We had a fantastic time today with the Community Thanksgiving Dinner. Pastor Trout started the day with prayer for all the church staff that was there to serve. We prayed for the people and we also prayed for the basketball team from the high school. Words and pictures can not hardly express what we saw and felt today in reaching out to those families.
Some of the families were from shelters for abused women. Others were from homeless shelters. Our church bus went to pick up fifteen homeless people and when they got to the location there were fifty people wanting to come eat. They called from up to 17 miles away for a ride to come to the church today. Others had no problems as such but they just wanted to come to the church a have a good dinner and fellowship with God’s people. Several of the church people and even couples spent most of the day transporting people to and from the dinner.
One lady that came was 91 and she used to take care of one of the men in the church when he was a baby. Another couple came and he had backslid from a large charismatic church in the area because he said that since they had grown real big all they could talk about was money. His wife wanted to get their daughter baptized and a certain church wanted to have them pay $500 to perform a baptism. Needless to say the wife was devastated because they did not have the money. Imagine a church charging for various plans or parts of salvation!
There was a lady that came and she had her oxygen tank on wheels. We moved chairs around to make it easier for her to get to a table and be seated. She was a little embarrassed to be treated so well and she kept apologizing and got a little overwhelmed. One of our ladies reached out and gave her a hug and within seconds they both were crying. I guess our prayers were working and God was reaching out through the hurts and scars and the people could feel His love in a real way today!!
Another family of 4 walked a mile this morning to get to the church and eat. What moved me was their desire to be there because the man had knee surgery on Oct 3 and could barely walk around the dining area today. When they were ready to go home I loaded them up and took them. They promised to come to church tomorrow!
The North East High school Girl’s Basketball Team came today to help us serve the tables. To help control the crowd and to let them know that we wanted to treat them royal, we brought the people in and seated them. They checked off on a piece of paper what they wanted to eat. The girls went around and picked up the forms and turned them into the kitchen. Then they took the plates to the tables and brought an assortment of deserts to choose from as well. When we counted those forms we found out that we served 400 people today!
4 comments:
Kevin, this is absolutely incredible! God was WELL-PLEASED with you all today! God bless you for serving those in need. You and the church will be blessed abundantly! Thank you for sharing with us.
Truly demonstrates the true meaning of "Thanks" "Giving".
Thanks Linda and Aunt Karen! I am glad that you enjoyed the post! It was a blessing to to give. We realized how blessed we really are in life.
WOW! This is great! I'm glad you all had such a great time.
Blessings to you all!
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