His pulse quickened.
“Did you hear that?” Brennen asked his friend. “Yes, yes, it’s the plane!” his friend said excitedly as he peered up through the dense jungle underbrush towards the sky.
Brennen and his friend turned and started running as best they could back down the mountain trail towards the school campus and associated airstrip. As they ran the two miles, he kept hearing the loud sound of the plane which was nearly as loud as his growling stomach. He kept thinking of the feast that all 40 staff and students would soon enjoy once they unloaded their long-awaited food from the plane. Out of breath, they emerged from the jungle, drenched in sweat, into the clearing which served as an airstrip for Davis Indian Industrial College.
There was no plane in sight. Where was it? He could still hear it. Then it dawned on them. That wasn’t the sound of a plane, that was the sound of high-powered mowers in the local village. His heart sank. Disappointed, drenched in sweat, and hungry, he wondered when they would have a decent meal again. At this point, they needed a miracle. Would God keep His promise?
It was 2005 in a little village called Paruima in the western part of Guyana near the Venezuela border. Davis Indian Industrial College (DIIC) was a small Adventist boarding school with around 25 students and a handful of volunteer missionary staff dedicated to bringing the light of God’s love to this remote part of South America. As a young nineteen-year-old student missionary, Brennen was growing in his faith in this rural mission outpost. There was no road or boat access to DIIC. The only way in or out for people or supplies was via airplane. Every few weeks, Jim, the pilot with Guyana Adventist Medical Aviation Services, would fly supplies into the school by landing on the one-way airstrip. As you can imagine, this was the school’s lifeline and their primary source of food. The goal of the staff was to make the school more self-sustaining, but that would take time. They had several acres cultivated into gardens where students and staff had worked very hard to till, cultivate and plant crops like cassava, cabbage, beans, and sweet potatoes. Unfortunately, more than half the plants that had come up that year had died. The plants that were growing, weren’t producing much at all. Their food supply was getting low and everyone was looking forward to the plane arriving with more food.
One morning as the school staff gathered around the radio for their daily check-in with Jim, Jim shared some sobering news. The mission had run out of funds. He had no money for fuel for the plane. The good news he hastened to add, was that they had received a large donation from the States. Unfortunately, the local bank had notified him that they would be freezing the funds for at least 30 days. Until those funds were released by the bank, he would not be able to fly at all.
As the crackle of the radio died away, the school leaders quickly gathered all the students and staff together. Together they made an inventory of the remaining food on hand – enough food to last three or four days at most. This didn’t look good. They prayed together, then continued with the school day.
Returning a Tithe to God
Pretty soon they had eaten up all their food, except for bananas. They had a lot of bananas which they began eating three times a day. School was cancelled and everyone was told to partner up with another person and go out to the jungle and scour for wild fruits. It was safer in groups of two. With poisonous snakes, the jungle was not always the safest place. The scavenging for food continued over three or four days, then something happened.
At the worship gathering one morning, where they were reading through the book “Acts of the Apostles”, they read about the story of Ananias and Sapphira.1 They read how God was displeased with covetousness and with those who withhold tithes and offerings.
As Brennen was quietly listening, someone a few seats over suddenly spoke up. “We’ve been robbing God as a school,” he says.
“Think about it, we haven’t been returning a tithe to God.”
Turning to him, Brennen asked “How is that possible? None of us are getting a paycheck. We’re all volunteers and have spent our own money to come here. How are we supposed to pay tithe if we don’t have an income?”
As the conversation continues, they think back to Bible times where it was primarily an agricultural economy. God was clear in His guidance that as the Israelites harvested their crops, a tenth was to be returned to Him of all their “increase.”2 Suddenly a light bulb went on in everyone’s mind. Yes, of course! No, they didn’t have paychecks to tithe but they did have a garden. Although it wasn’t producing much, it was producing something! They could tithe what little they harvested.
Tithe Bananas
Quickly they started doing some rough math to figure out how much the garden had produced since the school year had started. But there was a problem. They had eaten all the produce – beans, sweet potatoes, cassava. There was no food left, except for bananas. They did a little more math and came up with an equivalent amount of bananas which they owed in tithe, then added some more just to be safe. Armed with a weigh scale, they headed out of the school building to collect and weigh out the bananas. They put all the tithe bananas into the front loader of the farm tractor, which filled it. One of the staff then started the tractor and drove to the small village nearby. The tithe bananas were deposited on the front steps of the little Adventist church and the elder was called and notified about the delivery.
The group then gathered again for prayer, to ask God’s forgiveness for robbing Him, and to claim His promise that He would open the windows of heaven. Although they only had about one day’s worth of bananas left, everyone felt much better having made things right with God.
It was now about one week since that initial radio call. Everyone again teamed up and headed out for another day of scavenging. Midday, Brennen and his friend heard the sound which brought them racing back to the school campus. Disappointment overwhelmed them once they realized it was the sound of the local caretaker of the village soccer field that was mowing. They might be in a primitive and rural part of the world, but no expense or effort was spared by the local village to keep their soccer field in top shape for evening games!
The next day, with only a meal or two of bananas left, they were again out scavenging in the jungle. As Brennen and his friend were under a papaya tree trying to figure out how to get the fruit down without cutting the tree, he suddenly sees an airplane. Then he hears it. Not wanting to make the same mistake as the previous day, he asks his friend if he too sees the plane. Yes, he does! “Okay, I’m not seeing things,” thinks Brennen, “maybe this is for real this time.” They quickly abandon their task at the papaya tree and hurriedly head down to the airstrip. As they once more emerge from the jungle, they look up and see it. The airplane!
The pilot Jim is unloading bags of rice, lentils, garbanzo beans, split peas, and more. As a small crowd gathers around the plane, someone asks the question on everyone’s mind. What happened? Jim shared how the craziest thing transpired that very morning. He received a phone call from the bank telling him that the funds were released early. He was able to get fuel, load the plane with food, and fly to DIIC.
Several weeks after this experience Brennen took a picture of the school cook, Roberto, standing in their little kitchen. The floor is dirt, the walls are bare wood. Zinc metal roofing is overhead protecting from sun and rain. An old 50-gallon drum that has been converted into a makeshift oven sits in one corner. But piled high in front of the beaming Roberto are pumpkins, beans, cabbages, cucumbers, sweet potatoes, and cassava, all the bounty of the garden.
The school had gathered for a time of praise and thanksgiving to God and His faithfulness to them after the plane came. Almost overnight it seemed, the garden started producing. In fact, they had more than they could use at the school. They took the extra produce (after tithing of course) to the local village to share with the residents there. Did God open the windows of heaven for that little school some fifteen years ago? Yes, He did. And He can do the same for you and me today.
Call to Action
Today God is calling you and me to be faithful to Him,
in all areas, including in our tithes and offerings. Just like in the jungles
of Guyana, I know that God also wants to pour out His blessings upon us. In
Malachi 3:10, the Bible tells us to bring all the tithes into the storehouse
and prove God in this: that He opens the windows of Heaven and pours out more
blessings than we have room for. Could we be preventing His blessings to us? Could
God be looking for us to be faithful to Him in our finances, our increase, our
“harvest”?
- See Acts of the Apostles, Chapter 7: “A Warning Against Hypocrisy”
- Deuteronomy 14:22
