To become a child of God, one must believe with all his heart that Jesus Christ is the son of God, and then be buried with him in baptism. The sinner must be baptized for the remission of sins as Peter told the Pentecostians in Acts 2nd. This is the only was that sinners can become Christians. So, this adds up to something interesting and significant to me. Here we have a picture of an area that was suffering famine and having real difficulty even getting enough to eat.
Starvation is mentioned as a possibility.
We are proud people and self-sufficient and we have been blessed with a great deal of material wealth and a supply system that includes grocery stores abundantly stocked with food whether we are in a drought or not. They had the fruit of their labors, what they could get from their farms and what they could trade for. It was a different kind of existence altogether. Further, there was not any real support from the government for these kinds of problems, people were on their own. Because there was a small church which was aware of a larger brotherhood, there was a means of asking for and receiving some help.