I wanted to thank all of you who were there on Friday (9/14/07) and or donated to this outreach and to tell all of you of God’s miraculous provision to enable us to create 80 bags for the boys. On Friday morning, we had about 100-150 pounds of food or enough to fill perhaps 15 bags. We put out a call to the youth group, Barb stepped up to the plate, and we used some of our monetary donations to purchase food. As we started to fill bags on Friday evening, our initial thought was perhaps we could fill 40 bags and let Willie decide which boys were in the most need. What tugged at my heart was what Willie had told the new group in July when they didn’t have enough room to carry all the food our church provided for them. He had told them, “We will send food home with you every visit. Bring enough vehicles to be sure you can carry it.” What if we couldn’t provide bags for them this month? God is faithful in his provision to us. We needed to be faithful to our message to these boys. But how would we do it?
We put the basics in 40 bags and said perhaps we can do 10 more. It seemed as if the supplies didn’t go down. So we filled 10 more, then 10 more, and finally said we could provide all 80 bags although they would be light. We were delighted as we backfilled the bags with the various items that remained. When we were done, we thought “that was amazing.” The bags weren’t overflowing by any means but there was enough to let these boys and their families know that God cares.
We prayed and, while some volunteers left, some of us stayed to talk. Soon Jamie appeared with a few more bags from the youth group. We were delighted as we distributed these additional items. A while later Arturo arrived with an ample supply of soup and macaroni and cheese. By the time we finished adding this to the bags, they were nearly ¾ full and the volunteers were overflowing with amazement at God’s provision. Although we started out with perhaps 150 pounds of food on Friday morning, we probably sent 900 pounds home with the boys!
It reminded us of the story of the widow of Zarephath (I Kings 17) who had enough oil and flour to make one more loaf of bread in the midst of the famine, then she and her son would die. But God stretched the flour and oil to feed Elijah, the widow and her son until the famine ended.
God stretched our food on Friday. Let us all give thanks and sing His praise!
Lois Bennett, Director of My Neighbor's Pantry
