and each receipt finds [...]

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God directs my home wooden plaque

God directs my home

By on September 18, 2012 in Disaster Relief, World Poverty

As I grumbled today about the fact that my home was broken into recently,  and how I’ve struggled to feel safe again after the break-in, a little sign in my kitchen challenged my mindset. I traveled to Haiti in November 2010, ten months after the horrific earthquake physically and emotionally devastated millions.  We visited several [...]

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Hope from the hills of Kapchorwa

By on September 10, 2012 in Sponsor Impact, World Poverty

Today I’m featuring guest blogger Alex Mwaura, Food for the Hungry’s Africa Regional Communications Coordinator. Alex writes to us about his thoughts after visiting Kapchorwa, Uganda just after the finish of the London Olympics. By Alex Mwaura When Uganda’s Stephen Kiprotich won the marathon race in the London 2012 Olympics, many were amazed because his [...]

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Woman working on a blanket with harvested rice

Women’s work

By on September 4, 2012 in World Poverty

An astute reader of Food for the Hungry’s posts on Facebook asked a great question about our Labor Day photo album, featuring people around the world at work:  “As I look through these photos, I notice that a majority of them are about women. Are they just more photogenic or is this indicative of something [...]

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Boy named Kassim next to wattle and daub house

Off the map

By on August 28, 2012 in Sponsor Impact, World Poverty

I’m reading some interview transcripts today from Uganda, full of names: place names, school names, business names, mountain names. The names have many syllables and a lot of vowels. It’s very confusing and they all sound very much alike. I’m thankful my colleague Alex, who did the interviews originally, took time to spell out some [...]

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Joseph and his mother Nighty

Now I know I will live

By on August 21, 2012 in Church, Sponsor Impact, World Poverty

When people ask me what Food for the Hungry does, it’s often phrased like this: “What do you give people?” Most of the time they expect to hear that we give food. It’s in our name, after all. Today my colleagues in Uganda sent a great story about a woman named Nighty. She is  ”living [...]

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Girls with curiosity

By on August 7, 2012 in Sponsor Impact, World Poverty

I loved seeing the video clip of the NASA scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrating the landing of the Curiosity rover on Mars the other day.  What a milestone! I’m a child of the Apollo era, when we stayed up late to watch moon walks or heard about the mission’s progress over the school [...]

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Me and my sponsored child

Joined in prayer

By on July 24, 2012 in Sponsor Impact

I keep a photo of my sponsored child, Rani, by my desk.  It helps me remember to pray for her. Rani is from Bangladesh. When I decided to sponsor a child I asked our staff to find a child who had languished in the system without a sponsor. Rani was 12 at the time; sponsors [...]

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Goodbye to cookie cutters: Three reasons to be glad

By on July 17, 2012 in Church, World Poverty

Now that I’ve gotten your attention with something food-oriented… In my FH world, “cookie cutter” refers to community development where an outsider comes to a village with a certain pre-packaged technical solution to a problem.  Every village would receive the same stuff with the same design.  The village’s decision is whether to accept or reject [...]

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Woman holding watering can

What’s it take to change the world?

By on July 9, 2012 in World Poverty

Meet Emily. She’s an average teenage girl, slim adolescent build, mousy hair in a ponytail, donning a fluorescent orange safety vest.  She’s planted in lock-kneed stance on a traffic island, in the midst of a boulevard.  Thousands of evacuees from the fairground swarm Emily’s crosswalk, to reach their cars before the huge storm really cuts [...]

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